Acts of Resistance: Paving the Path Towards Redemption

This week, we find ourselves inside the month of Nissan, leading up to the Passover holiday. In just over a week, Jews everywhere will sit around seder tables to celebrate Pesach and recount our story of collective liberation. 

The story we tell at the Passover seder is grand in scope... almost larger than life! We'll recall plagues and miracles, signs and wonders, God's hand and outstretched arm. Recently, one of my B'nai Mitzvah students was reading the census that appears later in Bamidbar, and marveled at the sheer scale of the Exodus in human terms. The text indicates that some 603,550 Israelites left Egypt... and that's only counting the men ages 20+; if we extrapolate to account for women, children and Levites too, we can assume that in the Torah's telling, at least 1.5 - 2 million Israelites went out from slavery. That sounds like quite a march!! (Perhaps the scope and scale of the Exodus can inspire us to mass mobilization as well!)

In the lead-up to the holiday, though, I also find myself thinking about the many smaller and quieter acts of resistance that happened over a long stretch of time, paving the way for our ancestors' grand redemptive moment.

One such example, which is sure to be familiar to many of you, appears in the first chapter of Exodus, in the back-story to Moses's birth. The new Pharaoh who has arisen in Egypt is ruthless, greedy, and also paranoid. In an attempt to ensure that his authority won't be challenged, he commands that any new baby boys born to the Israelites must be killed. Here's the text of Exodus 1:15-16: "The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shifrah and the other Puah, saying, 'When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool: if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.'"

Shifrah and Puah spring into action. As Exodus 1:17 says: "The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live."

In this single short verse, we learn a great deal about the midwives' heroism. First, they are described as "God-fearers;" they understand themselves as answering to a higher authority than Pharaoh. Second, Shifrah and Puah are courageous in their willingness to defy a direct executive order, presumably at great risk to themselves. And third, they engage in their rebellion by simply continuing to do the jobs that they've been trained to do as midwives, of bringing live babies into the world as safely as possible. Their continued embrace of life, especially in the face of a regime that has embraced violence and death, becomes a remarkably subversive act. 

This short story of the midwives is a beautiful tale of resistance, in and of itself. But, of course, like any biblical text, it can always be built upon through the interpretive tradition of midrash! In Dirshuni, a collection of contemporary midrashim written by Israeli women, Rivkah Lubitch offers a brilliant reading of Exodus 1:17 (the verse bolded above). Drawing on the classical rabbinic premise that the Torah does not contain extraneous words, and therefore each phrase must add new meaning to our understanding, she offers the following interpretation in a question/answer format:

מהו: וַתְּחַיֶּינָה את הילדים
שהחיו אותם בתורה, שאין חיים אלא תורה. ומי הן שלימדו את ילדי ישראל תורה כל אותן השנים שעבדו ישראל בפרך? הרי אלו שפרה ופועה שהיו עוברות מבית לבית, מאשה לאשה, והיו מתכנסין שם ילדי ישראל לרגלי מיטתה של יולדת. תחילה היו מיילדות את האשה, ואחר מחיות את הילדים בתורה

What is the meaning of the phrase "they let the boys/children live?"

They sustained their lives with Torah, for there is no life except through Torah. And who was it that taught the Israelite children Torah during all of those years when Israel served with crushing labor? Behold, it was Shifrah and Puah, who would move from house to house and from woman to woman; they would bring the Israelite children in, to the foot of the birthing bed. First, they would deliver the birthing woman, and afterwards, they would sustain the lives of the children by teaching them Torah.

This midrash is pretty awesome, and I want to thank Beth Huppin for introducing me to it and studying it with me recently. Functionally, what this interpretation does is extend the midwives' actions through a creative re-reading of the verse: now not only do Shifrah and Puah defy Pharaoh by delivering babies and letting them live, but they also gather all of the older children (siblings, neighbors, etc.) into each birthing room in order to teach them Torah. Here, Torah is cast as life-support: its values, stories and laws are, indeed, life-affirming and life-sustaining. At times when Torah couldn't be transmitted out in the open, the midwives become itinerant teachers, turning the intimate spaces of a birthing room -- where men would not have dared to go, in those days -- into classrooms. How brilliant, and how subversive!

The story of the midwives -- both as it is told in Exodus 1, and as Rivkah Lubitch re-imagines it in her contemporary midrashic interpretation -- shows just how many ways there are to resist oppression. Some of us will march in the streets... hopefully in great numbers (as soon as tomorrow)! In addition, between now and some future point that represents a fuller liberation from oppression, there will also need to be many acts of micro-resistance. These will necessarily look different from one another, but in any case, the story of Shifrah and Puah can certainly spark our thinking about the many ways that each of us has the potential to make a difference. Cory Booker staged a great feat on the Senate floor this week, lifting his voice in a way that garnered public attention (hundreds of millions of likes on TikTok); there will also be many other ways that we can raise our voices, in conversation and in writing, articulating our values strategically. Some acts of subversion and civil disobedience will take place in broad daylight, and others behind closed doors, where no one else can witness them but their effects can still be felt. I hope many of us will take cues from the midwives -- some by defying orders directly, and others by "teaching Torah" to the next generation in subtler ways. 

This Shabbat and over the coming week, as we continue to prepare for Passover, let us remember that ours is a history of resistance to tyranny and oppression! All of us have a role to play in paving the path towards redemption.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum