Moses asked the Pharaoh to free the Israelites, but the Pharaoh refused because he was a schmuck. So G-d brought ten plagues upon Egypt, and each time, the Pharaoh got scared and promised to free the Israelites, but he did not, because in addition to being a schmuck he had the IQ of a glazed doughnut. It was only after the tenth and scariest plague that it finally dawned on his tiny Pharaoh brain that unless he wanted G-d to turn the entire Egyptian population into sea urchins or something, he’d better let the Israelites go.
We fill our cups with a meh wine that we do not mind spilling to remember how happy we were when this happened. But we are not totally happy, because we are Jewish, and thus we can never be truly happy except when the Knicks win the title. Also we feel a little bad for the Egyptians, because it’s not like they had a democracy and said, “Hey, let’s elect a moron to be the Pharaoh!” So instead of drinking all the wine or even a nice martini1 right now, we dip our fingers into our cups and spatter wine droplets all over a perfectly good tablecloth, which will have to be dry-cleaned—but go ahead, it’s fine—as we say the names of the plagues:
Blood
Humidity
Frogs
Nervousness
Lice
Constipation Like You Would Not Believe
Locusts
Jerry Lewis
Boils
Gluten