dvar torah - hol hamoed pesach 5769

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Dvar Torah Shabbat Hol Hamoed Pesach 5769

Rabbi Maurice Harris

On Thursday morning this week we read from the Torah verses assigned by the

sages to the first day of Passover. The scene is the slave ghettos of Pharaohs

Egypt just before the arrival of the 10th and final plague, the slaying of the first

born of Egypt. Moses calls together the elders of the people and says to them,

Go, pick out lambs for your families, and slaughter the Passover offering. Take

a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the

blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts. None of you shall

go outside the door of your homes until morning. For when the Eternal goes

through to smite the Egyptian first born sons, God will see the blood on the linteland the two doorposts, and God will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer

enter and smite your home.

In recent years much has been written about how the Passover story begins and

ends with birth imagery, and Ive talked about this here in the past as well. In the

haggadah we used yesterday at the community seder, we read the following (and

I paraphrase):

How was the desire for freedom first aroused? By the midwives, Shifrahand Puah, who resisted Pharaohs decree to kill every Israelite boy. ByMiriam, who watched over her brother Moses to insure his safety as hefloated in a basket down the Nile. In the birth waters and in the Nile,these extraordinary women saw life and liberation. The waters offreedom open and close the Passover story, taking us from the Nile to theSea of Reeds.

A baby, Moses, is given life thanks to midwives and then pulled from the water by

a princess the birth imagery is striking. A nation passes through the narrow

cavity of the path that God opens through the Sea of Reeds and emerges out the

other side, alive and free. Birth imagery again. What struck me as I took a

closer look at the Torah verses we read Thursday morning was that I was

reminded that we have more birth imagery here in the middle of the story, at this

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crucial moment, just before the 10th plague brings grief and sorrow to so many in

ancient Egypt, just before the Pharaoh finally summons Moses and Aaron and

spits out the words, Up, depart from among my people, you and the Israelites

with you. Go, worship the Eternal as you said! Take also your flocks and your

herds, as you said, and begone! And may you bring a blessing upon me also!

In that moment when Moses instructed the Israelites to take a lamb, slaughter it

as an offering, put its blood in a basin, and then paint the blood on the top and on

the side posts of the doors of their homes, we are confronted yet again with a

visual image of a people getting ready to pass through a birth canal, out of a

holding chamber and into a new existence.

The Torah is full of literary links that tie together these thematic echoes this is

part of its artfulness and beauty. The text that describes the placing of the lambs

blood on the doorposts offers us one of these marvelous literary links. The key

word is the Hebrew word for basin saf spelled with a samech and a final fay.

This is the basin that Moses tells the people to put the lambs blood in, and out of

which they will take up the blood to paint it on their doorposts.

Saf

is a somewhat unusual word, and it calls our attention to a key word in theother two moments of birth that I spoke of. In the first instance, which describes

baby Moses being placed into the Nile and then drawn out of the water by the

Pharaohs daughter, the text tells us that Moses mother placed the basket

containing her beloved child in the reeds of the river. The Hebrew word for reeds

is soof, spelled almost identically to saf. In the second instance the liberation

of the Israelites after they cross the divided Sea of Reeds the word soof

appears again this time as part of the name of the body of water from which

they emerged.

Lets take a closer look at these little Hebrew words, safand soof, and see what

other connections emerge, and lets also expand our examination of the birth

imagery that is so present throughout this story. What Id like to suggest is that

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we find elements, or at least hints, of death, blood, and rebirth in all three of

these key moments in the story.

At the beginning of the Passover tale, Moses is a baby marked for death. When

his mother and sister send him afloat upon the Nile, they give him over to almost

certain death. Listen to how the ancient Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria,

retells this moment of the story in his book, On the Life of Moses.

Moses parents with many tears exposed their child on the banks of theriver, and departed groaning and lamenting, pitying themselves for thenecessity which had fallen upon them, and calling themselves the slayersand murderers of their child Then, as was natural for people involved ina miserable misfortune, they accused themselves as having brought a

heavier affliction on themselves then they need have done. For why,said they, did we not let him die as Pharaoh ordered at the moment of hisbirth? But we, in our affection, have nourished him these three entiremonths, causing ourselves by such conduct more abundant grief, andinflicting upon him a heavier punishment, in order that he, having at lastattained to a great capacity for feeling pleasures and pains, should at lastperish in the most grievous of evils. And so they departed in ignorance ofthe future, being wholly overwhelmed with sad misery

So as we see, the story of the rescue and adoption of baby Moses is fraught with

the potential of death. It also offers us an obvious moment of birth, when thePharaohs daughter sees the helpless baby and has compassion on him, drawing

him out of the waters and taking him for her own. Lets listen to Philos

interpretive telling of this moment as well:

Now the king of the country had an only daughter, whom he tenderlyloved, and they say that she, although she had been married a long time,had never had any children, and therefore, as was natural, was verydesirous of children And as she was always desponding and lamenting,so especially on that particular day was she overcome by the weight of heranxiety, that, though it was her ordinary custom to stay in doors and neverto pass over the threshold of her house, yet now she went forth with herhandmaidens to the river, where the infant was lying. And there, as shewas about to indulge in a bath and purification in the thickest part of themarsh, she beheld the child, and commanded her handmaidens to bringhim to her.

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Philo also adds a story that, after keeping the baby a while, she faked a

pregnancy, stuffing things into the abdomen of her clothing, in order to create

appearances of having birthed the child herself. If we assume that Philo was

relaying folklore and early midrash in his elaborations on the story we find in the

Torah, which mentions very little about the Egyptian princess, her feelings, or her

back story, we see one of the most well known birth motifs found in the Hebrew

bible being attributed to the princess the pain of being unable to conceive a

child and the arrival of a miraculously unexpected child to solve the problem.

I think theres blood imagery here too, though its only hinted at. Later, during the

10 plagues, the Nile will be turned to blood. But also in this story, reading

between the lines, it may be that the Pharaohs daughter was heading to the Nile

to purify herself ritually following her menstrual cycle. If so, then Moses arrival

represents a miraculous reversing of a lack of conception and birth.

When we look at the Torah text from yesterday morning, which tells the story of

the 10th plague and the angel of death passing over the homes of the Jews and

slaying the first born of the Egyptians, we also see a story that presents us with

death, with blood, and with birth. The vividness of the lambs blood in the basin the saf being painted on the doorposts and lintels is there its a birth canal the

Israelites will pass through after the destroying angel has passed over them.

And finally, in the closing part of the Passover story the marching through the

miraculously divided Sea of Reeds, there are once again hints of death, blood,

and images of birth. The word for reeds soof bears close resemblance to

the Hebrew word for end, which is sof. The Yam Soof the Sea of Reeds is

also a pun for what the Israelites are afraid it really will be for them, namely the

Yam Sof the Sea of their End, their deaths. And with the Egyptian chariots

pressing in on them, the death they are terrified their about to experience is going

to be a bloody one. But then the Sea of Death turns into an unexpected birth

canal, and when the people march across the sea to freedom and then the sea

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closes in and drowns the Pharaohs armies, the violent birth of this nation is

complete. And on either side of the sea, we find two lone figures with the

strangest of relation to the newborn. Miriam and Pharaoh are the two figures the

Torah draws our attention to, one on each side of the sea. The Pharaoh,

grandfather to Moses, stunned and defeated on one side, and Miriam, sister to

Moses and therefore a sort of granddaughter to Pharaoh, leading the women in

dance on the other. A defeated, would-be god on earth on one side. A

prophetess and by the way, Miriam is the first person in the Hebrew Bible to be

called a prophet on the other.

Death, blood, birth. Its there throughout this story. Id like to close with one last

image also from Philo. Philo lived in the Jewish community of Alexandria in

Egypt about 2000 years ago, and his lifes work involved harmonizing Greek

philosophy and Torah. What Id like to leave you with his is explanation of the

allegorical meaning of the burning bush miracle, later in Moses life, when he

finds himself upon Mt. Sinai, tending his father-in-laws flocks, and sees a scrub

brush bush on fire, but notices that the little bush isnt being consumed by the

flames. Here is what Philo wrote about this:

For the burning bush was a symbol of the oppressed people, and the

burning fire was a symbol of the oppressors; and the circumstance of the

burning bush not being consumed by the fire was an emblem of the fact

that the people thus oppressed would not be destroyed by those who were

attacking them, but that the oppressors hostility would be unsuccessful

and fruitless to the oppressed. This bush the briar is a most weak

and supple plant It was not consumed by fire, but on the contrary it was

preserved by it All of this is an allegory almost crying out in plain

words to persons in affliction, Do not faint; your weakness is your

strength. You shall be saved rather then destroyed so that you shall

not be overwhelmed by the evils with which they afflict you, but when your

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enemies think most surely that they are destroying you, then you shall

most brilliantly shine out in glory.

Shabbat shalom.

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dvar torah - hol hamoed pesach 5769

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