Today's vort being written after a busy week, while I'm on a plane, so it'll be even shorter than usual.

As Mitzrayim was struck by Makkos Bechoros, the ultimate of the plagues, the Torah tells us "Vayakam Pharaoh, Pharaoh rose" to search for Moshe. Rashi comments: "mimitaso, from his bed."

Many have observed the irony of Pharaoh, himself a bechor, going to bed on the night Moshe predicted the firstborn would die.

There is an important lesson to every person in this episode:

Moshe had effected 9 makkos, each of which was executed with surgical precision. They started and ended just when Moshe said they would; they had destroyed Egypt even as they spared the Jews among them. Pharaoh's own people had told him "haterem teida ki avda Mitzrayim?! Don't you know that Egypt had been doomed by your refusal to let the Jews free?!"

Yet Pharaoh was undeterred.

The passuk tells us "Vegam es zeh leumas zeh bara Elokim, Hashem created this and its opposite." As great as the potential is to do bad, there is equal and opposite potential to do good.

Pharaoh teaches us that when challenges confront us, we still have the ability to do the right thing, so long as we are committed to doing so.

And we also see that, despite their being smitten again and again, the Egyptians did not rise up in revolt. Mitzrayim was being destroyed, as they said, but why did they sit idly by?

Rav Yisroel Salanter commented that although flasehood cannot survive (sheker ein lo raglayim) those perpetrating the sheker may succeed by didn't of the emes of their beliefs.

A committed leader can inspire his nation to endanger their survival. And if we can do good with that fervor, we will doubtless inspire all those around us.

Gut Shabbos!