Parashat Shemot – 5782
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites
Parashat Shemot, the first parasha of the book of Exodus, tells us about the children of Israel in Egypt. In the generations since Jacob went down to Egypt, they had multiplied and grew stronger. The Egyptians became anxious about the political aspirations of this large Hebrew minority. A new pharaoh ruling Egypt incites his nation against the Jewish people and gets legitimization and assistance in enslaving an entire nation in hard labor. Thus, Jacob’s family went from being the darlings of the Egyptian monarchy to its sworn enemy, enslaved in inhumane conditions.
The most horrific of Pharaoh’s decrees is the one he instructed the Jewish midwives and the entire Egyptian nation to do:
“Every son who is born you shall cast into the Nile, and every daughter you shall allow to live.”
(Exodus 1, 22)
Pharaoh cruelly commanded that all male babies be thrown into the Nile, hoping to sever the Jewish nation’s future. During this calamitous period of time, we read about a man and woman from the Levite tribe who marry one another. We later learn these were Amram and Yocheved, the parents of Moses, the leader that is destined to liberate the Jewish nation from Egypt and accompany them until the gates of the Promised Land. Jewish sages say that there was great drama behind the story o