Rise Up

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

-Oscar Wilde

To love another person is to see the face of God.

-Victor Hugo

There is no limit to the love you can share, to the happiness you can inspire, to the peace you can bring.
-Anonymous

Lately, God has seen fit to send challenges my way; challenges for which I was in no way prepared, but which, at the end of the day, with the help of great friends and family and an amazing therapist (all of whom God also saw fit to send my way) have made me stronger and, perhaps, even better.

As always, when confronted with events and behaviour I do not understand, I turn to our Holy books and to our sages, not for explanations, but instructions. 

This Shabbat, we will begin to read the book of Exodus (Shmot שמות)—the second book of the Torah.  It is the story of the beginning of the birth of a nation; from slavery in Egypt to redemption, from challenges faced as a free people to receiving the Laws that make them a Nation. 

What struck me, as I was reading about this week's parsha, is that it is so much more than just the history of a nation; it is also the model of how one person can change the course of history. It is an illustration of how one person – any person – can rise up above the challenges they face and make the choice to do better, to act better, to be better. And because of those challenges and that one person, the world – or at least that person's world – can become a better place.  Sometimes, however, we need a reminder of our responsibilities and obligations to our families and our communities and our people and our world. So God throws something at us to remind us to rise up! and to do better. 

In this first parsha of Shmot, there are three people, three women no less!! who stand up to pressures, take risks, and confront head-on, the challenges of the society in which they live. 

The book of Shmot starts with the story of the Children of Israel coming into Egypt and the first recorded case of anti-Semitism.

“Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. And he said to his people, 'Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it comes to pass, that when there befalls us any war, they also join themselves with our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land." (Shmot 1:8-10)

There is nothing at all in the literature to indicate that the Children of Israel were thinking of taking over Egypt or fighting the Egyptians. This is all pure “the Jews have taken over international financing in order to conquer the world” stuff—Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Egyptian style.

Pharoah, therefore, decrees that all baby boys must die so as to stop the growth of this insidious nation. He orders the two midwives, Shifra and Puah, to kill any male babies born to the Hebrew women.

"And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shifrah, and the name of the other Puah; and he said: When you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, you shall look upon the birthstool; if it be a son, then you shall kill him, but if it be a daughter, then she shall live." (Shmot 1:15-16)

It is unclear exactly who these two midwives are. The Hebrew (מְיַלְּדֹת הָעִבְרִיֹּת) is ambiguous and could be taken to mean either Hebrew midwives or midwives for the Hebrews, i.e., Egyptian women. Rashi, among many other of our sages, tells us that the two midwives were Yocheved and Miriam, but, in fact, their identity is unimportant. What is important is that they, of their own accord, rise up and make the decision to save the babies. 

"But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men-children alive." (Shmot 1:17) 

Women, in awful conditions, were giving birth – according to the Midrash – to six babies at a time. Women at advanced ages (including Yocheved - but that is another story for another time) were giving birth. Shifra and Puah are credited, not only for not killing newborn babies but also for resuscitating those who had died from natural causes. Miracles, our sages tell us, were occurring all around. 

These two women, alone, rise to the incredible challenge of delivering far more babies than normal, blithely explaining that Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women, and against the direct, immoral, orders of the most powerful man of the age, save a nation, one baby at a time.

The midwives do not end slavery. They do not ease the burden of the Hebrews. They do not bring about redemption. But they do - at great peril - what they can and what is moral and right in the eyes of God. 

"And God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and were very mighty; And it came to pass because the midwives feared God, that He made them houses". (Smot 1:20-21)

So great is the Pharoah's fear of the emerging Hebrew nation, that when killing the Hebrew babies at birth doesn't work to his satisfaction, he hatches a new plan. His astrologers, having seen that the saviour of the slaves will soon be born, cannot see if he is to be Hebrew or Egyptian. Also noting that water is somehow involved in the slaves' redemption, Pharaoh, in his great wisdom and mercy, decrees that ALL baby boys, Hebrew or Egyptian, when born, are to be thrown into the river. The fear and hatred of the Hebrews are great enough to sacrifice their own babies. (Does this sound familiar to modern times?)

But one woman - defying the might of the Egyptian empire - saves one baby. And by doing so, saves a nation. 

Just as we are introduced to anti-Semitism, we are introduced to the first righteous Gentile. 

Known in the Torah only as Bat Pharaoh, the daughter of the King of Egypt, and featured in only about half a dozen verses, this princess really has nothing to fear. But Bat Hitler Bat Stalin Bat Nasrallah Bat Khomeini Bat Pharoah is a symbol of the Nazi Communist Stalinist Islamic Egyptian regime and its ideologies. Yet here she is, saving a Jewish child, with the full attention of the media.

Bat Pharaoh openly and defiantly, in front of her maids and royal entourage, rises up and goes against her father's orders. Knowing exactly who this baby is, and what he represents, she nonetheless adopts him and raises him with morals; with a sense of doing what was right and good. She does not keep his roots from him. He knows who his people are; he knows who his family is. 

And yet, we are never told her name. We are not told what happens to her. She's mentioned that one time, in a few short sentences, and then she is no longer in the story. This unnamed woman doesn't end the slavery in Egypt or ease the Children of Israel's workload or change the culture of Egypt. Nonetheless, because she rises to the challenge and chooses to defy the explicit orders of her father, an entire nation is saved - a nation that would, eventually, change all of humanity.  While she is not named, our sages teach us that the baby she saves has seven different names. Yet, throughout the entire Torah, he is known only by the name his adoptive mother gave him, Moshe, as a tribute and reward to her courage and heroism.

Chazal tell us that Bat Pharaoh left Egypt with Bnei Yisrael, going into the unknown, rather than staying within the murderous society in which she was a princess. It is only in the Book of Chronicles that we are told her name is Batya – the daughter, no longer of Pharaoh, but of God.

Bat Pharaoh, Shifra, and Puah rise up to the personal challenges they face and do what they can do. They act, despite the environment in which they live, in the image of G-d.

Ultimately, what these women teach us is that we don't have to stop all the wars, feed all the hungry, or change the world all at once.

Yet, each one of us, the Torah tells us, has the ability to change the course of history, one deed at a time.