Dear Friends;

 

I hope that you’ll enjoy the following Parsha summary followed by a Dvar Torah;

 

” Parsha in a Nutshell “

 

The Children of Israel multiply in Egypt. Threatened by their growing numbers, Pharaoh enslaves them and orders the Hebrew midwives, Shifrah and Puah, to kill all male babies at birth. When they do not comply, he commands his people to cast the Hebrew babies into the Nile.

A child is born to Yocheved, the daughter of Levi, and her husband, Amram, and placed in a basket on the river, while the baby’s sister, Miriam, stands watch from afar. Pharaoh’s daughter discovers the boy, raises him as her son, and names him Moses.

As a young man, Moses leaves the palace and discovers the hardship of his brethren. He sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and kills the Egyptian. The next day he sees two Jews fighting; when he disapproves, they reveal his previous day’s murder, and Moses is forced to flee to Midian. There he rescues Yitro’s daughters, marries one of them – Tzipporah – and becomes a shepherd of his father-in-law’s flocks.

One day when Moses was watching the herd, G-d appears to him in a burning bush at the foot of Mount Sinai and instructs him to go to Pharaoh and demand: “Let My people go, so that they may serve Me.” Moses’ brother, Aaron, is appointed to serve as his spokesman. In Egypt, Moses and Aaron gathered the elders of Israel to tell them that the time of their redemption has come. The people believe; but Pharaoh refuses to let them go, and even intensifies the suffering of Israel.

Moses returns to G-d to protest: “Why have You done evil to this people?” G-d promises that the redemption is close at hand.

 

“ Dvar Torah “

 

In this week’s Parsha, G-d appears to Moshe in a burning bush and says to him: “I have indeed seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and I have heard their outcry……. And now, I will dispatch you to go to Pharaoh and you shall take My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” Moshe responds: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and how can I possibly get the Israelites out of Egypt?”

On the surface, Moshe’s two parts question is quite clear. The first part he is asking: who am I, to be worthy of such a great mission? The second: how can I possibly succeed?

G-d answers the second part. “Because I will be with you.” You will succeed because I am not asking you to do it alone. I am not really asking you to do it at all. I will be doing it for you. I just want you to be My representative, My emissary and My voice.

G-d never answered the first part of the question, “Who am I”! Perhaps it’s because Moshe found out the answer himself!

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says that Moshe’s question, who am I, may not just be a question about worthiness. It can also be a question about identity. So the question, who am I, may well be referring to who Moshe really was.

There are two possible answers to Moshe’s identity. The first: Moshe is a prince of Egypt. He had been adopted as a baby by Pharaoh’s daughter. He had grown up in the royal palace. He dressed like an Egyptian, looked and spoke like an Egyptian. When he rescued Jethro’s daughters from some rough shepherds, they go back and tell their father, “An Egyptian saved us”.   His very name, Moshe, was given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter. Although Moshe in Hebrew means “drawn from the water”, in ancient Egyptian it means a “child”. So the first answer is that Moshe was an Egyptian prince.

The second was that he was a Midianite. For, although he was Egyptian by upbringing, he had been forced to leave. He had made his home in Midian, married a Midianite woman Zipporah, daughter of a Midianite priest and was “content to live” there, quietly as a shepherd. We tend to forget that he spent many years there. He left Egypt as a young man and was already eighty years old at the start of his mission when he first stood in front of Pharaoh. He must have spent the overwhelming majority of his adult life in Midian, far away from the Israelites. So, on the one hand Moshe was an Egyptian, on the other, he was a Midianite.

So when Moshe asks, “Who am I?” it is not just that he feels himself unworthy. He feels himself uninvolved. He may have been Jewish by birth, but he had not suffered the fate of his people. He had not grown up as a Jew. He had not lived among Jews. He had good reason to doubt that the Israelites would even recognise him as one of them. How, then, could he become their leader? Their fate was not his. He was not part of them. He was not responsible for them. And he did not suffer like them!

Moshe could have lived a comfortable life till the end. He could have lived as an Egyptian prince or as a midianite shepherd in peace and harmony. So, why then did he accept? What made him give up the easy life in order to lead a group of people who he hardly knew and carry their burden on his shoulders for forty years?

Rabbi Sacks says, one hint is contained in the name he gave his first son. He called him Gershom because, he said, “I am a stranger in a foreign land”. He did not feel at home in Midian. That was where he was, but not who he was. But the real clue is contained in an earlier verse, where it says: “When Moses was grown, he began to go out to his own people, and he saw their hard labor”. These people were his people. He may have looked like an Egyptian but he knew that ultimately he was not. Moshe may have been un-Jewish by upbringing, but when he saw his people suffering, he identified with them and he couldn’t walk away. Who am I? asked Moshe, but in his heart he knew the answer. I am not Moshe the Egyptian or Moshe the Midianite. When I see my people suffer I am, and cannot be other than, Moshe the Jew. And if that imposes responsibilities on me, then I must shoulder them. And this is the greatness of Moshe that Hashem loved. He feels the pain when his people are suffering!

Yes my friends, there are many different type of Jews. There are Jews who believe and those who don’t. There are Jews who are observant and those who are not. But you can hardly find any Jews indeed who, when their people are suffering, can walk away saying, this has nothing to do with me. Whether Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Hasidic, Orthodox or non-observant, when a Jew is suffering, we all feel the pain. We all pray. We all want to help out. We all stretch out our arm to give a helping hand.

A boy in our community is in a desperate need of a kidney. Ask yourself the same question as Moshe did. “Who am I?” And if you find the answer to be a Jew, then don’t waste any time to try help in any way you can. Because this is what Judaism is all about!!

 

Shabbat Shalom & Regards;

Martin