Shemot portion begins with the story of the reversal of the king of Egypt over the successful and prosperous Israelites on the land of Egypt, a story of a sudden fall: "Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people: 'Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land.' herefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses." (Exodus 1:8-11). The portion ends with God's response to Moses' desperate appeal following the deterioration of the conditions for the Israelites working hard. And between the beginning and the end: hatred, decrees, murderousness, slavery, suffering, abuse.
For the readers, the portion offers several lights among the shadows, they can be seen as ways of dealing with the suffering and terror: the divine presence and promise that accompany the portion, choosing a worthy leader who symbolizes the beginning of the solution to the plight of the people, and drawing a line of continuity by mentioning the mythological fathers of the nation and connecting to a future vision and promise, which make it possible to imagine the present as a specific, passing point, rather than a continuous existence.
All these are powerful lines of thought and ways of coping. But personally, for me, the most comforting and meaningful passages in the portion, and in which the message for our time is embodied, are those that deal with human connections, and I wish to mention and illuminate them:
- One type of relationships are the connections within the family: the mother who, with the help of her daughter, saves her infant son and later Aaron who sets out to meet his brother to accompany him and help him with the task assigned to him. If in the book of Genesis we mainly saw competition and jealousy between brothers and sisters, here we are reminded of the power of mother's love and brotherhood.
- When Moses, who was in exile in Midian, sees the shepherds hurting the young women watering the flock, he comes to their aid. He risks helping the daughters of Reuel, priest of Midian, because it is the right and just thing to do, even though he knows they are not "ours". Reuel in turn returns the favor to Moshe, hosts him in his home and gives him his daughter. The differences of origin and religion between them do not stand in the way of the sense of justice and hospitality.
- The midwives, who according to some commentators were Egyptian, refuse to kill the Hebrew newborns, because they fear God. They run the risk of violating Pharaoh's express order, because they are connected to the moral order that calls to protect and revive helpless babies, to preserve life. Besides being a representation of the human dependence and vulnerability, newborns symbolize the potential, the unknown space, of everything that can come into being and happen, and also because of this we feel that protecting them is an ancient and profound command beyond any division into origin and nationality.
- And finally, in a scene that in my opinion is one of the most powerful and miraculous in the Bible, Pharaoh's daughter, the same Pharaoh who ordered the sons to be cast into the Nile, discovers Moses crying in the ark and takes pity on him. Moses' sister, who is watching over him from afar, sees Pharaoh's daughter discovering the child. From the scripture it appears that she hears Pharaoh's daughter say: "This is one of the Hebrews' children" (Exodus 2:6), because she replies with a suggestion: "Shall I go and call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?" (Ibid. ibid. 7). This is a Hebrew girl, who addresses an Egyptian woman and offers her assistance in violating the order of the King of Egypt in order to save a Hebrew baby. It does not seem that the Hebrew is afraid of the Egyptian, nor does it seem that they stand on either side of the Hebrew-Egyptian barrier. The conversation between them is factual, and its purpose is one - to save the child. Such is also the meeting between Pharaoh's daughter and the child's mother. The matter-of-fact and natural cooperation with the child's mother is especially amazing against the background of the attitude of the Egyptians to the Israelites described in the previous chapter. The birth of a baby was supposed to arouse that racial loathing/fear that stems from the increased birth rate of the Hebrews.
The portion goes out of its way to distinguish between the Israelites and the Egyptians, but perhaps in the most dramatic moment Pharaoh's daughter, the daughter of the murderous paranoid dictator, knowingly saves a Hebrew child, and even gives him his name. Alongside the national agenda that the portion deals with, the story of Moshe's birth reveals another, maternal, compassionate agenda, an agenda according to which national differences that are in conflict with each other are negligible in front of the basic human demands of saving children and supporting life, continuity, the potential for development and change.
So what can we learn from the portion? What can light the way in times of hatred and war, when it seems that the death drive rules everything? To remember the humane: fairness, help, support, compassion. Whether it is members of our family and our people, or whether it is someone who belongs to the "other side". The ability to see the humane in the other is essential for all of us so that we don't sink into blind hatred, lose the humane in us and sink into complete despair.
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Orna Pilz, a reform rabbi who graduated from the HUC in Jerusalem, a member of "Rabbis for Human Rights", a bibliotherapist at the Shalvata Mental Health Center, a writer and host of writing workshops. The editor of the book: "In the Beginning, She Birthed: Reestablishing the Centrality of Birth".
For the readers, the portion offers several lights among the shadows, they can be seen as ways of dealing with the suffering and terror: the divine presence and promise that accompany the portion, choosing a worthy leader who symbolizes the beginning of the solution to the plight of the people, and drawing a line of continuity by mentioning the mythological fathers of the nation and connecting to a future vision and promise, which make it possible to imagine the present as a specific, passing point, rather than a continuous existence.
All these are powerful lines of thought and ways of coping. But personally, for me, the most comforting and meaningful passages in the portion, and in which the message for our time is embodied, are those that deal with human connections, and I wish to mention and illuminate them:
- One type of relationships are the connections within the family: the mother who, with the help of her daughter, saves her infant son and later Aaron who sets out to meet his brother to accompany him and help him with the task assigned to him. If in the book of Genesis we mainly saw competition and jealousy between brothers and sisters, here we are reminded of the power of mother's love and brotherhood.
- When Moses, who was in exile in Midian, sees the shepherds hurting the young women watering the flock, he comes to their aid. He risks helping the daughters of Reuel, priest of Midian, because it is the right and just thing to do, even though he knows they are not "ours". Reuel in turn returns the favor to Moshe, hosts him in his home and gives him his daughter. The differences of origin and religion between them do not stand in the way of the sense of justice and hospitality.
- The midwives, who according to some commentators were Egyptian, refuse to kill the Hebrew newborns, because they fear God. They run the risk of violating Pharaoh's express order, because they are connected to the moral order that calls to protect and revive helpless babies, to preserve life. Besides being a representation of the human dependence and vulnerability, newborns symbolize the potential, the unknown space, of everything that can come into being and happen, and also because of this we feel that protecting them is an ancient and profound command beyond any division into origin and nationality.
- And finally, in a scene that in my opinion is one of the most powerful and miraculous in the Bible, Pharaoh's daughter, the same Pharaoh who ordered the sons to be cast into the Nile, discovers Moses crying in the ark and takes pity on him. Moses' sister, who is watching over him from afar, sees Pharaoh's daughter discovering the child. From the scripture it appears that she hears Pharaoh's daughter say: "This is one of the Hebrews' children" (Exodus 2:6), because she replies with a suggestion: "Shall I go and call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?" (Ibid. ibid. 7). This is a Hebrew girl, who addresses an Egyptian woman and offers her assistance in violating the order of the King of Egypt in order to save a Hebrew baby. It does not seem that the Hebrew is afraid of the Egyptian, nor does it seem that they stand on either side of the Hebrew-Egyptian barrier. The conversation between them is factual, and its purpose is one - to save the child. Such is also the meeting between Pharaoh's daughter and the child's mother. The matter-of-fact and natural cooperation with the child's mother is especially amazing against the background of the attitude of the Egyptians to the Israelites described in the previous chapter. The birth of a baby was supposed to arouse that racial loathing/fear that stems from the increased birth rate of the Hebrews.
The portion goes out of its way to distinguish between the Israelites and the Egyptians, but perhaps in the most dramatic moment Pharaoh's daughter, the daughter of the murderous paranoid dictator, knowingly saves a Hebrew child, and even gives him his name. Alongside the national agenda that the portion deals with, the story of Moshe's birth reveals another, maternal, compassionate agenda, an agenda according to which national differences that are in conflict with each other are negligible in front of the basic human demands of saving children and supporting life, continuity, the potential for development and change.
So what can we learn from the portion? What can light the way in times of hatred and war, when it seems that the death drive rules everything? To remember the humane: fairness, help, support, compassion. Whether it is members of our family and our people, or whether it is someone who belongs to the "other side". The ability to see the humane in the other is essential for all of us so that we don't sink into blind hatred, lose the humane in us and sink into complete despair.
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Orna Pilz, a reform rabbi who graduated from the HUC in Jerusalem, a member of "Rabbis for Human Rights", a bibliotherapist at the Shalvata Mental Health Center, a writer and host of writing workshops. The editor of the book: "In the Beginning, She Birthed: Reestablishing the Centrality of Birth".