Two Minute Torah Podcast

Shmot 5768 by Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb

Hi, I’m Daniel Goldfarb, Director of the Con Y in Jerusalem, a project of the USCJ and a sister program of KOACH. I’m delighted to share a thought with you about Parshat Shmot, the first in the book of Exodus. In Shmot the descendants of Yakov Avinu, Jacob, grow very numerous and prosperous in Egypt, incurring the jealousy and fear of the leader, Pharoah. Pharoah plots to “put the Jews in their place,” imposing slavery that gets increasingly burdensome and leads ultimately to slow-dose genocide. In this Pharaoh may have been the first, but certainly not the last of a line of national leaders intent on destroying the Jews, right up to the current leadership of Iran.

But note that the tragedy in Egypt, like many that followed, came in stages. The first is in Ch 1:11 – “Therefore [the Egyptians] set tax collectors over them to afflict them with their burdens”. The translation implies that the Egyptian authorities increased the burdens of the Jews. But in fact, in the Hebrew, the Children of Israel are referred to in the collective, singular voice, yet sivlotam “their burdens,” is in the plural, making the reference of the burdens to the children of Israel a bit problematic, though the general meaning of the verse is clear.

This grammatical inconsistency caught the eye of the classical Biblical commentator, Rashi. Since the only plural in the verse is “they” from the opening verb, Rashi says sivlotam, their burdens, are the burdens of the Egyptians. The first stage of slavery in a foreign land is subservience to the burdens of the hosts, to their ways, their habits and their values.

Being a successful part of the host culture has been a Jewish tradition since Josef’s time, but we must remember not to let that culture overwhelm us or suppress or subordinate our Jewish values. The earlier Pharoah, who raised Joseph to prominence after he had explained Pharoah’s dreams in P’ Miketz, gave him an Egyptian name, Zaaphnat-Panneah, but, the very next verse tells us that “Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt,” Joseph, who’d preserved his Jewish identity in the Egyptian dungeon and who’d kept his Jewish values when tempted by Potiphar’s wife, did not disguise them even as PM of Egypt. “Dress British, think Yiddish,” was a popular phase that summarized this years ago.

We should be active and contributing members of the society in which we live, but we should never let its ways and values dominate us and make us forget or neglect our Jewish identity and heritage. Shabbat shalom.