Pharaoh vs. the Midwives is actually a story about the ‘fear of God.’ Rabbi Arie Hasit takes us into the story.
This week we start reading the biblical book of Exodus: Shemot.
As we begin this portion, we learn about two very brave women who defy Pharaoh’s decree. For Pharaoh, in fear of the Israelite people rising up against him, decrees that the midwives should kill every boy who is born.
Abarbanel, the medieval Spanish commentator, tells us he does this in secret because the Egyptians, too, are commanded not to murder and he is ashamed of what it will say about Egypt.
Should he be murdering all of these boys? So, he tells the midwives that at their births they should drown the boys so that no one will know and they will assume that all of these Israelite births were stillbirths. But the text tells us that these two midwives had יראת אלוהים.
There are a lot of questions about what is this יראת אלוהים? This fear of God.
The first question is that they are called in the portion מילדות עבריות ‘the Hebrew midwives.’ While the Talmud and many commentators tell us that they are midwives who themselves are Hebrew, Abarbanel, and Shadal (Shmuel David Luzzatto) years…centuries later, agrees with him.
That no, how could it be that Pharaoh asks the Israelites to kill their own children. Therefore, the conclusion is they must Egyptian midwives. So what does it mean that they had this fear of God? This יראת אלוהים?
It seems to me that if they were told in secret that they must kill, that their יראת אלוהים was their understanding that in fact God is aware. There is no such thing as ‘in secret’ when it comes to morality. Even when human beings do not know what is going on, God is always aware of our actions.
So these Egyptian midwives to the Hebrews, what does it mean that they have fear of God? It does not mean that God had brought himself to them. God did not reveal God’s self to these midwives. It means that they understood that there is morality and goodness in this world. That when Pharaoh, the greatest human being, told them to murder they knew that there was something great than the strongest and most powerful human being.
In awareness of God, in fear of God, these Egyptians showed to all of the Israelites that the God of Israel, God of humanity, is the God of morality.
The God that demands from us not to follow evil decrees. The God that demands from us to recognize that all people are created in God’s image and deserve life.
Shavuah Tov from Schechter
image: Hebrew midwives refusing to kill male babies after being ordered, Wellcome Library, Wellcome Images (from wikicommons cc. BY 4.0)
Rabbi Arie Hasit, Associate Dean, Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, was ordained by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in 2016 and was in the second cohort of the Mishlei program. Prior, he served six years as the founding rabbi and CEO of 70 Faces — Mazkeret Batya, a unique community that promotes the values of Masorti Judaism and religious pluralism in the public sphere.
Rabbi Hasit volunteers as co-chair of the Masorti Movement’s Youth Committee and as a member of the Law Committee for the Israeli Rabbinical Assembly.
He lives in Mazkeret Batya with his wife, Sara Tova Brody and their two children.