Shemot
The book of Exodus begins with the Israelites enslaved under Pharaoh in Egypt. While every newborn Israelite male is drowned in the Nile, Moses is rescued Pharaoh’s daughter. As an adult, he is forced to flee Egypt and goes to Midyan, where he marries Tzipora and has a son. At the burning bush, God instructs Moses to confront Pharaoh and to lead the Israelites to freedom.
David Solomon
David Solomon is an internationally renowned speaker, a scholar and author across numerous disciplines and one of the most dynamic Jewish educators in the world today. David provides fundamental, big-picture frameworks that immerse students in a total Jewish learning experience. David lives in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Each of the books of the Torah seems to reveal (or emphasise) a different aspect of God. If the Book of Bereishit (Genesis) was a book of beginnings in which God is the Creator, then the Book of Shmot (Exodus) is clearly about God the Redeemer. God now engages in history as the force behind the striving of all nations towards autonomy and dignity.
And so the book of Shmot, which appears to open calmly, takes a dramatic turn after eight verses with the announcement of a new xenophobic ruler in Egypt; a ruler who did know the history of Joseph's contribution to Egyptian society. This ruler seems to have come from outside the existing power structures (if the 14th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun is right) and the text implies he may have even used his anti-Semitic rhetoric to gain a popular following.
Such is the pattern of most – if not all – anti-Semitic movements; they are notoriously anti-historical and seek to create new facts: "the Jews will join our enemies;" "the Jews will rise to control us;" "the Jews will seek to leave us, once they have used us." Pharaoh also enters into the classic anti-Semitic dialectic when he seeks firstly to tax the Children of Israel, then to exploit them, then to enslave them, and then finally to perpetrate genocide upon them. Yet the harder the new king of Egypt tries to contain and control this stubborn minority, the more they increase in number.
And then, out of the very persecution itself, comes redemption. Pharaoh's greatest fear is realized when, eventually, God is revealed to the person chosen to lead the mission towards freedom from slavery. This person was a boy born into slavery and destined to become a statistic in Pharaoh's genocide. He survived and flourished precisely through the mechanism set in place for his destruction, and found himself uniquely placed to influence events. But he has no clearly defined purpose to his frustration until he undergoes a personal exile and eventually finds himself in a conversation with God.
The seventh verse of Chapter 3 of Shmot – the confession of God to Moshe about the exile and the persecution - is a powerful revelation of the nature of God the Redeemer. For the first time in the Book of Shmot, the four letter Name of God – the Name associated with mercy and the engagement of God in the minutiae of historical providence – is revealed.
And in the very same verse, for the first time in the whole Torah, God refers to the Children of Israel as Ami ("my People"). The Creator of the universe – revealed now as the source of all mercy - has self-identified with a suffering nation. The only previous reference to the Children of Israel as "my People" comes from the lips of their father Jacob on his deathbed (Genesis 49:29).
God has deliberately used the term "my People" to connect with what is unique in Jewish identity: the idea of collective consciousness; for without a collective sense of identity, national redemption is impossible. The nation must see itself as one, and each individual is responsible for their fellow if the redemptive project is to work. (The opposite of "my People" is the well-known anti-Semitic marker "you people.")
God desires freedom. There is a plan for the Children of Israel that is part of an unfolding covenantal relationship, and it involves a return from galut (exile). The exile forces us to think individually and selfishly; galut is a state in which each person exists and survives only for their own sake. Redemption lies in the realization of collective consciousness. Yet God is revealed to Moshe precisely outside the locale of the primary exile – in a place of even greater exile, that of the isolated individual.
And we can take this a step further. Redemption towards freedom for all of humanity will come about only through human collective awareness of our common identity. The dignity of every individual human being must become the central value of all collective consciousness for humanity as a whole to progress towards a higher spiritual state. The Jewish People have always believed that no individual achieves true salvation unless the whole world arrives at freedom. That idea holds true for us as a unique collective within humanity, and for the whole of humanity as a being within creation.
Another Voice - Miriam Edelman
Miriam has been a Limmudnik since 1995 and has volunteered in various capacities. She teaches 11-13 year olds at Wimbledon and District Synagogue in a pre-b’nai mitzvah curriculum she designed. Miriam is an organisational psychologist, writer, and management consultant in the investment industry, and in a personal liberation she has begun doing these things freelance.
"A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph." Rashi suggests this was not ignorance but strategic. Pharaoh "willfully closed his eyes" to the many years of happy co-existence, and the contributions Hebrews from Joseph on had made to Egypt. The Egyptian people accepted the xenophobia and followed Pharaoh into gradually increasing levels of oppression over the Hebrews without objection, and even it appears with relish in their ruthlessness. But Pharaoh’s own daughter Batya adopts the baby Moses. Was she defying her father? Did she really see differently? Or was it perhaps a nurture-over-nature experiment, Pygmalion with pyramids, something akin to Victorian attempts at civilising savages? Compassion, important as it is, doesn’t necessarily overcome internalised bigotry. Did it ever show through for Batya? When little Moses acted up, as children will, and her temper frayed, did she remind him of his origins, his otherness? Did she threaten to send him back, say she wished she'd left him in the river? And if she did say these things in the heat of a bad moment, did she regret it later? Perhaps Batya, who our tradition understands as righteous, came to understand through her adopted son the injustice of the oppression, that the Hebrews were as human as she was. Perhaps she could articulate some Ancient Egyptian equivalent of b'tselem elohim, that we are all made in the image of God. To fight against Hannah Arendt’s "banality of evil", we must confront the Pharaohs - but we must also confront ourselves.