They met Moses and Aaron

eyes of his servants, to place a sword into their hand[s] to kill us."

(Shemot

5:20-21)

And judge every man charitably…

May the Lord look upon you and

judge – He

will see the violence inflicted upon us, and it is upon you for you caused it,

for it is because of you that we have become disgusting and stinking to Pharaoh

like a foul odor. He will make judgment between us, for He is the God of

Judgment and will not make promises He will not keep. We also believe that God

looks upon you, but you did not speak properly to Pharaoh for you caused him to

be angry with us as if you placed a sword in his hand to kill us. And he said in

the eyes in conjunction with smell because the five senses replace each

other, as in, light is sweet (Kohelet 11:7). The officers spoke this way

because of shortness of breath and their minds could not engage in

sustained thought; however, it was not because of a lack of faith.

(R. Shmuel

Yitzhak Reggio Shemot 5:21)

One cannot blame these men who

took on their own backs the strokes intended for their brethren – and thereby

became the prototypes of those noble men of the future centuries of Galut, who,

as elders of the community went to the stake on behalf of their persecuted

brethren – one cannot blame them if they lost faith in the mission of Moses and

Aaron.

(Rabbi S.R.

Hirsch Shemot 5:21, Levy translation)

In honor of my

daughter Be'er

Upon her

birthday

From Assimilation to Rescue – The Visionary of the Exodus from Egypt

Ronen Ahituv

The episode of the inn is one of

the most mysterious passages in the Torah. We shall attempt to decipher some of

its secrets.

Moses went and returned to

if you refuse to send him out, behold, I am going to slay your firstborn son.'

Now he was on the way, in an

of God, and he kissed him. (Shemot 4:18-27)

The Sages, and all of the

traditional biblical commentators in their wake, bisect this passage as we have

in reproducing the text above, creating two distinct parts: Moses' mission to

Egypt, and the story of the bridegroom of blood in the inn. The strange

episode in the latter section when God tries to kill either Moses or his son is

understood as a punishment for the postponement of the son's circumcision. Its

connection with the mission to Egypt is, accordingly, then viewed as weak and

marginal: "R. Yehoshua ben Karha says, great is circumcision, for

righteous Moses was not afforded even a full hour to postpone it." (Mishnah

Nedarim 3:11, and see the accompanying Gemara 31b). There are two difficulties

with this line of interpretation. First of all, the sin of postponing

circumcision is not explicitly mentioned in the text. Secondly, it is difficult

to ignore the connection between the two parts of the passage – between

Pharaoh's threat and the danger faced by Moses. We shall presently attempt to

treat the entire passage as a single unit.

We have already mentioned the

obvious difficulties posed by the second section. It turns out, however, that

the first section also offers its share of substantial difficulties, most of

which result from its lack of congruence with other stories of Moses and his

family. Moses leaves for Egypt, but in the end he meets Aaron in the Mountain

of God in the wilderness. We are not told what became of the planned journey to

Egypt. Our parasha creates the impression that Zipporah and her children

reached Egypt and that it may be assumed that they later left it together with

Moses. However, we find in parashat Yitro that Moses had sent his wife away to

stay in her father's home. When they eventually reunite at the Mountain of God

in the wilderness, we read:

So Moses' father in law, Jethro,

God. (Shemot 18:2-5)

The repeated use of the words

derived from the root shin-vav-bet in the beginning of this passage is

striking. Moses returns [shav] to Midian and asks to return [lashuv]

to Egypt, to his brothers or to the Land of Egypt. The foci of Moses' identity

are thus revealed: his family in Midian, his brothers in Egypt, and the Land of

Egypt itself. Against these foci, which call for Moses to return to them,

stands the mission assigned to him by God, a mission that, far from requiring

Moses' return, actually demands that he strike out on a new path. The passage

thus offers three reasons for Moses' journey from Midian to Egypt, each of

which places the nature of that journey in a different light:

1) Moses wants to meet his

brothers in Egypt and to see if they are still alive. This suggests Moses will

travel alone for a short visit to Egypt.

2) Those who seek Moses' death

have died themselves; now Moses wants to return to his earlier life in Egypt. Here

we are talking about Moses returning to Egypt in order to set up house there. This

would involve his family moving to Egypt.

3) Moses is sent to Egypt by God

in order to demand of Pharaoh that he send out the people and in order to

strike him with plagues when he refuses. Here we are speaking of Moses making

the journey by himself. He will have to leave his family behind for a

substantial period of time and devote himself to the national mission.

Between the mention of the

second reason and the third, we are told that Moses took his wife and children

to the donkey. It seems that Moses had arrived at the decision to move his

family to Egypt. In this act he expressed his wish to lead as quiet and as simple

a life as possible in Egypt, his birthplace from which he had been exiled to

Midian. True, he did take the Staff of God with him in order to perform the

signs with it, but it seems he intended to limit himself to performing the

signs before the people, leaving the Aaron or another emissary of God to

negotiate with Pharaoh. This was a continuation of his earlier attempts to

avoid his mission, which had reached their climax in his cry, I beseech You,

O Lord, send now [Your message] with whom You would send (verse 13).

In the light of this analysis it

appears that verse 23 – So I say to you, "Send out My son so that he

your firstborn son" – is not directed at Pharaoh, but rather at Moses

himself! It is not only Pharaoh who refuses to send out the people, but also

Moses by way of his attempts to evade the mission. Thus, the death

announcement, behold, I am going to slay your first born is addressed in

the first place to Moses himself; it will only affect Pharaoh at the end

of the Ten Plagues. If this is correct, then it was Moses firstborn Gershom who

was under threat. That child was circumcised by Zipporah, implying that Moses'

sons had not been circumcised. What does all this mean? Circumcision is a

recognized expression of national identity and of commitment to the covenant

with God: This is My covenant, which you shall observe between Me and

circumcised (Bereishit 17:10). Moses' avoidance of circumcising his sons reflects his intention to

leave the fateful covenant with his brothers and their God. True, he took an

interest in them and felt a certain responsibility towards them; in the past he

had even struck an Egyptian who had hurt one of his brothers. Later, however,

he had moved to Midian in order to distance himself from them and their fate;

perhaps their betrayal of him and their reporting on him to Pharaoh had led him

to make the break. He preferred to live as a stranger in a strange land, and

gave his son a name expressing that preference. As we have seen, the journey to

Egypt does not necessarily reflect his interest in the lot of his people; it

might reflect his wish to return to Pharaoh's palace and take up residence

there, in which case it would be reasonable for him to take his family with

him.

The donkey and the inn are

motifs which had already appeared in Bereishit 42:27. It was there that the

brothers understood that the hand of God had intervened in their lives, and

they ask each other, What has God done to us? (42:28). Moses and Zipporah are also

supposed to infer a similar conclusion from the danger that met them in the inn,

but Moses was not willing to admit his mistake. Zipporah the Midianite had to

make the decision in his place. She cut her son's foreskin and decided

that she and her sons were to be partners in the covenant between the People

Israel and its God. By this she saved not only Gershom's life – she saved the

entire mission. From here on in Moses is recruited – against his will – to the

mission of national salvation which he will have to shoulder for the rest of

his life. It was the sake of that mission that he had to return to Midian and

leave his family there until he completed his assignment. Afterwards he took up

his journey to Egypt once more, accompanied this time not by his wife and

children, but by his brother Aaron, his partner in the rescue team. Moses was

not a tzaddik [righteous man]; rather, he was a ba'al teshuvah

Dr. Yohanan

Ahituv lives in Mitzpe Netufa and teaches at the Oranim College.

Ethical Behavior is the

Criterion for Fear of God

The midwives, however, feared

live?"

…whoever withstands this test,

willing to sacrifice his life – prepared to be killed rather than to transgress

– definitely has in his heart the Lord, the Lord of truth… "Fear of

God" in the Bible is a demand made of every person created in the image,

and if there is no fear of God in his heart, the heart of the gentile,

Scripture judges him accordingly, and he is considered to have betrayed all his

duties. Abraham said: For I said that there is no fear of God in this

place, and they will kill me for my wife.

This means that fear of God does

exist among the gentiles. Whoever is suspect of not having fear of God in his

heart is also suspect of all evil behavior. Of Amalek it is written: How he

of God. It should be noted that in all of the four places where

the gentile (including Joseph, who plays the part of the gentile) is either

praised or condemned – either because of his fear of God or because of the lack

of it – in all those places "fear of God" is expressed by behavior

towards a member of another people, towards members of the minority. The

attitude to the stranger, to the one who is powerless, who lacks protection, is

the criterion of whether or not one has fear of God in his heart. Therefore,

and also because of the phrase the midwives, fearing God, it would seem

that the preferable explanation would be: They were Egyptians.

(Prof. N.

Leibowitz: New Studies in the Book of Shemot, pp. 32-33)

The degree of justice in a land

is measured not so much by the rights accorded to the native-born inhabitants,

to the rich, or people who have, at any rate, representations or connections

who look after their interests, but by what justice is meted out to the

completely unprotected "stranger." The absolute equality in the eyes

of the law between the native and the foreigner forms the very foundation of

Jewish jurisdiction. In Jewish law it is not nationality which gives man his

rights but the rights of man which give nationality! And the Torah knows no

distinction between the rights of man and the rights of citizen. Everyone who acknowledged

the moral laws of humanity – the seven Noahide laws – could claim the right of

domicile in Judea. This principle, this respect for human beings as such, apart

from all chance of birth and fate, is proclaimed everywhere in the Torah by remembrance

of what was experienced in Egypt. In Egypt, the cleverly calculated lowering of

the rights of the Jews on the score of their being aliens came first, the

harshness and cruelty followed by itself, as it always does and will, when the

basic idea of a right has been given a wrong conception.

(Rabbi S.R.

Hirsch Shemot 1:14, Levy translation. Written in 19^th century

Frankfurt, relevant for Israel in 5769)

And she saw him that he was good

Ibn

Ezra, Sforno, RaMBaN and others explain that he was beautiful since they

did not understand how it could make sense to say that a newborn baby was good.

RaShBaM explains that he was born after six months, and she looked at him and

saw that his form was complete and that he was viable, rather than stillborn.

I

think the term good is to be understood literally; a baby is called

"good" if he does not scream and cry. If he would have screamed it

would have been impossible to hide him, for his voice would have been heard

from afar, but since he was good she could hide him.

(ShaDaL 2:2)

Now Pharaoh's daughter went down to bath at the Nile… she saw

his name: Moshe/He-Who-Pulls-Out; she said: for out of the water I pulled him.

She did not call him Mashui – one drawn up

from the water, but rather Moshe – one saved from the water. Perhaps

this gives us an indication of the whole tendency of the education which the

Princess gave her foster-son, and of the deep impression that was made from the

very beginning upon his character. By giving him this name she said to him: All

his life, he is never to forget that he was thrown into the water and that I

drew him out of it. Therefore all his life is he to have a soft heart for other

people's troubles and always be on the alert to be a Moshe, a deliverer in

times of distress. His Hebrew name always kept the consciousness of his origin

awake within him. The Princess surely inquired of the mother the Hebrew term

for expressing this thought, otherwise she would have given him his an Egyptian

name. In all this we can see the noble humane character of Moses' savior.

(Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch, Shemot 2:10)

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