PARSHAT SHEMOT
At this time of the secular year we have a new month, a new tax year, and a new decade, and now we need to develop a new habit of writing the date without using double zeros any more.
In religious terms we begin to read a new book of the Torah (the book of Exodus) and we begin a whole new chapter in our saga as a people with an identity of our very own as a distinctive people. In this weekly portion we read today we are introduced to new characters who will shape this new and separate identity of our people from that day down to this very day.
This week's Torah reading (Parsha) begins with names (Shemot), hence the name of the Parsha and the book, but those names belong to characters from the previous book of Genesis (Bereshit). Then, with a very succinct sentence, the narrative jump ahead to a new time, several generations later. So much time has passed that the Egypt of Exodus is a very different place from the Egypt of Genesis. The seventy original members of Jacob's family who came down to Egypt have now become a multitude of Israelites. The Pharaoh in power now has no memory of Joseph, and the special privileges his brethren had are gone in the wink of an eye and bondage and servitude have taken their place.
The Pharaoh of Exodus is afraid of this increasing multitude of foreign people living in the Nile Delta, in the land of Goshen.
Archeological records of the conjectured time the events of the exodus occurred show that Egypt's power was on the wane and that the leaders of Egypt at the time were preoccupied with concerns about the rising influence of the neighboring "Sea People," among whom (in the Levant) were the Phoenicians and the Philistines. Archeological records also show that there were several local rulers of Egypt at the time competing for influences among themselves. One way these rulers got the upper hand in this power struggle was to erase the names of their competition (recorded in hieroglyphics) from memorial columns and buildings and to destroy their archives and tombs. Thus, a new Pharaoh could erase the memory of a predecessor for all eternity by removing any trace of his name. A Pharaoh "who knew not Joseph" is a very real possibility. And the fact that archeologists do not find records of Joseph or of the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt during this period could easily be explained by such a widespread practice.
It's also possible that none of the events we read about in the book of Exodus and in the subsequent three books of the Torah never happened at all in the historical world. Perhaps these were legends that grew in importance and significance for our people as we ourselves grew in importance and significance in the region we lived in, until the days when the words of the Torah were canonized as fixed immutable texts. Enough has been written by archeologists and historians in modern times to fill whole libraries with arguments for and against the historical accuracy of the Bible. I will leave these learned people to their work and go instead to the philosophical question: Does it really matter whether these things occurred or not? Throughout the history of our people, many have died and been murdered while steadfastly holding onto their belief in the veracity of these writings. Whole schools of thought have grown up and flourished among our sages, each seeking and finding more and more ways to understand and interpret and appreciate the words in these Books of Moses. For me, this huge body of work, carried out over thousands of years of intellectualizing, is itself testimony to the importance of what these books contain, no matter what archeologists and historians turn up.
Our sages have always realized that what was written in the Torah was only the basic essence of the story, similar to a skeleton that still requires sinew and muscle and skin and hair to make it a complete being. Our sages have always been inclined to add one layer upon another layer of their understanding in order to further advance our understanding. One of the interesting ways these sages went about doing this was to relate legends (Agadot) pertaining to Biblical personalities.
Of the four key women in today's Parsha, who so decisively affected Moses' fate, very complementary legends are told.
Many legends are told about Yocheved and Miriam, Moses' mother and sister, and how they thwarted Pharaoh's decree to kill the male newborns of the Hebrews. Legends about Pharaoh's daughter recount why she was at the river at that fateful moment, and why she decided to adopt the Hebrew child. And as for Zipporah, Moses' wife, there is a legend that explains why they married.
According to this legend, Jethro, Zipporah's father, had planted Moses' staff in his garden. The staff itself had had several owners before it came into Jethro's possession. Its first owner was Adam, who received it while still in the Garden of Eden. Ownership of the staff passed on to Noah, and it was with Noah in the ark during the flood. Noah handed this staff down to Shem, who passed it along to Abraham, and so forth, through Isaac to Jacob, and then was brought to Joseph by Jacob when he came to Egypt to live out the end of his days. At the end of Joseph's life, Jethro, who was once the chief adviser to Pharaoh, took the staff and planted it in his garden, as I've already mentioned.
Zipporah was beautiful, intelligent and generous, and many men courted her, but Jethro tested all these suitors thusly: only the man capable of removing the staff from the ground in his garden would be deemed worthy to marry his daughter Zipporah. One day, Moses appeared in the area, watered the flocks of Jethro's daughters and was invited by Jethro to dine with him. Moses went for a stroll in Jethro's garden, saw the staff planted in the ground, extended his hand only to touch it, and the staff jumped out of the ground and into Moses' hands. Moses brought the staff to Jethro to ask him about it, and Jethro understood then and there that Moses was fated to be his son-in-law. This is the same staff that Moses held in his hand while performing wonders before Pharaoh, while splitting the Red Sea, and so on. This legend endows Moses with his very own "Excalibur", and by association, endows us with out "Excalibur", too.
These legends were derived by our sages to help enhance the words of the Torah and make them come alive for us. Thus, whether or not archeological evidence is there or not is immaterial. The words we read today are living words for us, and that is what is most important.
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