Beshalach: Who is in Charge

Beshalach opens with a shocking perspective: Pharaoh evicts the Children of Israel.  I expected the Torah to say that Gd took Israel out of Egypt. The last 2 chapters have emphasized that Divine intervention brought Israel to its liberation; now it has become a royal edict, a human decision. 

The tension between Divine and human action is an important theme in Beshalach.  At the beginning of the parsha, there is the battle with Egypt, Gd is the general and protagonist.  In this battle we have Israel leaving Egypt in a high handed manner ( b'yad ramah ( Exodus 14;8) ).  At the end of the parsha, the battle with Amalek requires an exhausted Moshe to have Aaron and Hur support is arms, so that they are lifted, because it is only when they are lifted ( yarim) that Israel prevails in the battle.  The interaction with Omnipotent had become more complex. 

The parsha is filled with confusion about the chain of command.  When the Isaelites come to the desperate position, between the Army of Egypt and the sea, they cry out to Moshe that he should never have taken them out of Egypt to die in the desert.  Moshe answers: Be quiet, the Lrd will do battle for you.  Then Gd says to Moshe : 

מַה־תִּצְעַ֖ק אֵלָ֑י דַּבֵּ֥ר אֶל־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל וְיִסָּֽעוּ  Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.. Onkelos softens this to:  קַבֵּלִית צְלוֹתָךְ מַלֵיל עִם בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִטְלוּן:Your prayers have been answered, speak to  the Israelites and  proceed.Moses deflects the responsibility to Gd, and Gd tells the people to go drown themselves. But Moshe is told to lift up הָרֵ֣ם your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it. 

The strategy that will destroy the Egyptian army  requires brave faith, to go forward into the sea, to defy drowning.  Desperation may be a requirement for that level of audacity.  I imagine that great military feats often seem nonsensical to the soldiers  carrying them out.

After this great victory, the problems of survival return to the fore. The water in Marah is not potable.  The people complain to Moshe: What shall we drink?  Gd shows Moshe  a log that sweetens the water.  This problem has a technical solution

Then there is the problem of food. When there is no visible source of nourishment, the people complain to Moshe and Aaron. Gd has heard the complaints and a miraculous, inexhaustible source of food is provided: Mannah.  No identifiable technology here. Pure miracle. 

Once again, there is no water and the people now fight with Moshe.   Moshe protests: Why do you cry to me? Moshe fears for his life and cries out to Gd .  This time he needs the staff, the transducer of the power, to bring water from the rock


When the leader is powerful, the people seek his guidance.
Even the greatest of leaders answers to Highest of Authorities

Bo: Half baked

I am impressed with the lack of preparation for the Exodus experience.  When Pharaoh offers to let the people go, but leave their herds behind, Moshe answers that is unacceptable because they do not know what  they will need for the service to Gd that awaits them.  They leave at the most unexpected hour: midnight  The very symbol of the Exodus, matzoh  is the product of haste and lack of adequate preparation,  half baked. 

Every year, we celebrate  Pesach in the spring, the season of  surprise.  We celebrate that the death of winter has limped past our houses, new adventures await us, who have survived.  The dead have only the predictable ahead of them. 

Bo, the Exodus, do not specify a destination, only a door, streaked with lamb's blood, by which to leave the  oppression. 

I returned from Poland this week, a relatively easy set of airplane flights that lead to a home where everything is familiar.  How different from my parents' journey, out of  a hole in the woods of  Masovia, liberated by the Red Army of Stalin.  All that was familiar was robbed, and would not be returned.  They were released into a  very different, unfamiliar and unfriendly world.  But, at least, they were released. 

Preparation helps, but it is best to be ready for the unexpected. 

Vaerah:technology

This is the week of the CES, the consumer technology show in Las Vegas. The current publc competition of technologies.

The stated goal in Vaerah is to demonstrate the superior power at the disposal of the Hebrews  and to show that the forces available to Egypt  cannot stand up to them.  The demonstrations progress from the transformation of water to blood and a proliferation of frogs, both  tricks that the Egyptian technicians can reproduce  [but they cannot remove the problems generated by Moshe and Aaron]. The third plague,  lice,  is beyond  the Egyptian technical abilities. They give up.

Our world is miraculaculous relative to that of out ancestors. We can fly though the air and even into outer space, we carrry access to  the world's  knowledge in our pockets, we cen portray anything imaginable on a screen and microphone.  It is now, theoretically, possible to create lice from DNA.

The power of Gd is not a sufficient basis for belief. Now that humans can destroy the world, the raw power competition is over. 

The miracles after lice have a quality of selectivity.  The Hebrews are exempt from the wild beasts an the pestilence. They are on the right side. They have the advantage of allegiance.  Is it all about  being born into the right group?  This is not an appealing model to the modern.

The last plague, killer hail, has an important aspect fo heeding the warnings. Everyone was given the option of heeding the warning ...or not. Those that did not protecet their servants and livestock lost them.  But there are so many warnings! pesticides, carbon, sugar, influenza...

The story of power is not the point, it leads to the point.  Liberation requires faith that  the cause will prevail. In a sense, the obstinancy of Pharoah is also a lesson. People can tolerate superior forces for as long as they need to.  

The names of Gd used in parsha reflect  qualities.  E is power.  The Egyptians , the masters, may respect power.  Some are restrained from following evil orders, or heed the warning to take shelter from the impending hail because they recognize the power of the Hebrew ( or Universal) Gd. The ultimately victorious name, Y, derives form the verb "to be."
  It implies a respect for eternity, the past  as model , the present as a time of action and the futureas a time of hope.

Shemoth: heroism

Next week, I am going to Poland for a ceremony recognizing the Polish people who helped my parents survive their years of hiding from the murderous NAZIs and their local sympathizers, as "Righteous Among the Nations" .  Hiding does not really capture what my parents were doing.  My parents were hunted like noxious, dangerous animals.  They could be killed without penalty. They did not have  housing, a reliable food supply, or water for bathing. It was a crime to aid or shelter them.
These righteous Polish people were, according to the NAZIs, committing a capital offense. 

After the holocaust, how does a Jew relate to the traditions of the Torah? How does the  cruel bondage of Egypt relate to the  European degradation and massacre? 

This week's parsha deals with the relationships between peoples of different nations.  Within the first 20 verses, the immigrant Hebrews are enslaved; and the cruel Pharaoh has ordered that all  Hebrew male infants be drowned. But the Gd fearing midwives refuse the order to murder the babies.    They are answering to a higher authority.  Belief in Gd , when mixed with courage, can contain tyranny. 

Although the Talmud  ( Sotah 11b) identifies the midwives as the mother and sister of Moses, some commentators  (e.g.the  Kli Yakar) posit that these righteous midwives were Egyprtian, not Hebrew.  As I go to Poland the latter is an appealing interpretation. Perhaps these midwives were the forerunners of the Polish people that helped my parents, and others, during the holocaust

The edict against Hebrew male babies becomes  more oppressive.  Despite  the hateful edicts of  infanticide, a Levite couple dared to conceive a son and hide him. When he was cast into the Nile, the source of wealth, and hence,societal stratification, in Egypt, the princess daughter of the most evil Pharaoh recognized the contraband (1)Hebrew  child. She rescued the child from the water, and gave him back to mother to nurse him.  

Here we are certain that an Egyptian, a member of the Royal family, a daughter of the Pharaoh, rescued a persecuted child.  Barbarity is not inherited; it is not an inevitable  national character,   nor a necessary consequence of social class. There were good Egyptians. One saved Moshe -  and he liberated the nation. 

Moshe , after killing the cruel Egyptian taskmaster, comes to Midian and, true to form, helps the maltreated daughters of Jethro to water their sheep.  We know that these women were subject to ongoing abuse because on that day, Jethro remarks about how quickly they have completed their task.   Jethro is the model of hospitality, insisting that Moshe find a home with them.  Once again, we see the kindness of strangers. 

Shemoth contains ideas of subjugation: the enslavement of the descendants of Jacob, an attempt at genocide, the oppression of women ( the daughters of Jethro).  It shows that organized societies can go down the path of evil.  It shows that individuals- Shifra, Pua, Bath Pharoah, Jethro- may show courage , help the downtrodden, and become heroes in the light of history.  Recognition of the sovereignty of the Almighty helps them  make the right decisions and take the right actions. 

We should continue to celebrate those that answered to the highest authority and bravely supported the oppressed, like the Stys family who helped my parents and allowed my birth. 

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(1)Contraband was a term commonly used in the United States military during the American Civil War to describe a new status for certain escaped slaves or those who affiliated with Union forces