{"id":46697,"date":"2018-12-31T00:11:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T22:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=46697"},"modified":"2022-04-17T23:37:19","modified_gmt":"2022-04-17T20:37:19","slug":"vitality-and-its-causes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/vitality-and-its-causes\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitality And Its Causes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Vitality is the word that comes to mind to describe this portion. Israelites in Egypt are breeding and multiplying wildly having multiple births, litters of offspring at the same time, just like animals. In fact, the six verbs used to describe the ways the Israelites are reproducing and are \u201cfertile and prolific, they multiplied and increased, greatly, greatly\u201d suggest to medieval commentator Rashi that six offspring were birthed with each pregnancy.\u00a0 Commentator Nahum Sarna likens this population expansion to that at the creation in Genesis 1:28 and after the flood in Genesis 9:1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This vital force is perceived as a threat by the ruling Pharaoh and he decides that the way to combat it is to afflict the Israelites, specifically by commanding the midwives who serve the Hebrews to kill male offspring (Exodus 1: 16)\u00a0 The text leaves the ethnic identity of the midwives unclear, allowing us to see them either as ethnic Egyptians\u00a0 who work in Israelite neighborhoods or actual Israelite women, though later rabbinic interpretations assume that they are in fact Moses\u2019 mother Yocheved and sister Miriam.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What makes these midwives so filled with life that they are able to bring other lives into being is their understanding of who should give them orders.\u00a0 They don\u2019t listen to Pharaoh, knowing it is wrong to kill an innocent baby.\u00a0 They posit a world with a higher morality, one that comes from God, for the \u201cmidwives fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them and they let the boys live.\u201d(Exodus 1:17)\u00a0\u00a0 The ability of the midwives to resist evil comes from their knowledge that there is a better order, a way to live informed by hope and compassion. For them, this understanding comes from their fear of God; the ambiguity in the text that these midwives might be either Egyptian or Israelite is significant since this is an understanding available to all humanity.<\/em>\u00a0 These two women model a way to resist evil that is both simple and powerful.<\/p>\n

When an Israelite male baby does live, five women collude to save him: two midwives, mother, sister and daughter of the Pharaoh.\u00a0 That these women are collaborating across \u201cethnic, class and religious lines\u201d as Bible scholar Susan Niditch writes in The Torah: A Women\u2019s Commentary<\/a> is extraordinary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moses\/Moshe is named\u00a0 because the daughter of Pharoah states, \u201cI drew him out of the water.\u201d(Exodus 2:10). Yet the Midrash Hagadol, as cited by Yair Zakovitch and Avigdor Shinan in their From Gods to God<\/a>, says that \u201che should have been called Mashui<\/em>, [one who] was drawn from the water,\u2019 but she named him Mosheh, <\/em>saying \u2018He drew himself[out of the water],\u2019 meaning that his own virtue caused him to be saved.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The commands of an irrational ruler were defeated by the midwives who had the courage to defy him, which led to the possibility that a future leader would live.\u00a0 Moshe was able to draw others out of Egypt, as Isaiah 63:11-13 suggests, because God is behind him.\u00a0 However it is the belief of five women in the possibility of a better world than the current order expressed by their belief in God that sets redemption into motion and gives vitality.\u00a0<\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Parashat Shemot 5779","main_caption":"Vitality And Its Causes","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"Five women begin the process of redemption","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":false,"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""},"links":false,"send_noty":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104129,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46697\/revisions\/104129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}