THE MIDWIVES, FEARING GOD, DID NOT DO AS
THE KING OF EGYPT HAD TOLD THEM; THEY LET THE BOYS LIVE. SO THE KING OF EGYPT
SUMMONED THE MIDWIVES AND SAID TO THEM, "WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS THING,
LETTING THE BOYS LIVE?"
(Shemot 1 17:18)
... 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. Avraham 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 encountered you on the way and attacked your tail - all the beaten down ones
at your rear, while you were weary and faint, and thus he did not stand in
awe of God" . It should be noted that in all of the four
places where the gentile (including Yosef, 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)
YOU
ARE NOT TO ABOMINATE AN EGYPTIAN,
FOR
YOU WERE A SOJOURNER IN HIS LAND
Parashat Shemot provides a succinct and
objective account of the oppression, the suffering, and the attempted
destruction of our people by the Egyptians. The Egyptians enslaved us with
crushing labor, they made our lives bitter, they beat us and oppressed us.
Worst of all, they commanded the midwives and all Egyptians to kill the newborn
males. The Children of Israel, groaned, moaned, cried out to God from the iron
furnace of Egypt.
The
Children of Israel came to Egypt during the period that the Egyptians were
selling their belongings, their lands, and even themselves to Pharaoh. The
Children of Israel were free men, for they had come in response to a special
invitation which promised them sustenance, protection and development. The
Egyptians had no land of their own for "for each of the Egyptians
had sold his field". During that period, the Children of Israel, sheep
herders, with whom the Egyptians were forbidden to dine - the raising of sheep
being an abomination in their eyes - take hold in foreign soil, and become
plentiful: "Now Israel stayed in the land of Egypt, in the region of
Goshen; they obtained holdings in it, bore fruit, and became exceedingly
many" (Bereishit
47:27)
This
passage ends the story of the purchase of Egyptian lands by Pharaoh! Perhaps
through this explicit contrast the Torah alludes that this situation - in which
the Egyptians are serfs, indentured to Pharaoh, while the Children of Israel
are free and flourishing - will inevitably arouse envy and will be a basis for
future hatred and conflict. (Perhaps this is the meaning of Ralbag's
commentary).
Envy
and hatred do indeed arouse fear that the Children of Israel present an
existential danger to the Egyptian world-power: "Now a new king arose
over Egypt, who had not known Yosef. He said to his people: Here, this people,
the Children of Israel, is many more and mightier in number than we! Come now,
let us use our wits against it, lest it become many more, and then, if war
should occur, it too be added to our enemies and make war upon us or go up away
from the land!" (Shemot
1:8,9)
Pharaoh
wants to take action, but he dares not exploit his full power. As is well
known, the failure of the master only intensifies the servitude, as is
explained by Ramban (Shemot
1:10):
"Pharaoh and his advisors did not
see fit to strike them with the sword, because this would be a great breach of
faith, to strike for no good reason a people which had come by decree of the
earlier king, and also the common folk - with whom he would take counsel -
would not permit the king to perpetuate such iniquity".
The end of the story is known.
When
we search in the Torah and in the Prophets for instruction in coping with such
traumatic events such as oppression and forced conversion and geulah, we
quickly find a number of educational messages:
1. The first lesson related to the Egyptian
bondage revolves around the repeatedly emphasized obligation to show concern
for the weak and to love him. The weak is the slave, the pauper, the orphan,
the widow, and the stranger. The basis is "For you yourselves know well
the feelings of the sojourner, for sojourners were you in the land of
Egypt" (Shemot
23:9).
2. The second - and basic - message concerns
the concept of destiny. God delivered us from the bondage of Egypt so that we
acknowledge Him and serve him: "I am the Lord who sanctifies you, who
took you out of the land of Egypt in order to be your Lord" (Vayikra 23:33)
3. Another idea is that of freedom: "For
the Children of Israel are slaves unto Me, they are My servants whom I took out
of the land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God" (Vayikra 25:55)
4. Another value demanded of us is the
recognition of God's great deeds and the goodness which He bestowed upon us. We
celebrate the Shabbat and the festivals as remembrances of the exodus from
Egypt "Remember, yes remember that which the Lord your God did to
Pharaoh and to all Egypt" (Devarim 7:18).
5. We are enjoined to distance ourselves
from Egyptian culture by the injunction against ever dwelling in Egypt, as is
written: "You will never return that way again!" (Devarim 17:16). It is permitted to return to Egypt for
business, and in order to conquer other lands, but it is forbidden to settle
there - and therefore, the king may not multiply horses for himself. "Only,
he is not to multiply horses for himself, and he is not to return the people to
Egypt in order to multiply horses, since God has said to you: "You will
never return that way again" (Ibid.) Ramban explains that the reason for these prohibitions is
the fact that Egypt was the most depraved of all countries, as is written,
"What is done in the land of Egypt, wherein you were settled, you are
not to do" (Vayikra
18:3).
But
one subject - a natural reaction - is emphasized by its absence; in the Bible
there are no expressions of bitterness and hatred. There is no mitzvah
commanding remembrance of the injustice and the wickedness (such as with
Amalek; there is no joy over the fall of the foe, there is no promise of - nor
hope for - additional revenge and punishment.
Regarding
joy over another's misfortune, the Meshech Chochma writes:
"A
noble person does not rejoice at his enemy's defeat, because such joy is wrong
in the eyes of God and one should hate that which is wrong in the eyes of God.
Therefore on Pesach, Festival of Matzoth we do not recall His meting out
punishment - but rather that God delivered the Children of Israel from Egypt.
There is no Jewish festival and Yom Tov celebrating the fall of
enemies."
I
searched in vain through the Torah and the Prophets for some expression of
bitterness, hatred, anger, demand for revenge or punishment over our
enslavement in Egypt. True, it is a fact that Biblical Israel never derived
great nachat from Egypt throughout the Biblical period. Yet more, in the
Prophets we find visions of destruction of Egypt (although none presage total
annihilation, as with Assur and Babylon). It should be stressed that Egypt's
punishments are due only for sins against the kingdoms of Yehuda and Yisrael
and against those exiled to Egypt - the penalties are not for her historical
transgression the enslavement of the Children of Israel.
As
against the above, we find in Devarim the commandment "You shall not
abominate the Egyptian for you were a sojourner in his land. Sons which will be
born to them, the third generation may enter the community of the Lord." Whereas
the Ammonites - whose sin was much smaller and of shorter duration than that of
the Egyptians - are totally forbidden to become part of the community, the
Egyptians, despite all their continuing iniquitous actions, are in no way to be
abominated, and they may enter the community of Israel after three generations.
The
simplest explanation of the absence of any expression of bitterness and hatred,
is explicitly stated in the Torah and elucidated in the Gemarrah:
"Said
Rava to Rabba bar Meri: What is the source of the expression "Don't throw
stones into the well from which you drink?" He replied, as is written:
"Do not abominate an Edomite, for he is your brother, and do not
abominate an Egyptian, for you were a sojourner in his land" (Bava Kama 93a).
In
other words, the Torah tells us that in the merit of the long hospitality
extended us by the Egyptians, we are obliged to forgive their sins towards us.
A
different explanation - surprising and profound - for the almost total
forgiveness we find in the Bible is offered by modern commentators, mainly,
Benno Yaakov and M. D. Cassutto. They suggest that The Holy One, Blessed Be He,
provided the people with an instrument for rooting out - or at least
considerably weakening - the natural and human emotions of bitterness and
hatred, and the yearning for punishment and vengeance. This instrument is given
through the commandment regarding the lending of utensils. The giving of gifts
to the Children of Israel by the Egyptians might seem to be insignificant, but
surprisingly, it is mentioned four times in the Torah. God pleads with Moshe
"Pray speak in the ears of the people: They shall ask,
each man of his neighbor, each woman of her neighbor, objects of silver and
objects of gold" (Shemot 11:2)
Underlying
this act is the idea that God commands the Children of Israel to request gifts
in order to uproot those bitter and painful feelings, and to lessen the
animosity.
May
it be His will that we learn to find instruments to diminish the
animosity and the hatred between us and all those who wronged us, and also
between us and those whom we wronged.
Yehuda Pinchover is a founder of
"Netivot Shalom"
Now Pharaoh's daughter went down to bath
at the Nile... she saw the little ark... she opened it and saw him, the child,
here, a boy weeping! She pitied him and she said: One of the Hebrews' children
is this!... The child grew, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he
became her son. She called 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. 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 to 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 Moshe's savior.
(Rabbi Shimshon Rafael
Hirsch, Shemot 2:10)
"Moshe fled from
Pharaoh's face and settled in the land of Midyan; he sat down by a well...
Shepherds came and drove them away... But Moshe rose up, he delivered them and
gave drink to their sheep." Moshe
came and sat in judgement upon them, saying to them: It is customary that men
draw the water and the women give to drink; here women draw and men give to
drink, this is perversion of justice.
(Avoth D'Rabbi Natan, 20:1)
"Come and note Moshe's
humility; even though he was fleeing like a commoner, and he saw the daughters
of Yitro in distress, and he was not too proud to stand up and draw for them,
but his soul was that of a son of the daughter of the king". This is to
say that the awareness of his coming from the palace of the great Pharaoh did
not prevent Moshe our teacher from standing by those unfortunate women who were
robbed by the shepherds of Midyan and acting on their behalf in their distress.
From his first steps in approaching his brothers, upon seeing an Egyptian
beating a Hebrew, he decided that the proper course of action is to intervene,
to attack the attacker and to kill him. These events are testimony to his
sensitivity to the suffering of people and to the quality of his leadership;
from here we learn that he is qualified to be the faithful shepherd of his
people.
(Y. Leibowitz: Seven Years of
Discussions on the Weekly Parasha, pp. 195-196)
(Answer to
Menachem Ziberstein, Issue Miketz)
In his letter, Menachem
Zilberstein wrote the following: "When we are unwilling to learn from
history, locked into a flawed conception, we are drawn to philosophies which
led to the murder of a Jew by a mentally disturbed student seven years
ago." This
means that Mr. Zilberstein understands that the victim (who was
locked into a mistaken conception) was guilty of the murder...
This
kind of "logic" is gaining legitimacy in our circles - occasionally
we hear that the rape victim is guilty of rape, or that the woman murdered by
her husband behaved disrespectfully towards her husband, etc.
According
to this warped reasoning, The Holy One, Blessed Be He, as it were,
"erred" in punishing Kayin - when the guilty party was Hevel...
It is unfortunate that the
Editorial Board publicized Zilberstein's words without any reaction.
Chanan
Golan
Kibbutz
Saad
Editor's Comment:
May we again reiterate that the Editorial
Board does not necessarily identify with content of letters appearing in
"Shabbat Shalom". These letters provide a platform for our readers,
and open opportunities for fruitful dialogue between readers and authors of the
articles, and between the readers themselves. On occasion, we feel the
necessity to react or to comment. In this particular case, we did not deem it
necessary to stress that which is obvious, and therefore we refrained from
comment.
Editorial Board: Pinchas Leiser
(Editor), Miriam Fine (Coordinator), Itzhak Frankenthal and Dr. Menachem Klein
Translation: Kadish Goldberg
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