A.
Our parasha begins with the account of the growing shi‘bud Mitzrayim, the enslavement of the bënei Yisra’él which started with the rise to power of a מלך חדש אשר לא ידע את יוסף (“new king who did not know Yoséf”: I, 8). The Talmud records the famous dispute of Rav and Shëmu’él as to whether this was in fact a new king, or the old one with an adjusted attitude towards the gratitude owed Yoséf for having made Egypt into a great power (עיי' סוטה י"א.). For our purposes, it is immaterial; Yoséf and his brothers were now all dead, and the result was a steady decline, first into spiritual slavery, as the hedonistic culture of Egypt began to have its effect, then finally physical servitude.
But, as Hazal tell us, הקב"ה מקדים רפואה למכה (“The Holy One, Blessed is He, precedes the cure to the blow”;פסיקתא זוטרתא לשמות פ"ג א' בין השאר ). Just as the worst phase was cranking up, our parasha tells us: וילך איש מבית לוי ויקח את בת לוי: ותהר האשה ותלד בן ותרא אתו כי טוב הוא וגו' (“And a man from the house of Lévi went and took a daughter of Lévi. And the woman became pregnant and bore a son; and she saw that he was good....”; II, 1-2).
The Talmud (שם, י"ב.) tells us that there were various signs at Moshe’s birth (though he did not yet bear that name; his parents named him Tuvya) that he was rather a special child. For one thing, we are told, he was born without a foreskin (ask your local mohél how common that is); for another, as Rashi summarizes the Talmud, כשנולד נתמלא הבית כולו אורה (“when he was born, the house filled entirely with light”).
If it was as obvious as that that something unusual had occurred with the boy’s birth, a question suggests itself: Why does the Torah not reveal the names of the parents here? It is only after Moshe is well set on his mission to free the bënei Yisra’él from Egyptian bondage, that the Torah lets us know: ויקח עמרם את יוכבד דדתו לו לאשה ותלד לו את אהרן ואת משה וגו' (“And ‘Amram took Yocheved his aunt to himself to wife, and she bore him Aharon and Moshe....”; VI, 20), whereas in our parasha, where the account occurs in historical sequence, we read only of a “man from the house of Lévi” and a “daughter of Lévi.”
Why should this be? Why does the Torah not tell us who they were from the beginning?
B.
Our question appears a bit sharper when we review other sources to see just how great ‘Amram and Yocheved really were in their own right.
Before recording the birth of Moshe, our parasha tells of the Egyptian king’s evil scheme to reduce the population of the bënei Yisra’él in his midst by having the two midwives watch carefully as each baby is born; if a boy, they were to kill him; if a girl, she could be allowed to live (remember that this was before mattan Torah, and ethnic identity even for bënei Yisra’él ran through the male line).
The virtuous midwives were G-d-fearing, and would have nothing to do with this scheme. Our parasha identifies them as Shifra and Pu‘a, but, as Rashi reveals, following the Talmud (שם): שפרה זו יוכבד על שם שמשפרת את הולד. פועה זו מרים שפועה ומדברת והוגה לולד כדרך הנשים המפייסות תינוק הבוכה (“Shifra is Yocheved, for she would make the child beautiful [mëshappereth, from the same root as Shifra]. Pu‘a is Miryam, for she would call aloud [po‘a] and speak and murmur to the child as is the way of women who calm down a wailing baby”). The heart of the resistance of the Israelite women to Egypt’s abortion mandate thus coalesced around Yocheved and her daughter.
As for ‘Amram, ‘Amram was the spiritual giant of his day (שם בסוטה וע"ע שמות רבה פ"א סי' י"ז). Indeed, Hazal tell us, ‘Amram was the last but one of seven great tzaddiqim who returned the Shëchina, the Divine Presence intended to be resident in this world, from the far exile into which the successive evils of the first two millennia of human activity had driven it: עמד אמרם והורידה מן הב' לא'. עמד משה והורידה מלמעלה למטה: (“Stood ‘Amram and brought it down from the second level to the first [i.e. just outside our world]. Stood Moshe and brought it down from on high to below”; בראשית רבה פי"ט סי' י"ג). ‘Amram’s tzidqiyuth was of such a level, we learn, ארבעה מתו בעטיו של נחש ואלו הן בנימין בן יעקב ועמרם אבי משה וישי אבי דוד וכלאב בן דוד (“Four men died at the snake’s instigation and they are: Binyamin ben Ya‘aqov; ‘Amram, father of Moshe; Yishai, father of David; and Kil’av ben David”; שבת נ"ה:). As Rashi ad loc. explains, they died at the snake’s instigation ולא בחטא אחר שלא חטאו (“and not because of any other sin, for they did not sin”).
If such as these were Moshe’s parents, why, indeed, does the Torah not identify them from the first?
C.
The question bothered the great Rabbi Moshe Feinstein זצ"ל, who considers it in his Darash Moshe. He sees the Torah’s educative purpose as providing a vital lesson in bëhira, in human free choice. All of the signs and portents noted by Hazal at Moshe’s birth were signs of great potential, to be sure; but that was all.
Three months after Moshe was born, our parasha tells us, Yocheved reacted to another evil decree of the Egyptian government, this time mandating that every Israelite boy be searched out and drowned in the Nile. To prevent the boy’s discovery, she set him adrift on the river in a water-tight basket. The daughter of the very king who promulgated the decree found the basket, and was charmed by the baby. Moshe’s sister Miryam, who had been hiding in the rushes watching, offered her mother’s services as a wet-nurse, and the deal was on.
Thus, Moshe was raised in the Egyptian royal palace, with all of the social and educational advantages that implies, As such, he was presented with a choice: He could place his vast talents at the disposal of the Egyptian state, to which he owed a personal debt of gratitude, or he could embrace the cause of his parents. When he saw an Egyptian overseer beating an Israelite slave to death, he made his choice, and saved the slave.
As a result, he fled Egyptian justice, and ran to Midyan. There, he married Tzippora bath Yithro, who bore him two sons, and settled into the life of a Midyani shepherd. He was again brought face to face with his choice, when confronted by the burning bush: he was now a father of two young boys, with responsibilities, he could stay in Midyan, or take up the mission of liberating the bënei Yisra’él to establish the Torah nation. He chose to return to Egypt.
And it is only then, as the realization of the tremendous potential to which those portents alluded commenced, that we are allowed to know the identity of his parents, and hence the tremendous yihus from which Moshe emerged. For what is far more important than one’s yihus is the yihus ‘atzmi, the personal, private yihus established by one’s own choices and efforts to apply and actualize the talents provided by the other kind.
D.
‘Ad kan Rabbi Feinstein. It is for this very reason that we traditionally celebrate not the birthdays of our great forebears, but their Jahrzeiten, the anniversaries of their deaths. it is only then that it is possible to assess and ascertain the extent to which a person has lived up to his potential, the extent to which his yihus ‘atzmi has served to realize and actualize his yihus.
On the occasion of the publication of his first volume of responsa, the Ha‘améq Shë’éla, the Nëtziv, Rabbi Naftali Tzëvi Yëhuda Berlin, second rosh yëshiva of Volozhin, told of an incident in his childhood. He came home one day unexpectedly, and overheard his father crying in despair in the kitchen. As he told his wife, he had had such great hopes that the boy would develop into a true Torah-scholar, had hired the finest tutors he could find, but it was not working out. He sighed that he would have to apprentice the boy to some tradesman instead.
Overcome by the strength of his father’s feelings, little Naftali burst into the kitchen, begging him not to cry, promising to try harder. The result was evident in the publication of the Ha‘améq Shë’éla.
The Nëtziv did not come from an inconsequential family; his father was a respected talmid hacham, his mother the daughter of a prominent rabbi.
So, the Nëtziv speculated, what would have happened had he not come home so unexpectedly? He would have been apprenticed, perhaps to a shoemaker. He would doubtless have been a very good shoemaker; certainly he would have been a religious man, and would have joined the hevra Mishnayoth and studied Torah. And then. at the end of his 120 years, as he faced the Great Tribunal Above, he would have been asked: Why did you not write the Ha‘améq Shë’éla?
For he would not have made the choices which would have given him the yihus ‘atzmi to actualise his yihus.
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