Exodus 1:1-6:1 – Isaiah 27:6-28:13; 29:22-23 (Ashkenazim) Jeremiah 1:1-2:3 (Sephardim) – Luke 4:16-30

This week's edition of The Set Table contains:

Questions and Commentary on Shemot
Chayyei Yeshua - A Devotional Commentary on the Besora Reading
In Summary
Looking Ahead

Questions & Commentary on Parashat Shemot

1. Pharaoh's plan to decimate the Hebrew population by murdering their baby boys was the last of three plans. First, he enslaved the Hebrews to reduce their birthrate; then he commanded the Hebrew midwives to stealthily murder the newborn boys; and only after both plans failed did he come up with his "Final Solution" to the Israelite problem - a public extermination of all newborn males. How did Pharaoh and the Egyptian people become willing to commit public infanticide? If Pharaoh was vicious enough to decree these brutal murders, why did he not do so from the beginning?

Leah Vaks

Our approach to these questions will elucidate the degenerating nature of social oppression and illustrate history repeating itself. Pharaoh's original goal was not to kill the Hebrews but to inhibit their growth and reduce the powerful status that they had acquired since Joseph's time. Like a true tyrant, Pharaoh would have been satisfied with breaking the spirit and destroying the dignity of the nascent Israelite nation. He was able to derive free labor from the enslaved people as well as raise the national pride of the Egyptians by providing them with a social group whom they could marginalize and hate. Similarly, under Nazi tyranny, Jews were made into social pariahs through being denied their rights and livelihoods, and then through conscription into labor camps. Germans were glad to target a minority whose oppression would save Germany's honor.

While slavery doubtless took its toll on the spirit of the Hebrews in Egypt, their birthrate did not decrease. Instead of looking forward to the birth of more slaves, Pharaoh feared the continued proliferation of the Israelites. Though they were now his laborers, he still saw them as a nation of undesirables who may eventually challenge his authority. So he decided to undercut their numbers directly through an "early intervention" system by which healthy newborns would be presented as stillborns to their unsuspecting mothers. The Nazis had a parallel policy of "sterilization" for all social elements whom they considered undesirable. Using midwives and doctors to perform crimes would mask the atrocity as a necessary medical procedure.

Yet the fact that Pharaoh attempted to keep the infanticide secret at first showed that he was reluctant to inform the Egyptians of his policy. Similarly, Hitler kept many Germans in the dark about what was happening to the Jews after their relocation from the ghettos.

Eventually, however, Pharaoh had to enlist the assistance of his people in his battle against the "pariah nation" who kept on increasing and growing stronger despite all attempts to cut her down. Yet moral outrages on a mass scale can only be perpetrated after the ground has been prepared through the inculcation of fear and hatred of the marginal group. In the case of Nazism, Hitler recruited the Germans for genocide through a constant stream of anti-Semitic propaganda that dehumanized the Jews and cast them as the source of all of Germany's woes; Pharaoh, too had to use an equally powerful method of persuasion, in order to legitimize infanticide in the eyes of the Egyptians.

As suggested by several midrashim, the catalyst for Pharaoh's final decree was the urgent prediction of the court astrologers that the Redeemer of the Israelites was about to be born. Now Pharaoh was confronted with a seemingly irrefutable threat. It is likely that he propagated this threat in one form or another among the Egyptians in order to fill them with a sense of desperation. The contempt of the Egyptians for the Hebrew slaves was expanded to include a sense of personal mission to prevent the slaves from leading a victorious insurrection. While according to Midrash Rabba and Tanchuma, this decree of public infanticide lasted for only one day, Pirqe deRabbi Eliezer suggests a more extended policy that lasted for more than three years. In either case, the urgent fear of revolt made the Egyptians willingly complicit in this horrendous act of murdering babies.

One does not have to take the modern historical case of Nazi Germany to find a parallel to the Egyptian decree of infanticide; already the Besora of Matthew narrates a strikingly similar tale. In 2:16, Matthew recounts how Herod, the appointed king of Judea, put to death all the children up to 2 1/5 years of age who lived in Bethlehem and the surrounding areas. Though he was not a foreign tyrant, but supposedly a Jewish king, on learning that his competitor-the Messiah-was to be born, he acted no different than the pagan Pharaoh. The Midrash and Matthew both teach the same lesson: that the righteous Redeemer of Israel is always a threat to worldly rulers who condone the oppression and marginalization of people in society. Yet despite their ruthless attempts at annihilation, the Redeemer always survives and wins the battle for his people. May our Redeemer Yeshua soon come to Zion!

2. What sin were the men in Exodus 2:11 guilty of? What was the consequence of their actions? What can we do to ensure that we do not commit the same sin? What practical application does this have to our lives?

Rabbi Jason Sobel

The Jewish men who were fighting with one another were guilty of sinat chinam, baseless hatred. The individual described in this passage as the "wicked one" turns from beating his fellow Hebrew to verbally assaulting and threatening Moses. His response to Moses was totally unwarranted and seems to be characteristic of the Jewish people's general attitude towards one another at this time. Instead of fighting back against their Egyptian oppressors, they channeled their pain and anger towards one another. 

Moses actions were not motivated by pride or by a lust for power. Rather it was his love for his people as well the belief that the Lord was raising him up as the redeemer of Israel that moved him to take action. This view is underscored by Stephen's speech in Acts 7:23-29:

When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.

Their lack of love for one another and utter disunity made them oblivious to the work of God in their midst and even seems to have caused their redemption to be delayed by forty years. This same sort of sinat chinam, baseless hatred, which also characterized the Jewish Community in the first century culminated in the death of our Messiah and the destruction of the Second Temple. In the same way, we must be careful that our lack of love for another does not cause us to miss or hamper the work that the Lord wants to accomplish in our day.

We must understand that our collective attitude and actions can either hinder or hasten the ge'ula shelema, the final redemption. In light of this Torah portion, there are two primary actions that we should take in order to guard against repeating the sin of our ancestors. First, we must cultivate ahavat hinam, gratuitous love for another. If our sinat chinam lead to the death of Yeshua and destruction of the Temple, then only ahavat chinam can lead to its rebuilding and his return.

Secondly, we must cultivate a desire for the messianic redemption. Belief in and desire for the Messiah's coming is one of the fundamental principals of Jewish faith - "I believe with complete faith in the coming of Messiah, and even though he may tarry, I will wait for him daily." (Rambam's Thirteen Principals of Faith). We must cultivate a deep longing for Messiah Yeshua's return and the unconditional belief that he might come today. We must live in light of this reality by daily desiring and praying for the Messianic redemption. Like Israel in the days of Moses, We must cry out, beg, and plead, that today will be the day of our redemption - "The Israelites ... cried out, and their cry for help . . . went up to God" (Exodus 2:23).