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| Fri, 10 May 2024 12:11:46 -0500 — |
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D'var: Parashat Shemot 5783
Commentary by Michael Goldstein Friday, January 13, 2023 |
| Exodus 1:1 — 6:1 |
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Chapter 1, Verse 7: The children of Israel were fruitful and swarmed and increased and became very very strong, and the land became filled with them.
Here’s a brief summary of Shemot. A new Pharaoh, unaware of Joseph’s role in getting Egypt through the famine, worries that the Israelites are greatly increasing in number, might become stronger than the Egyptians, and then might rebel. He therefore enslaves them. As their numbers continue to grow, he orders that all newborn Israelite males be killed at birth. Amran, the leader of the Egyptian Israelites, and his wife, Jochebed, are the parents of Miriam and Aaron. Jochebed gives birth to Moses. When he is three months old, she puts him in a basket and lets it float on the Nile. Miriam watches Pharaoh’s daughter save him. She asks if she should find a Hebrew wet-nurse and Pharaoh’s daughter agrees. Miriam, of course, brings Jochebed who raises the child and, when he is grown, brings him to Pharaoh’s daughter. The Torah tells us he became like her son. Chapter 2 Verse 10: The child grew up, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became like her son. She named him Moses, and she said, "For I drew him from the water." As an adult, Moses kills an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating an Israelite slave. Fearing for his life, Moses flees to Midian. He marries Zipporah, one of Jethro’s daughters. Now Moses encounters God at a burning bush. God tells Moses to return to Egypt and free the Israelites. When Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites go, God promises to punish him. Now to Chapter 4 Verse 10: Moses said to the Lord, "I beseech You, O Lord. I am not a man of words, neither from yesterday nor from the day before yesterday, nor from the time You have spoken to Your servant, for I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue." In the 11th century, the French rabbi, Rashi, wrote that heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue means that Moses stammered. My second grade teacher told us the story about God directing baby Moses’s hand to the hot coals rather than to the gold, and then to his mouth, burning his tongue, and causing him to lisp. God’s solution to Moses’s concern is Aaron. Chapter 4 Verses 15-16: You shall speak to him, and you shall put the words into his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will instruct you [both] what you shall do. And he will speak for you to the people, and it will be that he will be your speaker, and you will be his leader. So that’s how Moses, speech impediment and all, became the Israelites’ trail boss. This teaches us that every human being, no matter his or her handicap is deserving of prominence, leadership, rank, importance. I think of FDR, crippled by polio, leading this great nation and its people through the darkest of times. I also think of Donald Trump performing his deplorable impression of Serge Kovaleski in 2015. F Y I: Mr. Kovaleski is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter for The New York Times who suffers from arthrogryposis, a condition that affects the movement of joints. But mainly, I think of the great first century BCE rabbi and scholar, Hillel. It is said that a Gentile man seeking to provoke him declared, “I will become a believer if you can teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Hillel immediately replied, “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto another: That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go study and learn.” And therein lies the lesson for us. All human beings, no matter the circumstances of their lives, deserve the greatest respect we can offer. Michael Goldstein |
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