Parshat Shemot - Believing for a Better Future

This week's Parsha commences the chapter of exile and servitude for the Jewish people in the land of Egypt. Thus begins the torment that Pharaoh and the Egyptians brought upon the Jews, with the murder of the infant boys, the back-breaking labor, and the ravaging of the slave’s wives, causing great anguish to our nation. A very dark period indeed.

The Torah says: “A man went from the House of Levi, and he took a daughter of Levi...The woman conceived and gave birth to a son.” (2:1) That man was Amram, and the woman was Yocheved. The son would grow up to be Moshe Rabbeinu, who would eventually lead the Jewish people out of Egypt, out of slavery.

Rashi (ibid.) explains the significance of this background information: “He [Amram] had been separated from her [Yocheved] because of the decree of Pharaoh, and he remarried her...he went on the account of his daughter [Miriam]’s advice who said to him “your decree is more severe than that of Pharaoh, for Pharaoh decreed only on the boys, but you have decreed as well on the girls…”

Amram remarried Yocheved because Miriam argued that his actions were in fact worse than Pharaoh! This obviously begs the question: Surely Amram understood on his own that to refrain from procreation altogether is more destructive than killing only one gender. So why did Amram leave Yocheved to begin with? And if Amram had a strong justification for his actions, what was it about Miriam’s argument that so convinced her father to change course?

The Gemara in Sotah (12a) sheds some light on the dynamics of Amram’s decision. The Gemara states that Amram exclaimed upon hearing the decree: “Our effort is for naught, he then arose and divorced his wife, thereupon all the men arose and divorced their wives.” The Sifri in Devarim (26:7) explains that “effort” refers to the sons (see the Meharsha in Sotah as well). Because of Pharaoh's decree, Amram felt that any efforts at building the nation, at building society, were for naught. Pharaoh’s cruelty was so great that he decreed even to kill the male babies of his own countrymen (Rashi 1:22). The hatred that Pharaoh had for the Jewish people was so strong that he was willing to mass-murder the babies of his own people, lest the savior of the Jews be born through them. So jarring, and so depressing, was the prospect of bringing children into this world, in the face of such evil. In this time, a period so dark and destructive to our nation and to the world, perhaps Amram did not want to have any children exist, only to suffer at the sight of this abuse.

However Miriam argued against this sentiment. She reasoned that no matter the situation, even at the worst of times, we must continue to move forward at all costs – we must continue to grow and build. We cannot let the destroyers deter us from progressing. We must approach life with the attitude that things will improve, and remain strong in the hope that we will see a better day. Yes, they are killing our boys, but do not let them win by stopping us from raising the next generation. This argument compelled Amram to return to Yocheved. Moshe, the מושיען של ישראל, was born and lead the Jews out of Egypt.

An attitude of despair was quite prevalent in the world post-holocaust; many made the calculation, understandably so after losing their entire families to the Nazis and witnessing the depravity of the world, to leave Judaism and to “check out” from society. How can one, after experiencing such evil, face the world with starry-eyed visions of תיקון עולם? How can one be expected to trust the world again?

Yet there were also those select few, dreamers and optimists, who did not allow the experience of evil to corrupt their view; rather they drew strength from the mission that they felt Providence had foisted upon them to build a new world. Orthodoxy was all but assumed dead in post WWII America, but the pioneers stayed strong and forged ahead, for they continued to look forward, girding themselves with the strength of the past, of their ancestors, to hope for a better future. And just a few years after the destruction of European Jewry, the sociologist Egon Mayer, in his book, From Suburb to Shtetl: The Jews of Boro Park (1979) with a study of the Orthodox Jewish community in the 1970’s, concluded: “they were facing a cultural renaissance, rather than the complete assimilation considered inevitable by much of the previous sociological literature on the subject.” (Beyond the Melting Pot, Alberto Bisen and Thierry Verdier – N.Y.U 2000). Today we reap the benefits of those optimists’ “efforts”; they were not for naught.

My wife is a descendent of two such dreamers, who settled in America and built a Torah home. After losing their 4 children in the war, they rebuilt their family from scratch and today, their many grandchildren and great-grandchildren are proud Torah Jews bringing pride to the Jewish people and Hashem. I hope and pray that I can instill in my family and coming generations this same sense of mission, and the hope that the world can, and will be a better place.

Shabbat Shalom