Torah Study Blog

The Torah portion for this week introduces us to the character Moses. The story is that the Israelites had become so numerous in Egypt that pharaoh became concerned that the Israelites would outnumber the Egyptians. Pharaoh decreed that every newborn boy should be thrown into the Nile River.

Although the biological mother of Moses is named in other traditions, in the story in Exodus Moses’s mother and father remained unnamed. The mother placed the baby Moses in a basket and let the basket float down the river, where it was found by a daughter of pharaoh who decided to claim the baby as her own. Moses was raised as a prince of Egypt , with all the advantages that would grant. Years later Moses witnessed an injustice against an Israelite, which served as a catalyst toward Moses becoming a great leader of his people and the savior of the Israelites.

The scenario of a child abandoned, raised outside his/her biological family, and then going on to do great things is a common motif throughout the world and throughout history. The oldest known story dates from the 16th century BCE and is a Hittite story about Queen Kanesh who gave birth to 30 sons in one year! Instead of trying to raise the brood herself, she put her babies in baskets and floated them down the river, where they were picked up and reared by the gods.

Examples of other foundlings in literature who went on to cross borders and do great things are Tarzan, Romulus and Remus, Superman, Harry Potter, Cinderella and Jane Eyre, among many, many others.

Sargon the Great ruled the Akkadian Empire in, roughly, the 23rd century BCE. Sargon was a hero figure who became the stuff of legends. One of the legends about him, found inscribed on tablets dated to the 7th century BCE, relates that Sargon’s mother was a priestess who was not supposed to get pregnant. When she bore Sargon, she placed him in a basket and floated him down the river, where he was rescued by a man and raised – eventually becoming the king of Akkad.

In the stories of Sargon and Moses, both boys were born to mothers who had to hide the birth of their child. They both floated their babies down the river. It is almost as if, by being put in the water, the boys are being reborn, and they are found by someone else who will raise them. They have left behind the life where they were in danger and have crossed a border into possibility.

The story of Moses could be an allegory for the entire Israelite people. We are like a foundling left in the wilderness. Deuteronomy 32 is a poem about the relationship between God and the Israelites, which I will now paraphrase:

God found Israel in a desert region,
In an empty howling waste,
God engirded Israel, watched over Israel,
Guarded Israel as the pupil of His eye.
...
God set Israel atop the highlands,
To feast on the yield of earth. (Deuteronomy 32:10-13)

And Ezekiel 16 describes Israel as an unwanted baby, whom God showered with love:

On the day you were born, you were left lying, rejected in the open field. When I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you: “Live in spite of your blood” ... I let you grow like the plants of the field; and you continued to grow up.” (Ezekiel 16:5-7)

Martin Buber was a philosopher who was born in Austria in 1878 and died in Israel in 1965. He wrote that the liberator, Moses, had to be introduced to the stronghold world of the oppressors so that, when he crossed boundaries to live as an Israelite, he could fully appreciate the injustices heaped upon them.

Rabbi Jaech pointed out to us, on this Martin Luther King Jr weekend, that, while many Jews benefit from white privilege, Jews are also aware of what it means to be oppressed. Perhaps this is why, during the 1960s, many Jews traveled to the south to help register voters. Jews have a history of being boundary crossers.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter