Judeo Talk

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is Parsha Yitro, Exodus 18:1-20:23.

This parsha is short, but there are two good reasons for this. First, the episode in next week’s parsha must stand on its own (we’ll see why next week) and second, there are two very important things that happen in Yitro.

The more obvious of the two is the giving of the Ten Mitzvot. Remember, we won’t be referring to them as “Commandments” here, as we discussed in a previous post. But before we get to the Mitzvot, there is an interesting and arguably more important scene between Moses and his father-in-law Jethro, for whom the parsha is named.

As the Israelites travel farther from Egypt they end up in Midian, which is where Moses lived after being banished from Egypt for killing a task master. In Midian, Jethro still lives and takes care of Moses’s wife Zapporah and their two sons. Moses and Jethro have a happy reunion and basically catch up with one another. I’m a big fan of scenes like this. The Torah frequently features family reunions. The fact that the holy texts take time out to reinforce the importance of loved ones in our lives is wonderful and reassuring. Even as Moses is the prophet of God and the leader of an entire nation, he is still only human. He misses his family and shows them deference despite his social station. He even takes advice from his father-in-law, who is really the only parental figure Moses has left in the world. That in itself is an interesting commentary about family responsibility.

When Jethro sees that Moses spends all day, every day acting as the judge for every little problem the Israelites have, Jethro tells Moses that he needs to make some changes lest he burn himself out and fail as a leader. Jethro suggests that instead of just interpreting the law for them, Moses ought to teach the law to all of the people so they can be judges for themselves. He also tells Moses to delegate responsibility to the righteous for smaller groups. Specifically, that there ought to be community leaders for groups of thousands, then for groups of hundreds within those thousands, then groups of tens within those hundreds. Essentially, Jethro is suggesting a Federal, State, and Local governmental system, freeing Moses to address only those issues deemed too difficult for the many different delegated judges. Essentially, Moses is now the Supreme Court. This sets a precedent for keeping the big-wigs out of local affairs while still maintaining a single rule of law throughout the nation.

This is why I say that the delegation segment is more important than the Ten Mitzvot. These are really just a few more common sense laws to add to an already established list of Israelite codes of conduct. This parsha begins a process that never really stops throughout the Torah and beyond. Most of the Torah from this point forward is concerned with the creation of laws by which the people agree to live. The laws get more nuanced and complex as the nation gets closer to solidification, but for now they are just day-to-day modes of order. The only thing that sets the Mitzvot apart from other laws is that they are handed down directly from God to the people, so their authority is absolute. These are laws that cannot be debated. If Moses is the Supreme Court, God is the Constitution.

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is parsha Bo, Exodus 10:1-13:16.

Parsha Bo is one of the most important, pervasive segments of the Torah. The origins of some very important liturgy come from Bo, as do the first instructions for the holiday of Passover. But first, there are the concluding three of the ten plagues. They are locusts, darkness and the death of the first born.

The plagues themselves seem almost arbitrary. They are a strange mix of natural disasters that don’t seem to be related. Upon deeper reading, their connection becomes apparent. As we saw last week, these plagues are not intended as a punishment for Egypt or even to coax the pharaoh to release his slaves. Rather, they occurred as a demonstration, to make a point. Each of the ten plagues is a direct assault on one of the gods in the Egyptian pantheon through some symbol of their presence. For example, the turning of water into blood was the first plague, and rightfully so. Most of the water in Egypt would have come from the Nile river. According to Egyptian mythology, the god of the Nile was Hapi the father of the gods, and later Osiris the god of rebirth.

The last two gods assaulted by the ten plagues are Ra, the supreme god and god of the sun, and the pharaoh, seen at the time as being a god given flesh to rule over the people. The death of the first born is a plague directed at the pharaoh’s ability to maintain his line’s hegemony in Egypt.

Before the tenth and final plague, God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites to mark their doors with the blood of a sacrificial lamb as a sign to spare their houses from the death of the first born. In addition, the lamb is supposed to be made into a feast for the house. The instructions also demand that this observance should be repeated every year at the same time. In addition to the eating of a sacrificial lamb, the Israelites are told to eat only unleavened bread for the entire week of the festival. The reason for this becomes apparent later in the parsha. When the Egyptians finally tell the Israelites to leave the land, they push them out in a hurry. It all happens so fast that the Israelites don’t even have time to let the dough of their bread rise.

This parsha has one of my favorite lines in the entire Torah. God instructs the Israelites to prepare themselves to leave Egypt by saying they should eat their lamb feast, “With your loins girded, your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand.” What an excellent line. The feast of the pascal lamb isn’t some random ritual. These people needed to eat a good meal to get up their strength for the long journey ahead. This line has so much meaning beyond the literal. As we will see, the voyage from slavery, through the wilderness and into the promised land is a great metaphor in the Jewish faith. It is an allegory for the search for enlightenment. God’s instruction for all those who seek truth is to begin that process prepared for the long haul.

The Israelites begin their march out of Egypt at the end of this parsha. The victory here, as the proverb goes, is not the end, it is just the beginning. They go with the instruction to pass this story down through the generations and to maintain these traditions. It is a subtle sign that all people, Jewish or otherwise, will face their own Egypt, their own personal slavery. Parsha Bo is a reminder that the road out of each individual’s Egypt is one that requires the utmost preparation.

The Torah portion for this week is Shemot, Exodus 1:1-6:1.

There are many very well-known stories in this parsha. It is the beginning of the book of Exodus, the story of how the Hebrew people left Egypt and received the Ten Mitzvot and the Torah. It is essentially the story of how a people not unlike most other peoples at the time came to be the first Jews.

But before that happens, they have to endure a lot of hardship. Just like Joseph, the Israelites first go through a period of slavery and pain, then through great and difficult acts they become the people they were meant to be. In Shemot, we learn how the Israelites came to be slaves in Egypt in the first place. If you recall from last week’s parsha, Joseph called his entire clan to come live in Goshen, a territory of Egypt. Because of Joseph’s service, his people were welcome. Unfortunately, the king of Egypt from Joseph’s time dies and the next king is far less kind. Because the Israelites become a numerous and prosperous people, the pharaoh worries that they would be a liability in times of war. In fact, there are so many Hebrews that the pharaoh believes they would overtake Egypt should they side with Egypt’s enemies.

The pharaoh’s solution to this problem is to enslave the Israelites in order to weaken them. When that doesn’t work, he orders the nurses of Goshen to kill every newborn Israelite male. This is the parsha’s first instance of women playing an integral role in the survival of the Hebrew people. Against the pharaoh’s wishes, the nurses secretly save the boys of Goshen and lie to cover up the rescue effort. For this, God protects them.

It’s an all-too-frequent exercise to point out the misogyny of the bible. Certainly, there are many instances of females being treated worse than males simply for being female. However obvious these moments are, for its time the Torah is actually startling in its progressive outlook on gender. In fact, Exodus is a book that is particularly focused on the raising up of women. The nurses not only defy a man, they defy the most powerful man in Egypt, all because they have their own notions of what is right. That God protects them is a sign that free-thinking women are exalted in the Torah. The story could just as easily feature men saving the Israelite boys. The fact that women are the saviors is deliberate.

There is another, very similar episode later in the parsha. After God charges Moses with the task of going to the pharaoh and demanding the release of the Israelites, Moses is in something of a hurry. He packs up his family and starts on the road to central Egypt. His pursuit is so single-minded that he neglects to circumcise his newborn son. Just because Moses is God’s emissary to the pharaoh doesn’t mean he gets special privileges. God begins to kill Moses for his transgression. The only reason he survives is because his wife, Zapporah, realizes what’s happening and quickly performs the circumcision. In a particularly dramatic moment, Zapporah casts the recently amputated foreskin at Moses’s feet.

Repetition, as I’ve previously mentioned (no pun intended), is a common Toritic method of creating emphasis. That we get two separate episodes of women saving the children of Israel despite the men around them is important. We are meant to see these women as strong, active and mindful individuals. It’s rather plain that, at least in this parsha, the women have a much more solid moral core than the men. They are not passive nurturers, but people willing to fight for what they believe is right and true. This not only lifts them up, it plants a responsibility in them that will follow for the rest of Jewish history.