Parshah Summary – P’shat
The parshah opens with the Children of Israel prospering and increasing in Egypt, while a new king now sits on the throne. Threatened by their growing numbers, this new Pharaoh enslaves them and orders the Hebrew midwives, Shifrah and Puah, to kill all male babies at birth. When they do not comply, he commands his people to cast the Hebrew baby boys into the Nile. A child is born to Yokheved, and she puts him in a basket on the river, while the baby’s sister, Miriam, stands watch from afar. Pharaoh’s daughter discovers the boy, raises him as her son, and names him Mosheh, Moses.
As a young man, Moses leaves the palace and sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and kills the Egyptian. The next day he sees two Hebrews fighting; when he rebukes them, they reveal they know of his murder of the previous day, and Moses is forced to flee to Midian. There he rescues Jethro’s daughters, marries Tzipporah, and becomes a shepherd of his father-in-law’s flocks. Hashem appears to Moses as a burning bush, and instructs him to go to Pharaoh and demand: “Let My people go.”
Torah of Awakening | Jewish Meditation Teaching
וְאֵ֗לֶּה שְׁמוֹת֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל הַבָּאִ֖ים מִצְרָ֑יְמָה אֵ֣ת יַעֲקֹ֔ב אִ֥ישׁ וּבֵית֖וֹ בָּֽאוּ׃ And these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with their household. - Shemot (Exodus) 1:1, Parshat Sh’mot
A disciple once asked Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apt: “It says that the seven years Jacob worked to marry Rachel seemed like a few days to him because of his love for her. How does this make sense? If he loved her so much, the seven years should seem even longer, not shorter! I would think that every minute he had to wait would feel like an eternity!”
The rabbi of Apt responded: “There are two kinds of love: the kind that attaches you to the object of your love, and the kind that is given freely to your beloved. We are most familiar with the first kind – we love someone or something, and the love enslaves us; that’s the kind when every minute away from your beloved seems like an eternity. But Jacob had the second kind of love – his love was given away freely to Rachel, and so he too was free. In that freedom, he wasn’t longing for the future, he was simply being in the moment; so, the entire seven years seemed like only a moment, because throughout that time he had always been in the moment!” On the physical level, we are absolutely slaves, in constant need of external support to survive. This is reflected in the story – the children of Israel are driven to Egypt by the famine and the promise of food: “To sojourn in this land we have come…for the famine is severe in the land of Canaan...” But once they’re there, they became enslaved: Egypt enslaved the children of Israel with crushing labor… Egypt is Mitzrayim, which comes from the root that means “constriction” and “suffering,” hinting that on the physical level we are ever incomplete, ever in need of external nourishment, without which we suffer and die. But the physical, form-based dimension of experience is not all there is. The very fact that we can feel suffering at all means there is awareness that feels. That awareness, that dimension of being without which there cannot be any experience at all, is itself beyond Mitzrayim, beyond constriction. Spacious and free, awareness is the ever-present openness within which all experience arises. How do we access this dimension of freedom? Love the moment you’re in. It is true, we are often acting to bring about results that we need for our survival; even our next breath is toward this end. But our actions need not only be aimed at the narrow and conditional goals of the future; we have the power to also be in this moment lishma, for its own sake, to offer our Presence to the inner goodness of this moment, as it is. This is the second kind of love the Rabbi of Apt speaks about: the love that sets us free. To bring forth the love that sets us free, we must remember that the inner goodness of this moment is easily hidden by our goals in time, by our Mitzrayim-based aim to secure something for ourselves. There is a hint of this in the passage about Moses’ birth: וַתֵּ֤רֶא אֹתוֹ֙ כִּי־ט֣וֹב ה֔וּא וַֽתִּצְפְּנֵ֖הוּ – She saw that he was good, so she hid him… She feared for Moses’ life, because Pharaoh threatened to kill him. Moses represents the pathway to freedom, the goodness of being, while Pharaoh represents the encroaching and deadening power of ego that kills this simple goodness. So, Moses is hidden away. Why? Because if the inner goodness were not hidden, there would be no desire for it, no longing in the heart for release from Mitzrayim – we would just take it for granted. It is only because it is hidden that desire for freedom is born: דִּרְשׁוּ יְהֹוָה וְעֻזּוֹ בַּקְּשׁוּ פָנָיו תָּמִיד: – Seek the Divine and Its Power; search for Its Presence constantly… And this is the promise: when we sincerely seek, we find – because It is not elsewhere; It is hidden within this moment, hidden as the Presence of Being within all being. Give your attention to this Presence and you draw it forth; this is meditation. Just as Pharaoh’s daughter drew forth Moses from the river, so too we draw forth the light of the present from the river of time; it shines like a soft glow at first, then like a fire that blazes forth but heals rather than burns. All we need do is give our attention to It, to love this moment for Its own sake, for the inner goodness to appear. This inner goodness, hidden away in plain sight, is represented by the letter ט tet.
Read past teachings on Shemot HERE
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