The
Torah is divided into 54 portions, which are read over the course of a
year in the synagogue. Each week’s portion is meant to be a message for
that week. So what, you might ask, is the portion for this week, the
week of the Inauguration of a new President?
Parashat Shemot (Exodus 1:1–6:1).
To
set the stage for this story: Jacob had twelve sons, but only two by
his most beloved wife, Rachel. He favored them, especially the elder,
Joseph, and his other brothers were jealous — and so they ambushed him,
kidnapped him, and sold him into slavery in Egypt. But Joseph used his
wisdom to further himself, and not only became free, but ultimately
became a governor; and when a major drought came to the entire region,
his careful planning was what averted a catastrophic famine across the
country. For this, the Pharaoh made him viceroy, and treated him like a
son; Joseph reconciled with his brothers, and they and their father
Jacob and their families all moved down to Egypt.
But as Shemot
begins,¹ time has passed. Joseph’s entire generation has died, as has
the Pharaoh, and there is a new king who did not know Joseph. “The
Israelites have become far too numerous,” he says; their loyalty cannot
be trusted. That is, the reason why these immigrants were welcomed has
long been forgotten; now we just see them as many and strange. So the
Pharaoh enslaved them, put them to work in the fields and building
cities, made their lives bitter.
The Pharaoh even commanded the Jewish midwives to kill all male children, but they refused. Why the boys? Because
the boys symbolize the strength to resist, and the girls, the strength
to continue. The Pharaoh wanted the Jews to endure, but never resist, to
remain his slaves forever; but the midwives raised a generation who
would resist, instead.²
And
who is one of the boys born in that generation? Moses, who is hidden by
his mother, then sent adrift in a basket just upstream of where the
Pharaoh’s daughter is bathing. The daughter adopts him, and is the one
who gives him his name: Moses because “I drew him out of the water” (“min ha-mayim moshitiyu”) but the name literally means the one who pulls, the one who saves.
What
is the first thing we see of Moses’ young adulthood? He sees his people
laboring, and sees an overseer beating a slave — so he beats the
overseer to death and hides his body. The next day, he sees two of his
own people fighting — so he intervenes and talks to them, to calm them.
But they don’t like him, and make it clear that they know who he killed,
so he flees town.
And
he flees for some time; he goes to Midian, where he meets a priest
named Jethro, marries one of his daughters, becomes a shepherd, has a
son. But after years of living in this wilderness, he hears the call of
God, from a burning bush: Go down, Moses, to Egypt, and tell the Pharaoh: Let my people go.
When Moses hears God’s call, does he leap up and say, sure!
I’ll give up my life here and go confront the all-powerful ruler of one
of the greatest empires on Earth and tell him to release all his
slaves! What could go wrong?
No, because Moses is not an idiot. He is not a superman. He is, in fact, a very ordinary man, and he argues with God. I am no-one, he says, why would anyone listen to me? I’m not well-spoken, he adds, if anything I’m “slow of speech and tongue.” But
God asks him: “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf
or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind?” Go, God says, and I
will help you speak and will teach you what to say.
And
what does Moses do? He musters his courage and goes down to Egypt, and
he talks to his people, and they agree to follow him; and he arranges a
general strike.
I’m
not kidding; the central event of Exodus 5 is that Moses calls a
general strike lasting three days, and Pharaoh responds by saying that
these immigrants are lazy, cuts off their straw supply, and tells them
that their brick quotas are nonetheless unchanged — they’ll have to find
the straw themselves. The slaves are now angry with Moses, because
after the strike, their conditions worsened, and God didn’t just show up
and rescue them. Moses asks God, Why did you bring this trouble upon me? And God says: “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh.”
And with that ends the parasha.
The
story does not end with the departure from Egypt; it will be another
three weeks before the Red Sea splits, and far longer until they reach
the land of milk and honey. This is not the story of a quick and easy
victory.
This
is the story of a generation which was raised by their mothers to
resist; the story of a man who, knowing that he was nothing special,
also knew that he was called upon to stand up and be counted; the story
of people who, despite their fear, despite the loss of their safety, of
the things they knew in their lives, stood up together against the
Pharaoh and were victorious in the end.
For
who still counts themselves a descendant of the Pharaoh? Where are his
alabaster palaces, his golden cups? The treasure of Moses is still with
us, because his treasure was not gold, it was the freedom he won for us
and the law he gave us.
And if you think that Moses somehow became less revolutionary over time, or that this law was some ancient thing — read Leviticus 19
sometime. If you want to cut right to the heart of the Mosaic Law,
that’s where you’ll find it: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do
not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of
your harvest… Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.” “Do not hold
back the wages of a hired worker overnight.” “Do not pervert justice; do
not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge
your neighbor fairly.” These are not tangents: these sentences, and many
others, are the basis of the law set down by the sort of man who would
beat an overseer to death for striking a slave, but negotiate peace
among his countrymen; who would step in front of the Pharaoh and say, Let my people go; who would organize a general strike, all the while being unsure of himself.
These
are, in short, the laws set down by the sort of person we would today
recognize as a no-good troublemaker, a thug, a criminal.
They are also what was given to us to remember, this week.
¹ Shemot
literally means “names,” because it begins with a listing of the names
of all twelve brothers. Why? These twelve brothers are the fathers of
the Twelve Tribes of Israel; all twelve of them coming says, you, too, were there; this is not a story of some of us, it is a story of all of us. Why
else? Because by listing all twelve of them together, and beginning the
story with this, it tells us that despite what had happened in the
past, they were wholly reconciled, and were one family: there is no nobility among us, no one of us who is above the others.
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