Parshas Vaera - Bo - Were the Jews Affected by the Plagues?

 Were the Jews affected by the plagues that struck Egypt? 

It seems like an absurd question. Weren't the plagues there to force the Egyptians to free the Jews?

And yet only in the plague of the swarm of wild animals does G-d for the first time make a point that the plague will distinguish between the Egyptians and the Jews.

This event is treated as extraordinary and is described as a "sign" implying that this had not happened before.

Going forward, some of the plagues contain this distinction while others make no mention of it.

The swarm of wild animals and the disease that strikes the animals, Orov and Dever, both distinguish between Jews and Egyptians, as does Barad, the wave of burning hail, along with darkness, Hosech, and the death of the first born, but there is no mention of this during, for example, the plague of soot that leaves of blisters. 

Why is there a distinction with some plagues but not others? 

The pattern seems to be that those plagues that were lethal, like rampaging wild animals, a disease that kills animals, hail that kills anyone in the fields and the deaths of the first born, distinguished between Jews and Egyptians. The plague of darkness does not entirely fit this pattern, but sudden blindness may itself be considered lethal in terms of the potential for deadly accidents, or perhaps was done for the sake of allowing Jews to enter the homes of Egyptians, or for a symbolic purpose.

But why would any of the plagues affect the Jews at all?

The answer may be that G-d needed to not only convince the Egyptians to let the Jews go, but he also needed to convince the Jews to leave.

Hard as it may be to believe, the Jews would propose to return to Egypt several times even after they had been liberated. In their agony they cried to G-d for salvation, but they did not request to be taken out.

And we have seen during exile how Jewish populations became so deeply rooted in exile that they did not wish to leave. It was indeed only a minority of Jews who returned to Israel to rebuild the Second Temple or who came to refound the State of Israel in the last century.

At the beginning of Parshas Vaera, Moshe protests that the Jews aren't listening to him, how then will Pharaoh heed him. And G-d commands him on both the Jews and the Egyptians in order to liberate the Jews.

The plagues made life uncomfortable for both Jews and Egyptians. While some plagues killed Egyptians, other plagues made the Jews more willing to leave Egypt.

Liberation is more than a matter of eliminating the slavemaster. A slave can remain a slave even when his master is dead. 

That goes to the question also of why G-d delayed the liberation of the Jews for so long.

It is an unhappy thought that the Jews had become so acclimated to Egypt that G-d did not even propose to liberate them sooner because they would not have gone. And when G-d proposed to liberate them, it was not because they asked to leave, but because of their agony and suffering, that He took pity on them even though they were not ready to leave, and increased the pressure so that the Egyptians would, as it states before the final plague, drive them out. 

It was not enough for the Egyptians to cease being an obstacle, they had to drive the Jews out.

The end of exile requires not only the fall of tyrants, but unfortunately also the discomfort of the Jews.