Among all the ten plagues in Egypt, frogs are probably the most Disney-esque. Unlike most of the other plagues, they were more annoyance than anything else, no one got hurt. And frogs have that mischievous, wide-eyes personality.
I asked kids at the Maimonides school in Albany to compile interesting facts about frogs for the “High-5” feature in our weekly “MC” school newsletter – in connection with the frogs in the Torah portion. I realized that some of this frog trivia can have meaningful application to our human and Jewish lives. This isn’t so far-fetched, because we learn that Chananya, Mishael and Azarya, many generations removed from Egypt refused to renounce their faith and were shoved into a fiery furnace – yet survived. We learned that their willing sacrifice was inspired in part by the frogs of Egypt, who thought nothing of jumping into hot Egyptian ovens during the second plague. So there’s Rabbinic precedence to learning life lessons from frogs.
All frogs jump. Some frogs can jump many times their body length.
Often we limit ourselves by our reach. Some frogs can jump five, then or twenty times their own body length! They don’t stretch out their legs and think maybe I can stretch a little further. Their leaps far exceed their own size.
Did you know that frogs don’t drink? Instead they sit and soak in water and absorb the water through their skin.
Spiritually, we sip refreshing words of Torah here and there. Another way is to immerse yourself inside of it, absorb it through your pores, take it all in through a total immersion experience.
We, too, can live an amphibious life.
Frogs dance between two worlds. They are perfectly comfortable in the water, and can function very well on dry land. They can bounce back and forth seamlessly and effortlessly between the two. Many of us also find ourselves living back and forth between two worlds – our identity as Jews and as Americans, our religious lives and our secular lives, our lives at home and our lives at work – you get the idea. Frogs teach us that if we are true to ourselves, we can indeed live happily in both worlds, and transfer seamlessly between them. They don’t have to be a contradiction if we balance it right.