Parshat Shmot
Power & resistance
New book who dis! (first parsha in the second book of the Torah)
When I consider the 3 parsha segments I reviewed (the parsha itself, Essays in Ethics, and Lessons in Leadership), I see the main theme as being about our personal agency in decision-making: what we choose to do; how we choose to respond to external things.
A few weeks ago in a 20s and 30s discussion group I co-organize, we were talking about resistance and what we would do when faced with a Chanukah-type situation (or, an Inquisition or Soviet situation). Lately, I’ve been fleshing out my answer a bit more after reading Judy Batalion’s The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos and Anne Berest’s novel The Postcard. I think I would need to be prompted into action.
While I still think I’d take an observational approach initially, I wouldn’t be organizing anything on a group scale or end up leading some sort of underground movement. I’m not at all comfortable leading anything in a life-or-death context, so the group/movement would need to have no other (good) options before I’d reluctantly step in. It’s way more realistic that I’d be brought to a meeting or training by a friend and then start getting more and more involved.
I might have had some… (cough) delusions about being a spy, but now I know I wouldn’t make a very good spy or, like in Batalion’s book, courier. [I recently read Ronen Bergman’s book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations that also talked about the Mossad and what makes a successful spy. I wrote about my takeaways in this note]. And anyway, depending on the context, my appearance might make me ineligible for that type of work.
… Before I can go down the rabbit hole about my role, but in a dystopia context #The100, let’s get back to the parsha.
In “On Not Obeying Immoral Orders”, Jonathan Sacks’ piece on Parshat Shmot in Essays in Ethics, Sacks writes about how the midwives are civilly disobedient.
And they didn’t even get punished/killed! I shared some interpretations of the pasuk about the midwives’ households in this note. One interpretation was that Par’oh gave the midwives house arrest (why didn’t he do more? People have been killed by rulers for far less than disobeying a direct order).
The midwives refused to follow direct orders from the highest (human) ruler in their land; they were following moral orders from the highest ruler.
“The story of the midwives belongs to a larger vision implicit throughout the Torah and Tanakh as a whole: that right is sovereign over might, and that even God [Gods’ self] can be called to account in the name of justice, as [God] expressly mandates Abraham to do. Sovereignty ultimately belongs to God, so any human act or order that transgresses the will of God is by that fact alone ultra vires [beyond the legal authority/power]. These revolutionary ideas are intrinsic to the biblical vision of politics and the use of power.” - Sacks (my bold)
The midwives are two of six women Sacks writes about as leaders and heroes in his piece on Parshat Shmot in Lessons in Leadership.
Who were these six leaders/heroes?
Yocheved
she, “at the height of Egyptian persecution, had the courage to have a child, hide him for three months, and then devise a plan to give him a chance of being rescued.”
Miriam
“she who kept watch over [Moshe] as the ark floated down the river, she who approached Pharaoh’s daughter with the suggestion that he be nursed among his own people”
Shifra
she “frustrated Pharaoh’s first attempt at genocide…outwitted Pharaoh by constructing an ingenious cover story… escaped punishment and saved lives”
Puah
she “frustrated Pharaoh’s first attempt at genocide…outwitted Pharaoh by constructing an ingenious cover story… escaped punishment and saved lives”
Tzipporah
“she was nonetheless determined to accompany Moses on his mission to Egypt, despite the fact that she had no reason to risk her life on such a hazardous venture… it was she who saved Moshe’s life [she circumcised their son, who] at a crucial moment, ha[d] a better sense than Moses himself of what God requires”
The daughter of Par’oh (or Hashem / Batya)
“she who had the courage to rescue an Israelite child and bring him up as her own in the very palace where her father was plotting the destruction of the Israelite people”
These women “were leaders because they had courage and conscience. They refused to be intimidated by power or defeated by circumstance. They were the real heroes of the Exodus.” - Sacks
Like Sacks, I find Par’oh’s daughter most intriguing of the six women. In a way, she had the furthest to fall, the most power to lose, of them all. Related, I wrote a bit about the Miriam and Par’oh’s daughter situation in this note.
Though, interestingly, if we go back to another parsha to what Sacks wrote about leaders for Parshat Noach, she wouldn’t be considered a leader but righteous.
She didn’t encourage other daughters or wives of royalty to adopt Israelite boys. She didn’t try to intervene in royal decrees (like Esther did; maybe because it wasn’t personal enough for her? Though it was personal to her adopted son). She was righteous because she didn’t try to save other people, but saved someone not related to her.
Like the daughter of Par’oh, “Noah was righteous but not a leader. He was a good man who had no influence on his environment.” - Sacks (Parshat Noach)
“Sacks continues [in Parshat Noach], sharing how Chasidim called Noah "a tzaddik im peltz, “a righteous man in a fur coat.” [By which they mean that] There are two ways of keeping warm on a cold night. You can wear a fur coat or light a fire. Wear a fur coat and you warm only yourself. Light a fire and you warm others. We are supposed to light a fire.”
Even if Sacks contradicts himself (on what constitutes leadership), these women used their power to warm their loved ones, in the avenues and resources available to them. While only two of those six women lit a fire instead of wearing a fur coat, we need a plethora of options and contributions to warm us.