Exodus 7-12: the plagues of Egypt and Passover

So, over the course of five chapters we have a fairly spectacular series of plagues, all designed to make Pharoah let the Israelites leave Egypt.
In order, we have the bloody, stinking water (which sounds like some kind of 'red tide' algal bloom to me); frogs which die everywhere; lice (ugh); flies (eeuuuwh); murrain, which kills all the cattle and sheep; boils all over everyone, including the 'magicians'; thunder, hail and fire (sounds like a dodgy 70s pop band); the notorious locusts, and finally the death of the firstborn sons.


I have two main problems with these.
Firstly, what did the poor frogs, cows and sheep, and for that matter the firstborn sons, some of whom were presumably just we'uns at the time of being bumped off, do to anyone? This all seems highly unfair. I mean, obviously there is some strategic point to offing Pharoah's son to get him to make policy changes, but:

“even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts”

(the ones that have survived the murrain, presumably). What influence are they supposed to have? How are they supposed to help the Hebrews be allowed to leave? This is all getting very bloodthirsty...
Secondly, it's all a massive set-up. All these plagues are allegedly ways to getting Pharoah to let the poor enslaved Israelites go, but after every one we get a statement like:

“But the LORD hardened Pharoah's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go” (Ch10 v20)

and:

“But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go” (Ch10 v27)

So, apparently Pharoah is supposed to let the Israelites go, but the LORD keeps stopping him. What sort of psycho game is he playing here? I'm just confused now.
But having pretty much nuked the entire livestock , farmland and water supply of Egypt (them Yankees with their Agent Orange got nuttin' on the LORD in a bad mood), the LORD then stops hardening Pharoah's heart enough that the Israelites finally get to leave.
To follow this up, we get the instructions for the Jewish feast of Passover (the night the houses of the Israelites were Passed Over by the Angel of Death seeking the firstborn), or Pesach, with the meal of lamb, bitter herbs and unleavened bread. It's a beautiful and dignified meal – I was privileged to be invited to a seder (Pesach meal) at a leftie kibbutz in the Arava desert 13 years ago, and was very moved at how, even though I was at a table full of usually rowdy teenaged students, everyone remained quiet and solemn for many of the readings which punctuated the servings of food.


I'm not entirely sure I should have been there, though, looking at the official instruction booklet we have here:

“12/43 And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof:
12/44 But every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then he shall eat thereof.
12/45 A foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat thereof.”

My experience that year amongst young Jewish people who had made aliyah – emigrated to Israel – was also an interesting lesson in the way that ritual can be more important for 'outsiders' and people who need to reinforce community and define themselves, than for those who feel more secure in their identity and community.
These young people – at the time in, I guess their early 20s – had made the choice as British Jews to move to Israel, partly perhaps because of job opportunities (or, quite frankly, to escape the bloody British weather), but substantially, as I understood it, because they felt deeply attached to the notion of a Jewish homeland in Israel and as being part of that project. Most of them, because of the friend I was travelling with, came from left-wing Zionist Jewish youth movements such as RSY Netzer and Habonim.
So, my friend (a non-kosher-keeping Jewish girl) and I, in Jerusalem during Passover, went into one of the many wonderful bakeries in the Arab quarter of the Old City, in search of bread that wasn't matzo. We'd had several days on kibbutz of unleavened matzo being made into all sorts of inventive forms of carbohydrate, and all of them were pretty tasteless and horrible. Basic matzo itself is kind of like cream crackers and actually ok, but it was the efforts to replicate leavened things like pasta and sandwiches using matzo meal that had been tough going.
Friend and I sneaked our illicit leavened bread home, where we planned to respectfully eat it away from people who were keeping proper kosher for Pesach. Not in this flat though. All of those aliyah-making twentysomethings (none of whom would have happily gone in the dark, narrow, spice-and-mint-scented streets of the Arab quarter) fell upon the proper bread like starved things, and the bagfull lasted about ten minutes. And, if keeping Pesach is primarily an expression of identity, a way of defining and celebrating Jewishness in a Britain which has over the centuries been deeply hateful, violent and prejudiced towards them, then why is it still necessary to pursue it once you're home and dry? (Even if it is on contested land...)
And, at the risk of sounding like one of those Daily Mail readers who laments the passing of some bizarre mythical 1950s England full of scrubbed-clean blonde people who skipped around being neighbourly to each other, there is something very sad about the fact that modern society seems to have lost most of its rites and rituals, that we rarely celebrate things together with any sense of poetry and solemnity, that festivals like Christmas seem to largely be an excuse for over-indulgence or an opportunity for desperate and over-worked people to cram some R&R into their lives. We seem to have lost the notion of a ritual meal as a time to share with other people and to step back, getting some perspective on both the past and future. I think it's a sad loss.

Thanks to National Geographic and Discourse.net for the pix