In this week’s Torah portion, Bo, Moshe and Aaron go to Pharaoh, who appears to acquiesce to letting them go to the desert to serve God. Pharaoh asks who is going and Moshe and Aaron reply that everyone must go since it is a festival to God. Pharaoh argues back that only the adult males need to go and then ends the conversation. What is this back and forth really about? 

Pharaoh is speaking from his idolatrous point of view. If one needs to satisfy a god with sacrifices, why send everyone? In fact, this emerges out of the image of God that Moshe and Aaron present to Pharaoh in last week’s parsha: “Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Eternal, the God of Israel: Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the wilderness.’ But Pharaoh said, ‘Who is God that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know God, nor will I let Israel go.’ Moses and Aaron answered, ‘The God of the Hebrews has become manifest to us. Let us go, we pray, a distance of three days into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Eternal our God, lest we be struck with pestilence or sword.’”

Moshe begins by appealing to Pharaoh on his own wavelength, using language drawn from idolatrous theology. The God of the Hebrews awakened and came to us and needs us to sacrifice to him or he will hurt us. This does not work, so Moshe and Aaron present Pharaoh with something much more sophisticated and Jewish in our parsha, arguing that it is not about placating God: “It is a festival of God to us.” This explains why we must all go; it is about spiritual joy for our people. 

In monotheism, God does not change. God is not satisfied by our sacrifices. It is we who are edified through serving God. It is about simcha shel mitzvah, spiritual joy for us. Thus, we all must go together. As the 19th-century Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg wrote in his Kitav VeHaKabbalah, “We all must go since it is a festival to God, meaning what kind of joy would it be if we went without our young and our old?”

Thus, Moshe is saying to Pharaoh that this is not placating a God, which would require only priests. This is different; it is something more: a national relationship between God and the Jewish people and among the Jewish people themselves.