TORAH SPARKS
Parshat Shmot
January 14, 2023 | 21 Tevet 5783
Torah: Exodus 1:1-6:1 Triennial: Exodus 1:1-2:25
Haftarah: Isaiah 27:6-28:13, 29:22-23
Fleeing Home
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
When God encounters Moses at the burning bush, Moses has had a rough go of it. His entire life he has been surrounded by secrecy and lies. There is nothing Moses can say about himself that is simply true. Everything about him requires qualification. He was born during the decree to kill all baby boys and yet he lived. His mother was not his mother but his nursemaid. He is neither fully Egyptian nor Hebrew. He is not subject to abuse of power but neither is he allowed to wield power freely. In Midian, he is thought to be an Egyptian. Moses names his son Gershom, a stranger there, reflecting Moses s secrets. He is a stranger not just in Midian but also in Egypt and among his own people. As we saw in Genesis, progeny was always the solution. The promise to Abraham is fulfilled through progeny and the punishment for Adam of mortality is softened through progeny. But Moses has no past with which to connect his child nor has he a future to imagine onto his child.
It is shortly after the birth of his child that Moses wanders into the desert. He takes Jethro s sheep and leads them into the wilderness until he comes to Horeb, to Mount Sinai. Lost and confused, he seems to have led his father-in-law s flock astray. It is yet another act of Moses fleeing, following on his actions as a baby in a basket and then after having killed a person in Egypt. When given a choice of fight or flight, Moses is the exemplar of fleeing. He has nothing to tether him to a place. Even after marriage and the birth of a child, Moses still wanders away.
As it turns out, the Israelite people were in need of exactly such a wanderer. God will take Moses s scampering away and transform it into the Exodus. However, this transformation must be carried out most delicately. God can t scare Moses away before they have an opportunity to converse. In an epic demonstration of empathy and healing, God meets Moses at the burning bush.
God lets Moses choose to approach God. Just as Moses had turned this way and that to make sure no one saw him kill an Egyptian, Moses now chooses to turn aside to look at the burning bush. God takes what had been a motion of fear for Moses and transforms it into a motion of awe. God calls Moses s name twice and Moses answers. He has been identified, it would do no good to flee. But God takes no chances. He has Moses remove his shoes. It is reminiscent of the age-old joke that reads: before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticize them, you re a mile away and you have their shoes. God takes away Moses s ability to run. It is in stark contrast to what God will tell the Israelites on the eve of their departure from Egypt, when God will command the Israelites to eat the paschal lamb with your hips belted, your sandals on your feet, and your staffs in your hand. They will be ready to flee with Moses at the vanguard.
God continues speaking to Moses, explaining to Moses who God is. It is too much for Moses, he hides his face. He can t run away, but he can check out. God pushes on, explaining the mission. It is at this point we hear Moses s first words to God. He asks, Who am I? In order to approach Pharoah, in order to lead the Israelites, Moses needs to come out of hiding. He needs to have a firm grasp on his own identity in order to forge a new identity for the Israelites. God explains that God is with Moses, God gives Moses various signs, and reminds Moses of God s awesome powers. None of this is enough for Moses. The man who flees is unwilling to return. The hider still has no fixed identity. Finally, God breaks through to him. God presents Moses with his brother. Aaron is waiting for Moses, holding an idea of who Moses is, a home to which Moses can return. In order to heal, to confront his past and imagine a future, Moses does not need God as his helpmate. Rather, he needs to dwell among his own kin. He needs his brother.
In Those Days, In These Times
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah
Being the opening haftarah for a chumash (one of the 5 books of Torah) is a big responsibility. It is assumed that a haftarah is relevant for the parashah that it is attached to but looking at the opening haftarah one is left wondering if it is not an opening for the chumash itself.
Much like the book of Shmot, the haftarah contains both heartbreak and hope. Shmot is the book known as Sefer HaGe ulah, the book of Redemption, by the rabbis. Indeed, the English name Exodus reflects this rabbinic name. Isaiah, living centuries later at a time of distress, speaks of future salvation in terminology that will echo the wondrous past, feeding eschatological hopes for a future redemption.
In 732 BCE, along with war and destruction, Assyria began exiling the people of Israel. During the next one and a half centuries Assyria and Babylon would exile people from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah far away, into the eastern parts of the Fertile Crescent. The unstable situation caused the remaining people to flee the country. Not very different from the family of Jacob in the past few parashot, some of these people fled to Egypt, hoping to wait things out. In face of this difficult period, Isaiah is describing an upcoming redemption (27:12-13):
It shall be on that day that the LORD will thresh, from the strong current of the [Euphrates] River to the Brook of Egypt; And you will be gathered one by one, children of Israel.
It shall be on that day a great shofar will be blown; And those lost in the land of Assyria will come, as will those who are distant in the land of Egypt. And they shall worship the LORD in the holy mount in Jerusalem.
Isaiah speaks about the current situation in terms of both geography and empires. The Euphrates river ( The River in Tanakh) was the natural border in the north of the greater Levant area. Egypt was the southern marker. Now, for the first time since the patriarchs, the Children of Israel find themselves across The River. Lost. A new story is being written, and Isaiah must create a new narrative for his audience.
He tells them of a new redemption echoing
the old one, involving God gathering His people and taking them across water
bodies. Now a great shofar calling for awakening will sound through the world
for the lost and distant to come back. They will return to worship God on the
Holy Mountain in Jerusalem. Since the splitting of the kingdom into Judah and
Israel, the northern kingdom did not worship in Jerusalem. Isaiah, the
Jerusalem based prophet that witnessed the destruction of the kingdom of Israel
in the north, is speaking not only of a physical salvation but also of a future
of unity. Isaiah brings us back to the national situation at the opening in
this week s parashah when the Children of Israel were one family led out of
Egypt in the greatest epic of all time.
Feeding Hametz to a Pet
Ilana Kurshan
Pesachim 2:1
Each year I start thinking about the approaching holiday of Pesach in January, as soon as we begin reading the book of Exodus in the Torah reading cycle. Reading the Exodus story puts me in the frame of mind to think about the holiday, and so perhaps it s appropriate that Matan and I recently began learning Pesachim the tractate of the Mishnah that deals with Pesach preparations, the Paschal lamb sacrifice, and the festive meal that came to be known as the Passover Seder.
Matan and I are up to the beginning of the second chapter, which is about the status of hametz on the day before Pesach. We ve already learned that there s a disagreement about how late in the day you are allowed to eat hametz on erev Pesach how late can you sleep on the morning before the Seder and still eat a muffin for breakfast? This is an especially relevant question for Matan, who enjoys his leavened breakfasts almost as much as he enjoys sleeping in.
I remind Matan that a halakhic day is divided into twelve hours each hour corresponds to 1/12 of the time between sunrise and sunset. According to Rabbi Meir, you are allowed to eat hametz for the first five hours of the day. According to Rabbi Yehudah, you may eat it only for the first four hours of the day; in the fifth hour, you may still own it, but you may not benefit from it. Both agree that by the beginning of the sixth hour, all Hametz in one s possession must be destroyed.
Our mishnah is about those early hours of the day on Erev Pesach, when you re still allowed to eat hametz. The mishnah teaches that as long as you are allowed to eat hametz, you may benefit from it; once you can t eat it anymore, you re forbidden to benefit from it. This mishnah follows the opinion of Rabbi Meir, who holds that there is no period of time in which you can eat hametz but not benefit from it. But how does one benefit from Hametz without eating it? The Mishnah explains that one could sell it to a non-Jew, or feed it to one s animals. Matan is intrigued. How come I didn t know about feeding hametz to pets? You never taught me that before!
I look at Matan quizzically. It never really came up. We don t have any pets, I told him.
Matan looks at me in exasperation. I knew I had said something wrong. That s because you don t let us get a pet! Ima, when can we get a turtle?
Matan, can we talk about this later? We re learning Mishnah now.
But I really want a turtle. A real turtle, like Dribble. Don t worry, I won t let anyone swallow it. He is alluding to Judy Blume s novel Fudge, which we recently read, about a nine-year-old boy, Peter, whose pet turtle, named Dribble, is prematurely disposed of by his younger brother, who is nicknamed Fudge. Matan is determined that he will protect any turtle entrusted to his care from such a fate.
Well, it s good to know that if you did have a turtle, you d be allowed to feed it Hametz for only as long as you re allowed to eat hametz, right? I say, trying to steer us back on topic. Unless you follow Rabbi Yehuda, who says that there s one hour when your turtle can still eat hametz even though you can t.
We should definitely get a turtle to eat our hametz, Matan tells me. You hate when we waste food. But as we learn in the second part of the mishnah, the rabbis don t all agree about acceptable ways to dispose of hametz. Rabbi Yehudah insists that you have to burn it, but the other rabbis say you can cast it into the sea or crumble it up and throw it to the wind.
What about flushing it down the toilet? Matan asks. Don t you remember we did that during the pandemic, when we couldn t leave the house? We searched for hametz and then we put all the crumbs in the toilet, and Abba poured some disgusting poisonous cleaning liquid on it, and flushed it. That s OK, right?
Well, it s OK according to the rabbis, but not according to Rabbi Yehudah. Rabbi Yehudah would say you have to burn it.
Ok, says Matan, and I can see the wheels turning in his mind. So what if they add a burning hot pipe that everything we flushed has to pass through. The pipe would be so hot that anything that went through it would burn up immediately. Then Rabbi Yehudah could flush his hametz, right?
I suppose so, I concede, relieved that we are no longer arguing about pets.
But it only counts as hametz if a dog is willing to eat it, says Matan, recalling what I d taught him previously. So it would really help to have a dog to know whether you need to flush your hametz down the toilet, or whether you can assume it s so gross that it doesn t count as food anymore.
Right, I said.
So maybe instead of a turtle, we should get a dog and name it Turtle.
I smile wanly. After Fudge swallows his older brother Peter s turtle, his parents buy him a dog as a new pet, and Peter names it Turtle. Turtle the dog still sounds awfully confusing to me. And I can t justify owning a pet year-round just because it might come in handy when trying to determine if something is hametz or not.
While Matan is still imagining his future pet, I flip ahead to the next couple of mishnayot, where we will learn that if an avalanche falls on your hametz, you are exempt from getting rid of it, so long as it is so deeply buried that even a dog would not bother to search for it. I don t think I can bear to have another conversation about pets with Matan. Maybe, for now, we ll skip over that Mishnah.