Of the many ways to bring about redemption, two of them come to play in the Exodus narrative: Grand displays of power on the one hand and subtle, brave acts of rebellion on the other.
By RABBI SUSAN SILVERMAN'Moses before the Pharaoh,’ a sixth-century miniature from the Syriac Bible of Paris(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)‘Let’s sway while color lights up your face. Let’s sway, sway through the crowd to an empty space. If you say run, I’ll run with you. If you say hide, we’ll hide. Because my love for you would break my heart in two.” David Bowie, “Let’s Dance,” released Rosh Hodesh Iyar, 5743 (April 14, 1983).Of the many ways to bring about redemption, two of them come to play in the Exodus narrative: Grand displays of power on the one hand and subtle, brave acts of rebellion on the other.We have the showdown between God and the Egyptian palace magicians. God turns the river’s water to blood. The Egyptian magicians did the same. God brought a plague of frogs. The Egyptian magicians did the same. But starting with the plague of lice, the magicians “surrendered” and the battle became one of God’s plagues vs Pharaoh’s stamina – a stamina strengthened by a divinely hardened heart. Pharaoh’s increasing stubbornness gave God the opportunity to multiply His signs and wonders and therefore display His strength.Perhaps not surprisingly, it is the divine might that we are commanded to remember daily (well, almost daily) through the practice of putting on tefillin.This is commanded in the last verse in Parshat Bo: “And so it shall be as a sign upon your hand and as a symbol between your eyes that with a mighty hand God freed us from Egypt” (Exodus 13:9).We are to wrap ourselves in Divine Might.Even as we easily celebrate the glory of our liberation from Egypt – God’s outstretched arm. The parting of the sea; Miriam’s song of victory – it’s more than worthwhile to recognize, and emulate, that kindness and tzafun, hiddenness, and subtlety were crucial to setting redemption in motion. Consider the responses of two mothers, one biological and one adoptive, to the dire circumstances they faced.Jochebed, Miriam and Bat-Paro each set herself aside for Moses, for the divine redemption that he was to champion. Knowing that her baby’s survival demanded that he be dissociated from her, Jochebed, agonizingly, sent him away. Moses’s sister, Miriam, knowing that she too endangered her brother, “stationed herself at a distance” to watch for his safety in the basket. The meaning of the Hebrew word tzafun is more layered than its common translation, “hiding.” It also means keeping something – like a treasure – aside for a later time. In the Talmud it is written that while a fetus is formed in its mother’s womb, the reward for the Torah she will learn in her life tzafun la, is hidden away, is set aside for her. Thus the gift of their beloved baby, Moses, was set aside for a crucial later time.Bat-Paro, the daughter of Pharaoh, found the baby. The daughter of the ruler who oppressed the Hebrews not only felt compassion for this Hebrew baby (she knew he was a Hebrew), but also played a crucial role in this story of Hebrew redemption. Bat-Paro set aside her role as Pharaoh’s daughter for the sake of Moses and for God. And she constricted herself – as Pharaoh’s daughter by forsaking his rule and in her new role as Moses’s mother to make room for Jochebed to nurse him, enabling Moses to “drink in” the family of his birth.Jochebed and Bat-Paro each made tzimtzum, the godly act of contracting oneself – constricting their emotions, their desires and their actions to make room for each other, for Moses and for God’s will. These women’s actions also brought redemption.I can’t help but see these two strains of our holy text in the life of the State of Israel. How we unfortunately need, but also emphasize and celebrate, our might – the life-or-death competition we place non-metaphorically in our minds and our hands. But sometimes it seems that such oppositional thinking is our go-to for redemption when, truly, the better path is of kindness and tzimtzum – making room for the good of others.One example is our treatment of asylum seekers.Instead of emulating Pharaoh, “Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land” (Exodus 1:10).We have many versions of Moses here in Israel, people who have come to us from Africa through Egypt, their mothers and sisters weeping and praying as they left. And now we must draw them from the narrow minds and hardened hearts of our fellow Israelis into safety and love so they too, may become the redeemers their families back home so desperately need. The writer is a founder of Kamocha: A Jewish Response to Refugees, which is a project of Kehillat Kol Haneshama and of JustAdopt (justadopt.net). Her book, Casting Lots: Creating a Family in a Beautiful, Broken World (Da Capo Press) comes out in April.
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