Parshas Shemos 5772

‘Parsha Growth Spurts’

Rabbi Dani Staum

Parshas Shemos

(1:15) “The King of Egypt said to the Jewish midwives – that the name of one of them was Shifra, and the name of the second one was Puah.”

Rashi writes that Shifra was Yocheved, the mother of Moshe. She was called Shifra because she was meshaper/beautified the infants, making sure they were clean and cared for. Puah was Miriam, the sister of Moshe. She was so called because she cooed and soothed the infants when they cried.

Although such acts were surely chessed, they pale in comparison to the courage it took to defy Pharaoh’s decree that they kill all males? It would seem that calling them by their real names, Yocheved and Miriamwould be a greater honor than to call them by names which make reference to their ‘added’ acts of chessed?

Rav Shimshon Pincus zt’l in Tiferes Torah, explains that it was specifically those ‘smaller’ acts of chessed which symbolized their true greatness. If a young child is r’l hospitalized, many doctors and nurses will be occupied with the child, administering medicines, checking vitals, and analyzing and recording his condition. But only the child’s mother will sit at his bedside reading him books and playing games with him.

To the hospital staff he is a patient and their job is to nurse him back to health. But to the mother he is her son, the most precious thing in the world, and her goal is to nurture him with love and devotion.

The fact that Yocheved and Miraim were willing to ignore Pharoah’s decree and place their own lives in danger was unquestionably valiant. But the fact that they also nurtured and strengthened the infants, demonstrated that it was a labor of love.

Rav Pinkus relates that Rebbitzin Heiman a’h, the wife of Rav Shlomo Heiman zt’l worked tirelessly doing chessed for others. On one occasion the Rebbitzin arranged for the wedding of an orphan, personally dealing with every detail involved in arranging the affair and helping the young couple set up their new life together.

On the wedding day, Rav Shlomo asked his wife if she had purchased flowers for the kallah. The Rebbitzin replied that she didn’t think she had to be preoccupied with such details, especially because everything was purchased from tzedakah money. Rav Shlomo told her that she should rush out to the florist to make sure the kallah had beautiful fresh flowers like every other kallah.   

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 (2:12) “He turned this way and that way and saw that there was no man, so he struck the Egyptian and hid him in the sand”

Rabbi Isaac Bernstein zt’l related the following novel poignant explanation:

One of the greatest ironies in the Torah is the fact that Moshe Rabbeinu was raised in Pharaoh’s palace. But Moshe left the palace to seek out and witness the Jews’ oppressive labor, even trying to assist them in whatever way he could.

At that juncture in his life Moshe had dual identities. On the one hand, he was born a Jew and sympathized with them, but on the other hand, he lived in the palace with the highest echelon of Egyptian monarchy. On that fateful day when Moshe saw an Egyptian beating a Jew he was internally conflicted, who was he really? 

“He turned this way and that way”, Moshe contemplated both components of his identity, but he “saw that there was no man”, i.e. he saw that he in fact had no identity for he could not belong to both worlds. He had to make an emphatic decision of who he was. “So he struck the Egyptian”, he struck the Egyptian within himself, “and hid him in the sand”. At that crucial moment Moshe severed all emotional ties with his Egyptian upbringing. He forfeited all the glory and glamour of the palace so that he could be a member of the people he would eventually lead. 

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(4:10) “Moshe said to Hashem ‘Please Hashem, I am not a man of words…”

Ramban writes that Hashem never cured Moshe from his speech impediment to remind him of the miracle that occurred which caused his impediment, when an angel forced his hand into hot coals instead of Pharaoh’s crown (see Shemos Rabbah 1:26).  

Rav Yisroel Dovid Shlessinger explained that the miracle was a constant reminder to Moshe that ‘all that glitters in NOT gold’. Every time Moshe began to speak he was immediately reminded that the things that are the most precious in life are the things you cannot buy.

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