Useful Idiots and Pharaonic Blindness: When We Stop Connecting the Dots Parshat Bo
- Dr Tanya White
- 15 hours ago
- 5 min read
A Shabbat friendly PDF attached at end of the page.
Part of a collaboration with The Simchat Torah challenge (Simchat Torah Challenge)
(In the Zechut of Refua Sheleima for גיטל פעשא בת מאשע רחל)
Every day that passes, another headline reminds us of the battle being waged by radical ideologues on both left and right — what has become popularly known as the phenomenon of the "useful idiot." We witnessed the sheer double standards when these same voices refused to cry outrage as the people of Iran — truly persecuted for over forty-seven years under a tyrannical regime — rose up to reclaim their indigenous heritage. They are fighting to return to their historical roots, to the time of King Cyrus, to claim back their land and their narrative.
Watching them, I was reminded of Tara Westover's vow in her memoir Educated, after escaping a cult that repressed her individuality:
"Never again would I allow myself to be made a foot soldier in a conflict I did not understand."
Being a foot soldier in a conflict we know nothing about requires two things: a world that has shifted from wisdom to information, and a culture that has moved from curiosity to data. Today, in a world that has outsourced everything from morality to responsibility, we have outsourced our memory to hard drives and our collective story to the dustbin. Our attention span lasts only as long as it takes to scroll to the next empty reel. Memory has become storage space on our devices rather than the meta-narrative arc that once comprised a human life.
Real memory is passed down through generations; it is part of the learning curve of humankind. But because humans have become increasingly solitary, our memory has also become atomized — disconnected from any larger pattern. There is a connection between a world bereft of narrative and a world of uneducated foot soldiers. In our disenchanted age of crude causality, everything must have a simple explanation. Oppressed means oppressor. Good equals good. Bad equals bad. No space for nuance, complexity, or moral ambiguity.
Playing Connect the Dots: The Antidote to Pharaonic Amnesia
A parallel narrative unfolds in this week's parsha.
The first is a leader whose name we know only generically: Pharaoh. He suffers from moral amnesia, forgetting from one plague to the next the suffering his people have endured. But his amnesia runs deeper than mere forgetfulness. The Torah tells us that a new king arose over Egypt "who did not know Joseph" (Shemot 1:8). This was not simply an act of forgetting — it was the collapse of dot-to-dot thinking. Pharaoh inhabits a world of crude causality, searching only for immediate causes and effects, unable to perceive the larger pattern, the meta-narrative arc that provides not just cause but meaning.
Neil Gilman once described Jewish history as a kind of sacred dot-to-dot: "The function of the Bible and of post-biblical Jewish religious literature is precisely to assign a number to the dots of our communal experience so that Jews will continue to trace the predetermined pattern of God's power and love for Israel."
Pharaoh cannot play dot-to-dot. He sees only the immediate threat to his power— a growing population — and responds with a policy of immediate results - extermination. In this week’s Parsha as each plague strikes he responds as if it were the first. Warning’s go unheeded, events are not connected beyond their immediate causes. He is the archetype of the leader who cannot learn because he cannot perceive pattern, who cannot remember because he has no narrative framework in which memory might dwell. He had adopted the pattern of amnesia long before God imposed it upon him.
The second leader is Moshe — a man whose humility almost cost him his leadership. Unlike Pharaoh, Moshe consistently instructs his people to remember.
Before they have even left Egypt, they are given laws of Pesach — rituals of remembrance for generations yet unborn:
“וְהָיָה הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה לָכֶם לְזִכָּרוֹן”“This day shall be for you a memorial.” (Shemot 12:14)
הִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא”“And you shall tell your child on that day…” (Shemot 13:8)
At the height of the action — while history is being made — the people are instructed to prepare for its retelling. This is performative memory it tells us that freedom is not merely about breaking physical chains; it is about creating the narrative architecture that will preserve that freedom across time. But the story is told as a consequence of questions asked.
הָיָה כִּי יִשְׁאָלְךָ בִנְךָ מָחָר”“And when your child will ask you tomorrow…” (Shemot 13:14)
What emerges is a revolutionary idea: individual freedom is predicated on our ability to ask questions and to answer through narrative. Questions do not always need definitive answers; they must spark curiosity, foster identity formation, and generate dialogue between generations. Unlike contemporary culture Moshe introduces freedom through a society that values wisdom over information, and curiosity over data. These, God teaches us, are the ingredients of true freedom.
Postmodernism wants us to believe that absolute freedom is won through the negation of our past — of our identity, our tradition, our story. The Exodus narrative protests this idea. Memory. Narrative creation. Dialogue between generations. Identity formation. These are the building blocks of freedom because they ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past and provide a moral compass for the future.
The Sin of 'Casual Causal Conscience' Foot-soldiers
The people of Iran, fighting to reclaim their heritage, understand intuitively what Pharaoh could not grasp — that a people without a story is a people without a future. The Exodus teaches us that freedom is not a right but responsibility and needs protecting through memory.
And here we return to where we began. When we outsource our memory to hard drives, when we move from wisdom to information, from curiosity to data, we become Pharaohs of our own making — trapped in a world of immediate causes, unable to perceive the sacred pattern that connects the dots of our existence. Data gives us causes; collective memory gives us meaning. Information tells us what happened; wisdom teaches us why it matters. Causality explains the mechanics of events; narrative reveals their purpose.
The useful idiots of our age are not lacking in information — they are drowning in it. What they lack is the wisdom to connect the dots between things – like for example the Iranian regime and Hamas, to see beyond pure "facts" into patterns and wider perspectives that lend context and nuance to a
very complex story and history. They are championing ‘causes’ based on what I like to call their ‘casual causal conscience’ but lack a framework of meaning in which those causes might be understood in their wider horizon. In the words of Byunh Chul Han, “The hegemony of causality leads to a poverty in world and experience. A magical world is one in which things enter into relations with each other and that are not ruled by causal exchange”. (The Crisis of Narration p36)
The question we must ask them is this: Can you connect the dots? Can you place your brief moment on earth inside a larger narrative arc? Are you willing to remember both the pain and the hope of human history without whitewashing or blackwashing? Are you ready to build a moral world of ritual and reason, rooted in memory, while taking responsibility for the future?
The world may no longer play dot-to-dot.
But we must.
To do so means we will not merely be foot soldiers in another's battle — we will become soldiers in our own collective story. It means resisting the seduction of simple causality and embracing the harder, slower work of meaning-making. It means teaching our children not just to find answers but to ask questions that unfold across a lifetime.
This is our inheritance. This is Moshe’s message on the brink of freedom. And it must be our message to the world today, as so many are still fighting for theirs.
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