Torah Thoughts Exodus

So many parts of the beginning of the book of Exodus could apply to any time period. The Pharaoh who does not know Joseph, the fear of the might of the Israelites, the attempt to “deal wisely” with us because if not “it may come to pass that when there would be any war,” we “join the enemies and would fight against”

them. How many times have these arguments been used against us, and other non-native populations as well. Here, in Exodus, there is collusion, for it is not just Pharaoh, but the Egyptian population as well that perpetrates the crime.

After touring Yad B’Shem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, on Monday, Pharaoh’s words and actions haunt me. How could it all have happened? How could the world have stood silently by as our babies were tossed callously into the Nile, as the taskmasters came to enslave us?

The museum is designed to make you weave through narrow and narrower spaces as the Nazi actions become more and more extreme. “Mitzrayim” itself, the Hebrew word for Egypt, is sometimes translated as a narrow space, as if the walls of the world were closing in on us, blocking the light.

We emerged into the bright light of Jerusalem to hear a Holocaust survivor, Marta Wise, recount her tale. Born in Czechoslovakia, she in her older sister were forced into hiding in Hungary, only to be sent to the death camps Auschwitz as teenagers and to be subjected to the cruelty of Joseph Mengele, surviving mostly on her wits and blind luck. She spoke about the many Jews and non-Jews who supported her along the way, the nanny that helped her and her sister into hiding, the young man who jumped into the sewer to save her after a Nazi guard pushed her in on a whim, the others who helped clean her and find clothing. In the portion, we see the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, risk their lives to save Hebrew babies. There is light even in the darkest times.

This trip has been one of examination, where Israel can be viewed from many different sides – the settler up north, the angry Palestinians in the square at Nazareth, the Christian Arabs in Bethlehem serving as peace keepers, and the thriving, bustling streets of modern day Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. We leave more confused than before, seeing Israel as both protector and oppressor. And yet knowing how necessary this fragile “narrow” strip of land is for, not just for Jews, but for the world.

Pharaoh’s memory must be sharper this time, we cannot afford to forget Joseph. We honor the memories of our ancestors, going back thousands of years to Egypt, and more recently to the 6 million murdered by Nazi hands, by staying true to our values, by living life to its fullest, and, by being proud of who we are. We are a people who survived both Pharaoh and Hitler, and turned those difficult times into small notches on a long and healthy historical record. I don’t know about you, but I’m interested in what will come next.

Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Alex