Mazel tov! We’ve reached the second book of the Torah, Sefer Shemot / the Book of Exodus! As well as the opening number of the excellent Dreamworks film, Prince of Egypt. We are entering Sefer Shemot, the Book of Exodus!  A new Pharaoh has arisen (or just new edicts have begun… there’s differing opinions) who is threatened by the fact that B’nei Yisrael (the Children of Israel) have thrived in Egypt. So Pharaoh demands that all Ivri (Hebrew) baby boys be flung into the Nile.

Enter Yocheved, daughter of Levi, granddaughter of Yaakov (Jacob), who gives birth to a particularly “good / ט֣וֹב” Hebrew baby boy. She hides him as long as she can, but eventually has to make a decision. Some commentators say she put her baby in the Nile momentarily and was planning to come back, some say she was sending her baby off for what she hoped was a better life, and others say she was finding the classic Jewish mother loophole — flipping the script and following through with Pharaoh’s command to put all Hebrew baby boys in the Nile. No matter what her intention was, her baby floats down the Nile to be discovered Divinely by the daughter of Pharaoh, who takes him in and names him Moshe (Moses) — “for I drew him out of the water” כִּ֥י מִן־הַמַּ֖יִם מְשִׁיתִֽהוּ There is also a piece of commentary that connects Moshe’s being saved or drawn out of a harsh place to his eventual role as the “savior” of B’nei Yisrael, too.

So Moshe grows up in the palace and eventually finds out he’s Jewish. He goes out (maybe for the first time?) and sees an Egyptian task master beating a fellow Ivri. We are told that Moshe looked this way and that way, but saw no one, so he struck down the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. When I first read this, I assumed Moshe was looking this way and that way to see if there was anyone who would see him commit this crime. But no! He was looking around to see if anyone else was going to intervene. Maybe I’m just dim, but when I first read commentary confirming this, it really surprised me. It wasn’t that Moshe was worried about getting caught (I mean maybe he was a little), it was that he wanted to discern if now is really the time to step up. There may have been a huge crowd around him, but if no one was willing to intervene, there may as well have been no one.

Even now I’m reflecting and thinking about the times that I personally have “stepped up” and done something I was proud of. Thinking about it, I’m realizing these situations happened when either 1) no one else was around or 2) no one around was choosing to do the thing I knew was right. Nothing makes me more angry than inactive bystanders. Of course we’re social creatures, we want to be accepted and approved of by our fellow humans. But sometimes being forced to act because no one else will, can be revealing.

There is no such thing as evil, there is only lack of good. Meaning, there can only be evil when we fail to be good.

This reminds me of a movie my dad put on last week, called the Electric Horseman, starring a mustachioed Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Robert Redford is a washed up, hungover former rodeo star / cowboy (I was going to say “spoiler alert” but this came out in 1979 so if you haven’t seen it yet…. IDK man) who’s now sold out as the face of a breakfast cereal brand. He’s about to make a big PR appearance with a $12 million racing horse, named Rising Star, when he discovers that the horse is drugged up and injured. Robert Redford then steals away into the night on the horse, planning to free him into the wild. Why does he do it? He sees pain, he sees a lack of good, and steps in.

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opening theme: reCreation by airtone (c) copyright 2019 Licensed