What happens when you are exhausted, want to produce a blog post, and resort to artificial intelligence? I entered three ideas into ChatGPT and Perplexity and asked for a blog post. The ideas were: Heated Rivalry, the HBO Max gay hockey player show, the confrontations between Moses and Pharaoh, and the political posturing of our President. I thought the result was fascinating, and it helped me to preserve some energy after a very busy week and a wonderful Friday night event for the Jewish Studio. So here it goes!
Heated Rivalry
The rivalry between Moses and Pharaoh in Exodus looks a lot like a season‑long feud: two talented, strong‑willed figures locked into a contest that neither is willing to end, even when the cost to everyone else keeps climbing. As with the feuding hockey stars on HBO Max, the drama is not just in the outcome but in the way each confrontation reveals who these men really are and what they refuse to surrender.
Pharaoh’s Court As the Rink
Pharaoh’s throne room functions like their shared ice: hostile territory, yes, but also the only arena where the rivalry can play out. Moses keeps skating back into that space because his mission is unfinished and non‑negotiable—freedom is the goal, not a better contract within the same oppressive system. Pharaoh, for his part, keeps letting Moses back in because the confrontation itself feeds his sense of dominance; he believes that as long as he controls the venue, he controls the narrative.
Like star athletes who need each other to sharpen their edge, these two leaders become strangely bound by repeated face‑offs. Yet the similarity stops there: Moses is not chasing personal glory but a covenantal future for his people, while Pharaoh is defending a brittle ego and an unjust order that depends on never admitting a foul. (Rabbi/editor’s note: sounds like history repeats itself.) Their shared ice is the place where one insists on liberation, and the other insists that nothing fundamental must change.
Manufactured Enemies and Modern Pharaohs
Exodus’s Pharaoh is an early sketch of the kind of leader who needs rivals to feel important. He keeps summoning the man he calls his enemy, then refusing to heed him, because the ongoing feud reassures him that he is still at the center of the story. The plagues that follow—economic collapse, public misery, national grief—are the fallout of a heart that would rather escalate than repent.
So, when a contemporary leader constantly rails against the press, political opponents, business critics, and foreign heads of state, yet cannot stop inviting them back into the room—press scrums, televised meetings, tense summits—it is hard not to hear the echo. The conflict becomes the show; each new self‑inflicted crisis is spun as proof that only he can win the next dramatic showdown. Like Pharaoh, he thrives on the rivalry he has manufactured, even as the “plagues” of instability, division, and global distrust multiply around him.
When Rivalry Blocks Redemption
The television show offers that fierce competitors can become unlikely partners when they finally name what they’re really after and risk trusting one another. Exodus offers the darker version: Moses and Pharaoh never reach that point because their ultimate loyalties are irreconcilable service to God and liberation on one side, preservation of absolute control on the other. Reconciliation would require Pharaoh to step out of the role he has written for himself and admit that his power has limits.
Any leader who builds a public identity on permanent feuding faces the same fork in the ice. Either the rivalry is allowed to cool so that truth, repentance, and shared standards can take root, or it intensifies until there is nothing left but a hollow throne and a wrecked arena. The Exodus story, and the best sports dramas, suggest that greatness is never finally measured by how many enemies a person can keep on the ice, but by whether they ever learn to lay down the feud before it destroys the game itself.
Rabbi Evan J. Krame
If this reflection resonates with you, consider sharing it on social media—or simply take a moment to reflect on how you can create a better community.
