פרשת שמות

The title is a link to an amazing resource - yutorah's page for the parsha this week. They construct it each week, and have an enormous amount of shiurim, audio and text, on all subjects. In the coming weeks, we plan to construct a list of Torah resources on the web that will remain on the side of the blog.

In the meantime, as there is no Stream this week (I think), I want to share a couple of thoughts about the parsha.

• After consistently referring to the baby in the basket (Moshe) as the ילד (child), it says that בת פרעה heard the cries of the נער (youth). Rashi quotes the midrash that Hashem miraculously made Moshe's infant cries sound older. What was the purpose of this נס? Perhaps, we can explain that with the decree that all newborn Jewish boys be drowned in the Nile (and we know there were many newborn Jewish boys), the sounds of crying, drowning infants were almost commonplace at the river; background noise that would not have penetrated even the compassionate בת פרעה. Only the unusual sound of an adolescent cry made her think twice. Looking back, the notion that even the desparate cries of babies could be so routine that they become inaudible seems horrifying, as many barbaric practices in world history do in hindsight. I wonder what future generations will think of us? Who are our world's crying babies? Whose desparate pleas fall on deaf ears today?
• Reviewing the Parsha with my head already on vacation, I was struck by a certain passage. When defending themselves to Paro, the heroic midwives defend themselves with a statement that would serve us well to remember as we head to our various exotic & less exotic destinations: כִּי לא כַנָּשִׁים הַמִּצְרִיּת הָעִבְרִיּת - The Jewish women are not like the Egyptian women. As integrated as we are into our American culture, with all of the benefits - of all types - that we get from it, it's important to keep in mind that we are different, and that should be evident for all to see.