They were standing there, leaning against the wall with that world-weary, seen-it-all indifference. Shalhevet, our oldest daughter, had returned to the school at which she worked during her three months in Sherut Leumi (National Service) to visit the kids with whom she had formed a connection. She had decided to change track to a pre-army Mechina (preparatory academy) for religious girls, but she still missed the kids, and so she hit the road early last Erev Shabbat, made her way to Netanya, and was rewarded by an overwhelming, excited response on the part of the kids, who missed her too. Even fifth-grade boys, normally so habituated in their pre-macho macho, smiled and came running. All except these two. Earrings in place, spitting sunflower seed shells, they kept their distance and make sarcastic remarks. Oh, well. You can’t win ‘em all. Teenagers will be teenagers, no?
Except this pair were no teenagers. They were six-years old! Shalhevet remembered them from her time at the school, and she was profoundly saddened. Not that they didn’t greet her with enthusiasm, but that already at six, they could be so disdainful of all around them, so deadened to the world, so closed off to their own youthful vibrancy.
We meet another “troubled youth” in this week’s Parashah – Shemot. Starting off on the wrong foot, with his mother “putting him up for adoption” to save his life, Moshe’s struggles are briefly chronicled. We watch as he discovers identity conflict, both in the society around him and within his own soul. We see him grow into a passionate advocate for justice, as his deeds bring a price upon his head that brings him to flee for his life. But even in far-off Midyan, having married a chieftain’s daughter, he cannot rest, he burns inside with an unknown energy, and so he must understand “why the bush was not consumed”. Launched on a mission from G-d, he returns to Egypt to make more trouble, for Egypt and, in a profound sense, for Israel, too.
What is it in this man? Who is he, that pushes the envelope from the get-go? The Torah text, in its typically spare way, gives us a clue.
Yocheved bears Moshe prematurely, so the Midrash tells us. That is why she is able to conceal him for a while from the prying eyes of the Egyptians and, perhaps even then, from the Jewish “Kapos”. They did not expect her to give birth so soon, she was not on the list for this month’s baby-tossing sporting event.
But when the time comes, she beats the Egyptians in their own game. SHE “throws” the baby into the Nile, thereby “technically” fulfilling the Pharaonic decree. Only she does so AFTER gently placing him in a makeshift boat – a Tevah, an Ark, the same word used for Noah’s seaworthy craft. But while Noah sealed his ark outside and in with pitch, a noxious tar derivative, Yocheved used pitch only on the outside; the inner surface was clay – soft, smooth, yet sturdy. And, having provided all she could, she let it go, the Nile carrying the precious, months-old cargo where it would.
Straight into the arms of Pharaoh’s daughter! Oh, well, not STRAIGHT into her arms – she saw the ark a distance from shore, and “sent her amah” out to fetch it. The literal meaning is that she sent her servant girl, but, for reasons connected to true textual “irregularities”, the Midrash explains the word with its alternate meaning: arm. Her arm miraculously hyperextended and she gathered the boy in. And when she opened the ark, this is HOW she saw:
“And she opened, and she saw HIM, the BOY and behold A YOUNG MAN crying; she had compassion upon him, and she said, this one is from the Hebrew children…” (Shemot 2:6).
Why does the verse refer to the unnamed baby with three different referents? First, she saw HIM – as he was, a baby? Then, she saw a BOY. Finally, she sees a YOUNG MAN crying. What happened there?
We normally see the surfaces of things. There is no Superman, Virginia; only G-d has x-ray vision. As Hashem told Shmuel when he went to pick out one of Yishai’s sons to anoint as king over Israel and, swayed by broad shoulders and primogeniture, got it wrong time after time: “Man sees through/to the eyes; Hashem sees to/through the heart”. Divine seeing is a dynamic non-event; it is a movie unfolding in an instant, presenting in the now the trajectory of an entire life.
And this was her miracle. She extended both extremity and encounter beyond the bounds of the possible, and for that moment, she saw MOSHE, a fish out of water amongst men, at once a baby, and a boy, and a young man, always a young man (at 120, “his eye had not dimmed and his moist life-vigor had not fled”), especially a young man…crying.
She saw a teen-aged boy crying! Perhaps THAT was the miracle. For the emergent man that is the teenager, desperate to take his place amongst men, steels himself through rites of passage to a stoicism which refuses to be moved by emotion, by others… by life. And in modern times, the onset of teenage ennui and cynicism, thanks in large part to the media, has crept earlier and earlier. To the point where first-graders, though they may not learn to read, can read the cultural writing on the wall all too clearly, and act accordingly.
Egypt was an ancient world-weary culture even then, yet here was an infant projecting passion – every bit the YOUNG MAN, with all those strengths and capacities; from the earliest stages, Moshe would always be crying – compassionate, tender, moved by the plight of others. For the next 120 years, those monumental actions, taken at divine behest with all the vigor of the YOUNG MAN, would be powered by the empathy of one who floated on the amniotic Nile, mothered and motherless at the same time. Hardened already outside, soft and accessible inside, and blessed with the ability to be seen as such by those who gazed upon him. Thus would it be when he would descend from Mt. Sinai with the goodly rays of translucent divine light effulgent upon his face, and thus may it be with all of us, when, integrating stricture and compassion, light and vessels, we fulfill the statement in Devarim: They will see that the name of Hashem is called upon you, and they will fear you.
As well they should. They shall retreat… and then we shall speak to them, and bring them close.
Except this pair were no teenagers. They were six-years old! Shalhevet remembered them from her time at the school, and she was profoundly saddened. Not that they didn’t greet her with enthusiasm, but that already at six, they could be so disdainful of all around them, so deadened to the world, so closed off to their own youthful vibrancy.
We meet another “troubled youth” in this week’s Parashah – Shemot. Starting off on the wrong foot, with his mother “putting him up for adoption” to save his life, Moshe’s struggles are briefly chronicled. We watch as he discovers identity conflict, both in the society around him and within his own soul. We see him grow into a passionate advocate for justice, as his deeds bring a price upon his head that brings him to flee for his life. But even in far-off Midyan, having married a chieftain’s daughter, he cannot rest, he burns inside with an unknown energy, and so he must understand “why the bush was not consumed”. Launched on a mission from G-d, he returns to Egypt to make more trouble, for Egypt and, in a profound sense, for Israel, too.
What is it in this man? Who is he, that pushes the envelope from the get-go? The Torah text, in its typically spare way, gives us a clue.
Yocheved bears Moshe prematurely, so the Midrash tells us. That is why she is able to conceal him for a while from the prying eyes of the Egyptians and, perhaps even then, from the Jewish “Kapos”. They did not expect her to give birth so soon, she was not on the list for this month’s baby-tossing sporting event.
But when the time comes, she beats the Egyptians in their own game. SHE “throws” the baby into the Nile, thereby “technically” fulfilling the Pharaonic decree. Only she does so AFTER gently placing him in a makeshift boat – a Tevah, an Ark, the same word used for Noah’s seaworthy craft. But while Noah sealed his ark outside and in with pitch, a noxious tar derivative, Yocheved used pitch only on the outside; the inner surface was clay – soft, smooth, yet sturdy. And, having provided all she could, she let it go, the Nile carrying the precious, months-old cargo where it would.
Straight into the arms of Pharaoh’s daughter! Oh, well, not STRAIGHT into her arms – she saw the ark a distance from shore, and “sent her amah” out to fetch it. The literal meaning is that she sent her servant girl, but, for reasons connected to true textual “irregularities”, the Midrash explains the word with its alternate meaning: arm. Her arm miraculously hyperextended and she gathered the boy in. And when she opened the ark, this is HOW she saw:
“And she opened, and she saw HIM, the BOY and behold A YOUNG MAN crying; she had compassion upon him, and she said, this one is from the Hebrew children…” (Shemot 2:6).
Why does the verse refer to the unnamed baby with three different referents? First, she saw HIM – as he was, a baby? Then, she saw a BOY. Finally, she sees a YOUNG MAN crying. What happened there?
We normally see the surfaces of things. There is no Superman, Virginia; only G-d has x-ray vision. As Hashem told Shmuel when he went to pick out one of Yishai’s sons to anoint as king over Israel and, swayed by broad shoulders and primogeniture, got it wrong time after time: “Man sees through/to the eyes; Hashem sees to/through the heart”. Divine seeing is a dynamic non-event; it is a movie unfolding in an instant, presenting in the now the trajectory of an entire life.
And this was her miracle. She extended both extremity and encounter beyond the bounds of the possible, and for that moment, she saw MOSHE, a fish out of water amongst men, at once a baby, and a boy, and a young man, always a young man (at 120, “his eye had not dimmed and his moist life-vigor had not fled”), especially a young man…crying.
She saw a teen-aged boy crying! Perhaps THAT was the miracle. For the emergent man that is the teenager, desperate to take his place amongst men, steels himself through rites of passage to a stoicism which refuses to be moved by emotion, by others… by life. And in modern times, the onset of teenage ennui and cynicism, thanks in large part to the media, has crept earlier and earlier. To the point where first-graders, though they may not learn to read, can read the cultural writing on the wall all too clearly, and act accordingly.
Egypt was an ancient world-weary culture even then, yet here was an infant projecting passion – every bit the YOUNG MAN, with all those strengths and capacities; from the earliest stages, Moshe would always be crying – compassionate, tender, moved by the plight of others. For the next 120 years, those monumental actions, taken at divine behest with all the vigor of the YOUNG MAN, would be powered by the empathy of one who floated on the amniotic Nile, mothered and motherless at the same time. Hardened already outside, soft and accessible inside, and blessed with the ability to be seen as such by those who gazed upon him. Thus would it be when he would descend from Mt. Sinai with the goodly rays of translucent divine light effulgent upon his face, and thus may it be with all of us, when, integrating stricture and compassion, light and vessels, we fulfill the statement in Devarim: They will see that the name of Hashem is called upon you, and they will fear you.
As well they should. They shall retreat… and then we shall speak to them, and bring them close.
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