Dvar Torah on Parshat Shemot

This week, we begin the Book of Exodus, with the story of the growth, enslavement, and redemption of the Jewish people in Egypt. Moshe, of course, figures prominently. The Torah tells us about the genocidal Egyptian decree to throw every male Israelite baby into the Nile, and how Moshe's parents, in an attempt to save him, first hid him, and then, when he grew too big to hide, placed him in a small basket on the river and watched to see what would become of him.

Found and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, Moshe grows up in the house of Pharaoh. Apparently aware of his Jewish origins, Moshe, once he gets older, "went out to his brethren, and saw their afflictions. And he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers. And he turned this way and that, and he saw that there was no one there, and he struck down the Egyptian and buried him [his dead body] in the sand." The speed in which Moshe is radicalized is, of course, interesting. One is struck by the immediacy and violence of Moshe's response, mitigated only by his looking around, apparently to make sure that he could get away with this radical, rebellious act. Seeing that "there was no one there" and that he could, therefore, act with impunity, and, perhaps, remain at liberty to do more of the same in the future, he strikes a blow against Egyptian oppression.

A few verses later, Moshe is chosen by God to go to Pharaoh and free his people. This act of violent disobedience would seem to be one of the components in Moshe's personality which makes him the man for the job. If we were to stop here, the story would seem to be a polemic for the kind of action which Moshe took. Although devoid of any immediate practical effect - Pharaoh does hear about the killing of the Egyptian, and Moshe is forced to flee Egypt - the fact that God chooses him to be the savior of the Jewish people would seem to indicate that, if only on a symbolic level, the act of killing the Egyptian taskmaster was an appropriate one. Oppression - violent, immoral, murderous, oppression - must be met with an immediate, violent response. This seems to be the message we are taught here.

However, the Rabbis, as is their wont, will not let matters rest there; they complicate things. In the Midrash Rabbah, commenting on the phrase "and he saw there was no one there" we are taught:"The Rabbis said: he saw that there were no righteous people among those who would descend from him or his offspring, until the last generation. Once Moshe saw this, he consulted with the angels. He said to them, 'is this one deserving of the death penalty?' They said to him, 'yes.' This is what is meant by "he saw that there was no one there" - he saw that there was no one there [even among the angels] who would defend him." Clearly, the Rabbis feel that the phrase "he saw that there was no one there" can not be understood as we did, that Moshe saw there was no one around so he went for it. It is not totally clear to me what they don't like about our simple reading. Perhaps the Rabbis do not want to attribute a possibly cowardly or shifty motivation to Moshe's looking around. Perhaps they find the phrase "there was no one there" unnecessary; if we were just told that "he looked this way and that", and then he killed the taskmaster, we would assume that he didn't see any potential witnesses there, so we don't really need to be told that "he saw there was no one there", do we? Since the phrase is unnecessary, it is, to the rabbinic mind, suggestive of other unseen people, such as the Egyptian's non-existent righteous descendants, or a single angel who would argue for leniency for him.

Whatever their reason, the Rabbis, by taking the phrase out of its simple meaning, completely change our understanding of what Moshe did. His killing the Egyptian is no longer the spontaneous, violent, act of pure rebellion, stemming from his immediate sympathy for the downtrodden, that the Biblical text might lead us to think it was. Instead, Moshe is unwilling to kill the man until he has investigated, to an absolute, otherworldly degree, whether he deserves this punishment or not. He looks into the future, to see if perhaps, if allowed to live, the man's progeny might be sufficiently righteous to mitigate his punishment. When that avenue of investigation proves fruitless, he is still not satisfied. He turns to the angels, and asks them to give him a mandate to kill the oppressor, which they do. Only then, according to the Midrash, does he act.

The implications for the way we make judgments in the world, and act upon those judgments, are astounding. This Midrash, in effect, takes the obvious message of this story, which seems to be an argument for immediate, direct, and extreme action in the face of obviously evil, violent oppression, and totally subverts it. Can we ever know enough, the Midrash asks, to take the decision to kill a person? Can we ever have all the facts, even those which lie in the distant future and yet must also, apparently, be taken into account? Only Moshe, who, ultimately, miraculously, did know everything about this Egyptian, and only then was able to be certain that his punishment was deserved, was able to kill him.

This approach to guilt, truth, and justice, and our ability to know and act on our understanding of the legal and moral situation, is paralleled by the Rabbinic attitude to the death penalty. The Torah is, of course, for the death penalty; it appears all over the place, for a very long list of crimes, including some which a modern viewpoint would consider misdemeanors. The Rabbis, however, understood the laws of evidence and testimony so strictly that, as they themselves said, it was a bloodthirsty court indeed which actually executed a criminal once in seven years, and some say once in seventy! Interestingly, this disinclination to actually carry out the death penalty, with all of its absolute finality, is rooted, here in the story of Moshe, as well as in Rabbinic legal material, not so much in feelings of pity or compassion for the criminal. Rather, it is rooted in the recognition that, in this world, we can never know everything, we can never be sure that we have all the relevant facts. Only the angels have access to ultimate truth - if you want to kill someone, ask them first.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix