Moses and the Egyptian, Israel and Iran

Shemot
Exodus 1:1 - 6:1

Précis: With this parasha, we begin the second book of the Bible, Exodus. In Hebrew, the title for this book is “Shemot” (“names”) because the first verses begin with a listing of “names” of the Israelites who came down to Egypt with Jacob, Joseph, and the rest of the family.
         A new Pharaoh has arisen who “does not remember Joseph.” He afflicts the Israelites and orders the killing of all male children. A Levite male child is born, is hidden by his parents, and is sent down the river in a reed basket where he is found by Pharaoh’s daughter. He is, of course, subsequently identified as Moses.
          Nothing appears in the text about Moses’ childhood, other than that he is raised in the house of Pharaoh. As an adult, Moses witnesses a taskmaster beating a Hebrew, and slays the taskmaster. Next, he witnesses a fight between two Hebrews. When he attempts to intervene, one mentions Moses’ killing of the Egyptian. Fearing disclosure, Moses flees to the desert.
          There, Moses becomes a shepherd in the camp of Jethro, a Midianite “priest.” He encounters the burning bush and learns God’s “name.” Moses receives his charge to free the Israelites and is provided with signs to authenticate his mission. Before leaving Jethro, Moses marries Zipporah. Moses and his brother Aaron go before Pharaoh and ask that the people be freed to worship God in the desert. They are refused, and the burdens are increased on the slaves, who become angry with Moses for his interference. The parasha ends with God telling Moses, “You now will see what I will do to Pharaoh.”

Exodus 2:11-12 “And it happened in the days when Moses was grown, that he went out to see the burdens of his brothers, and he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brothers. And he looked around, and when he saw no one else, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”

          Our tradition contains two starkly different versions about how Moses killed the Egyptian overseer. Moses observes a terrible injustice but does not act rashly; he first “looks around.” The text seems to imply that Moses first "looked around" to see if there would be any witnesses - whether he could "get away with it." Other commentators suggest that Moses was hoping to see someone else who might intervene before he needed to engage in violence personally. These two conceptions underscore how hard it is to reconcile the concept of Moses the law-giver who communes with God with a man who commits premeditated violence.
          For two millennia, Jews lived in a Diaspora of essential powerlessness, where our survival depended on the acts of others, surviving periodic outpourings of violence and anti-Semitism. We believed that God would redeem us when He was ready to do so, just as He did in the story of the Exodus. This belief went so far as to suggest that active, physical defense was somehow a “shanda” – that it revealed a lack of faith in God. Early religious opponents of Zionism were inheritors of this perception.
          As Daniel Gordis wrote in Commentary (October 2010), “...the Jewish experience in Europe was fundamentally one of defenselessness. What happened to the Jews was whatever their enemies determined should happen to them. The creation of the State of Israel fundamentally changed not only that reality but also the self-perception that accompanied it.” He adds that “Many people are put off by the Israeli national affect, which they take to be a mix of arrogance and bravado. This is a misperception of an attitude that is born, in truth, out of collective relief: We Jews no longer live - and die - at the whim of others.”
          In his article, Gordis argues that should Iran become a nuclear power, there would be a fundamental sea change in Israel’s self-perception: we would return to the status of “victims-in-waiting.” This, he maintains is the real existential threat of an Iranian bomb: the end of the Zionist dream of self-defense of the Jewish People.
          It is true that Israel would retain a so-called “second strike” capability, and that vengeance would be assured. But the damage to Israel - and to the Jewish People - would be horrific. Almost as much as the loss of life, a second Holocaust could spell the end of the Jewish enterprise.
          Like Moses in our reading, Israel needs to “look around” and see if there are others who can intervene before it takes action itself. We must hope that the “international community” can understand Israel’s need for defense against a nuclear-capable Iran, a regime that believes Israel is a “cancer” needing to be “cut out” of the Middle East. But Israel cannot become a victim-in-waiting, and must be prepared, like Moses, to take action itself.