By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—Just as the ABC network hoped many people would do, I got myself
ready for Passover seders by watching the "Ten Commandments"
mini-series, starring Dougray Scott as Moses. However, in that I watched
the four hours of television programming by playing it back on my videotape,
fast-forwarding through the commercials, I may have disappointed the network. By
viewing the entire program on Wednesday morning, instead of in Monday and
Tuesday night installments, I perhaps saved myself an hour
People already are comparing and contrasting the series' special effects to
those of the famous 50-year-old movie of the same name starring Charleton Heston
in the title role. I found myself focusing less on miracle and battle scenes and
more on the discussions that writer Ron Hutchinson imagined between Moses and
Menerith (Naveen Andrews), a made-up character who supposedly was the son of the
Egyptian princess (Padma Lakshmi) who drew Moses out of the water as a
baby. In this midrash of Hutchinson's, the two boys grew up
together but were parted after Moses fled Egypt for killing a taskmaster who
beat a slave.
The step-brothers meet up again in a new Pharaoh's court—Menerith
as an officer of the Pharaoh's army, and Moses as God's spokesman, demanding
freedom for the slaves. Pharaoh (Paul Rhys) instructs Menerith
to make certain that the upstart Moses learns the meaning of hard work, but
Menerith recognizes him as his long-lost brother. They embrace out of the
sight of the Pharaoh. When Moses starts to introduce the Egyptian to his
Hebrew slave brother Aaron (Linus Roache) as another brother, Aaron will have
none of it. "I see only one of my masters," Aaron snaps.
For Moses, who once lived in the Egyptian palace, it is not so easy to divide
the world into "us" and "them." Menerith and Moses
feel real brotherly affection towards each other—more, in fact, than Moses
feels for Aaron whom he did not get to know well until after he returned from
the desert. Equally caught between family and group loyalty, Menerith
tries to mediate the dispute between Pharaoh and Moses but, with his heart
hardened by God, Pharaoh stubbornly resists Moses' demands. Although the plagues
sent by God cause suffering for him and his people, the Pharaoh continues to
resist right through the Tenth Plague, which is the climactic killing of the
first born.
The Angel of Death kills not only the beloved son of Pharaoh, but also the
son of Menerith, a boy whom Moses thinks of as his own nephew. Moses tells
Menerith that the plague was God's work, not his, and that he grieves for
the boy. Menerith suggests that Moses has a cruel God. Moses responds that long
ago the previous Pharaoh had sent soldiers to the homes of the Hebrew slaves to
kill their newborn sons. But Menerith refuses to acknowledge any justice in this
divine retribution, protesting that neither he nor his son were involved in,
much less responsible for, that attack on the Hebrew slaves. Menerith asks
Moses if God were to tell Moses to kill him, would Moses comply? Moses
does not answer.
Not God but the Pharaoh demands fratricide. He orders Menerith to chase down
Moses and the fleeing Hebrews. Complying, Menerith catches up with his
step-brother at the Reed Sea, and after God parts the waters to allow the
Hebrews to pass through, Menerith is among the Egyptians who are drowned when
the waters close back up again. Moses, after finding his step-brother's
drowned body, cannot join the dancing and singing led by his sister Miriam
(Susan Lynch) on the eastern side of the sea. As we watch him mourn his
step-brother, we are reminded of the seder when we diminish our cups of wine in
acknowledgment that the Egyptians, too, were God's children, and that we should
mourn their loss.
But that's the Haggadah, a fairly flexible body of work
that seems to change with the social norms of the times. The television
mini-series makes the point that compassion, divine or human, was in short
supply in the biblical story of the journey of the Hebrews from slavery to the
Promised Land. At one point, Pharaoh demands an explanation if the contest
of wills were between him and God, why so many innocent Egyptians should
suffer—kind of a chutzpadik question given all the suffering
Pharaoh's reign inflicts upon others.
This question concerning the justice of mass punishment is
raised again and again in the mini-series, at least by implication. After
defeating the Amalekites, who had been attacking Hebrew stragglers, Moses orders
that their city to be set afire. He subsequently questions God whether
this will be the fate of the Hebrew, to be forced "to keep fighting and
winning to prove that we are working for You?" God makes no reply.
Later, Moses orders that those who worshiped the Golden Calf, while he was on
Mount Sinai to receive the Law, be put to death. No provision is made to spare
children who blindly may have followed their parents without
understanding what was at stake. Where is the justice in that?
Providing contrast between the quality of justice meted out to the masses
and that which should be accorded to individuals, the scriptwriter of the series
has Moses intervening to prevent one man falsely accused of murder from being
stoned to death in the absence of any eye witnesses. Later when the real
culprit is found—and the motive of covering up a case of adultery
discovered—Moses agonizes over having the murderer and his adulterous partner
stoned to death.
Had he not once killed an Egyptian in a fit of anger—to protect this very same
man, who now stood before him as a murderer himself? Was this man's act of
passion any worse than his own? And if he were to show favoritism to the
man, who had been his loyal follow, rather than carrying out the sentence,
wouldn't he lose the trust of the Hebrew masses?
In first imagining and then dramatizing these kinds of moral issues,
Hutchinson "has helped to refine the story of the Exodus. Therefore I
welcome it as an interesting addition to the television liturgy—whether or not
the scenes of the parting of the sea were better or worse than those in the
previous version.
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