Avot288

1:
Chapter 5 continues with its quasi historical review from a midrashic point of view. From Adam the material proceeded to Noah and then to Abraham. Now we have reached Abraham's descendents. As foreseen in the Brit Beyn haBetarim [see Avot 284] Abraham's progeny had become numerous but had also been enslaved by a pharaoh in Egypt. In the Brit Beyn haBetarim God had promised Abraham that there would come a time when He would judge the Egyptians and apply pressure that would secure the release of the Israelites.

2:
At first glance one might think that the ten miracles that were performed for the Israelites in Egypt were the ten plagues themselves, the ten calamities that are so graphically described in six chapters [7-12] of the book of Exodus. Every year, at the Seder table, we succinctly review them:

But not all of these events impressed the Egyptians that they were intended to impress. Let us take, for example, the very first of the plagues, the changing of the waters of the Nile to blood. We read [Exodus 7:20-22]:

If the Egyptian magicians could duplicate the phenomenon it could not have been so impressive a miracle.

3:
It would seem better to pay careful attention to the exact wording of the midrash which is our present mishnah. The miracles were performed for our ancestors (and not for the Egyptians). In the case of a couple of the plagues the miracle vis-a-vis the Israelites is made clear. For example, we read [Exodus 10:21-23]:

The miracle was the fact that of all the calamities that were visited upon the land of Egypt not one affected the Israelites themselves, but only the Egyptians.

To be continued.

In Avot 285 we saw how Abraham and Sarah tried to secure progeny through the surrogate, Hagar. Jacob Chinitz offers a most interesting comment:

Is it not surprising from the halakhic point of view that Jewish identity is created by the Jewish mother and here, suddenly, the father and mother of the nation are prepared to ensure the continuation of the nation through a non-Jewish handmaid. One can claim that this happened before the Torah was given and that therefore halakhic minutiae did not apply to the patriarchs. And, indeed, there is a dispute in the Gemara whether the patriarchs should be considered to be Israelite or Noahide. This means that before the giving of the Torah there was only national identity but not religious identity. According to this term the Israelites become Jews at Sinai according to a conversion process. It is interesting that Rambam describes the conversion process as including circumcision, mikveh, sacrifice and acceptance of the commandments, following the paradigm established at Sinai.