Parashat Shemot has two halves. The first half, comprised of chapters 1 and 2, is about
human beings: Pharoah, the midwives, Moses and his several families. Beginning at the
end of chapter 2, God takes center stage. This is a big shift: of the roughly 300 times that
God is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, the vast majority occur in the first half. God
has been a minor figure since we started talking about Jacob, and certainly during the
story of Joseph, but He comes roaring back with a vengeance (literally) in the Book of
Exodus.
Yet in its first half, the parasha goes out of its way to highlight three heroic women. Two
midwives (we do not know if they are Egyptian or Hebrew) violate Pharoah’s order to
kill the male children of the Israelites. And the daughter of Pharoah, or Bat-Paro, takes
the most heroic action of the entire story by rescuing the baby Moses from the water and
rearing him (she also gives him his name).
While I have written about Bat-Paro before, I can’t seem to escape the impression that
she is the pivotal character in the story, the one with the most to teach us, and so I am
writing about her again.
The Torah says that when Bat-Paro looked inside the tiny ark, she saw the boy crying,
she had pity on him, and she said or thought, “This one is a child of the Hebrews.” Take
note of the order of events: first she sees Moses crying, then her sympathies are stirred,
and then she identifies him as a Hebrew baby. Had she first said, “This is a child of the
Hebrews,” and only then saw him crying, perhaps she would not have had mercy as she
did; perhaps she would have heard her father’s order, “Every boy born will be thrown in
the Nile,” and let him drown. But her human instinct to altruism is activated before her
cognitive act of labeling kicks in. Because of this tiny instance of humanity (and
godliness), the greatest of our prophets is allowed to live.
In the midst of the plagues and the killing, and the war of wills between God and Pharoah
that will occur in the coming chapters, the Torah goes out of its way to make the opening
chapters of Exodus chapters about women and their capacity for mercy—first with the
midwives, and second with Bat-Paro. (Indeed, it did not need to tell the story of the
midwives at all.) Every time we read Moses’s name throughout the rest of the Torah, part
of us must remember that he would not be there were it not for an act of mercy by
someone who had no reason to be merciful.
One day this past summer, after a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, Natalie and I were
reading about the victims. We both became teary-eyed as we read of the lives that had
been shattered. And then Natalie, a mother of six months, said something simple and
profound: Every one of those people was born from a mother, just as helpless as our tiny
son. Every one of them required someone to feed and clothe them, to hold them and put
them to sleep. This was true of the victims, and it was true of the bomber. It is true of
every human being. Yet at some point, we allow ourselves to forget this and it becomes
possible to take a human life, to destroy an image of God. Perhaps necessarily so.
While the parasha opens with the words, “These are the names of the sons of Israel who
came to Egypt,” and thus the parasha and the Hebrew name of the book are called
“Shemot,” or Names, the bulk of the first two chapters of Shemot is ironically about
nameless people: the King of Egypt, the Daughter of Pharoah, her handmaids, a man
from the house of Levi and his wife, a baby, his sister. In particular, the children of Israel
become a swarming, teething, nameless, mass. Perhaps this is what allows Pharoah to
take such drastic and genocidal measures: he does not know their names, he only sees a
horde; he does not hear or see their cries.
It is only when Bat-Paro, and later God Himself, hears the cries of a human being, that
her (Her) mercy is awakened. Rashi comments that when she peered inside the ark, BatParo saw the Divine Presence (Shechina). Perhaps this was not that this baby was
specifically the man who would later speak to God face to face, but because there was a
baby crying. To truly hear a baby crying and have mercy on it is to see the Divine
Presence.
The message for us is that when we find ourselves categorically writing off entire
communities (“Zionists,” “non-Jews,” “Orthodox Jews,” “Reform Jews,” “Arabs”),
ignoring the humanity of individuals within them, we must allow ourselves to hear the
cries of people who were once helpless babies, just like us and our children. Our capacity
for mercy, for altruism—which is completely irrational—is perhaps the greatest
expression of our godliness. May we all be blessed to listen to it.
Shabbat shalom.