Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parshat Shemot 1

good evening we are learning parashat shemot we are starting the new safer the new book of the Torah the second book The Book of Exodus and we are on page 293 in art scroll homash at the end of the book of bereshit in parashat we learned that yaakov passed away and was buried in maratha and Joseph passed away he was the first out of 12 brothers too die and Levi was the last Joseph passed away at age 110 and Levy at age 137. and after the brothers passed away the Egyptians slowly started oppressing the Jewish people and this is where we find ourselves now and first we have a quick review and these are the names of the children of Israel who were coming to Egypt with yaakov with their households and the 12 tribes are listed reuven shiman Levi Huda is all together there were 70 descendants of yaakov that are in Egypt however verse 6 Joseph died and all his brothers and that entire Generation all 70 people that entered Egypt died except for perhaps one and that is um the lady that was born between the walls as they were coming into the country there was still by the security check and she was born and even though many many years passed she's still alive she lived a long time um verse 7 the children of Israel were fruitful they teamed they increased and became strong very very much so altogether six words are used to describe how Jewish people multiplied and so the land became filled with them so I would say just say that this six times expression tells us that the Jewish ladies gave birth to multiple births up to six children every time and this was a special blessing and next um paragraph will explain why did God bless the Jewish people with such abundance verse 8 a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Yosef some commentators say that really he was an Old King the same King before he just made new policies he pretended he behaved as if he doesn't know yourself and others say that this indeed was a new king and not only new king this was a new Dynasty a tribe um overpower the old Paro and established a new pharaoh and he really didn't know yourself and not only he didn't know he didn't want to know you might expect that that a new king will learn the history of the country and will learn who are it's um allies and enemies who should he um be grateful to but this particular Paro didn't care about history and he didn't care about the fact that Jewish people saved Egypt and that is why it says he didn't know and didn't want to know Joseph not only he was an ingrate he didn't have appreciation for somebody who saved his country verse 9 tells us even more he said to his people behold the people the children of Israel are no are more numerous and stronger than we are now this is a common occurrence that first the Nations that surround us they point out that Jewish people multiply too much they have too many children and they become stronger than we are the Nations complain they use this as a pretense to attack the Jewish people why because really there's nothing to fear the Jewish people don't attack anybody their peaceful Nation so be happy that there are more peaceful people in the world happy that you have more good neighbors but because jealousy is a very strong emotion and it's not so easy to overcome it most people fall prey to it and Egyptians were no different they saw the the Jews and they said why do they have more children than us why are there more Jews in Egypt than they are Egyptians and according to some historians that is exactly what happened there were more Jews in Egypt than Egyptians themselves and why do Jews have more money why do they live in good neighborhoods so that's what Paro said come let us outsmart it lest it become numerous even more numerous and it may be that if there is a war they will join our enemies so this is fear for future not only there is jealousy but that jealousy causes people to find more faults with with others and they say that's not fair why does he have more and not only that he might actually use his blessings against me and they will wage war against us and go up from the land now this sounds very strange usually you would say they will wage war against us and kick us out Potter doesn't say that he says the Jewish people might fight against us and leave so what's so bad about leaving Egypt if you're scared of them so just let them go and we see that sometimes a nation is afraid that someone might leave the country we we know this was true for the 70 years that the Soviet Union was around they were very scared that no citizens should ever live the country because they proclaimed that communism is the great is the great savior of humanity and they wanted to prove it by saying that our citizens are the happiest and if any person wants to leave our country and go somewhere else that shows that we're not the greatest and that shows the communism is not the best and similarly was with Paro Paro cared very much about his image in the eyes of other nations he wanted to create an image that he is God himself and therefore his country is the best and the strongest and therefore nobody even once to live anywhere else it's very similar to the United States everyone wants to come to the United States and nobody wants to leave even though people say oh if so-and-so becomes a governor I'm leaving if so-and-so becomes the president I'm leaving but actually nobody wants to leave because it's so good here even though you can leave nobody wants to but Paro actually had a concern he knew it wasn't true that he is a God and he knew that Egypt might not be the best country in the world and therefore he was scared that somebody might leave and therefore he said I I hate the Jews and I want to make sure they never Rebel because if they do Rebel they might want to leave Egypt and that explains why later when Moshe asked Paro can we please leave Egypt for just three days we're just going to serve our God and we are going to come back said no no no I can't let that go even for three days I cannot allow anyone to leave Egypt as the midrash says that never before in history of Egypt a slave escaped the country even a Slave who doesn't want to be a slave he wants to run away Potter created the image of Egypt that even slaves are happy in Egypt and even they never run away because they don't want to that's what Paro said so that's why Paro refused to let the Jewish people go because it would reflect badly on Egypt so much so that he was willing to suffer and let his people die just to play the role of of uh the best president of the world okay now we turn the page page 295. so Paro imagine another interesting thing para doesn't say let us kill the Jews let us enslave the Jews all he says is let us outsmart it outsmart means that I'm dealing with equals and we have a struggle we have a fight and I'm trying to outsmart why does he need to outsmart them why not just make a decree all the Jews are becoming slaves foreign and you have Army and Parliament why why can't you it's not like democracy it's not like you have half of your government Jews no Jews in the government the king is not Jewish and doesn't have Jewish grandchildren the whole Senate and Parliament are all not Jewish why can't they just make a decree to kill the Jews that's a big question and the answer is following the same logic that we said before Paro was very concerned about his image he wanted to show that he is enlightened that he is liberal that he is democratic he wanted to show the world that he cares for human rights he would never oppress a nation he would never enslave a people so he had to make a trick outsmart them Let's Be Clever let no one ever know what we're doing this is very similar to Germans till the last moment they were trying to hide the fact that they were killing the Jews why why not just Proclaim it no there were even burning their own books that had and destroying their crematoria sopado wants the whole world to think that he's Humane and by the way that that is one of the reasons why Egyptians were vegetarian because they wanted to show that we care for all life we protect animals we don't work the animals too hard we rather would work people we see history repeats itself again and again so how did they outsmart the Jewish people they did what Lenin did what did Lenin do Lenin said we would like to have free labor we don't want to pay so he announced that once a week the entire nation should volunteer for the great Mother Russia and do work for the country for free and on the first such a volunteer day and by the way every time it was on Shabbat and that was specifically done so that they remove religion from the Jews the first Saturday that it happened Lenin came out and started working he picked up a beam together with another guy and they took pictures of him and they drew paintings of him and everyone who saw Lenin working said oh if the great Lenin Our Father our God is working then for sure we will also end the entire country for the next 70 years every Saturday volunteered to do communal work for free and uh until I was 13 14 I remember even until then both adults and school children and college kids had to volunteer some volunteered uh on Saturdays some volunteered in the summer when they were off like students and uh and teachers but the entire country was trained to work for free and that's what Potter did as well he declared that since Egypt is such a good country and they care for all human life and they support other countries and they export their food and they even save the world from famine uh in the past they must grow more and they must Advance themselves and therefore they ask all their citizens to come and work for free and Paro came out the first and they transported him from one region to another so that everyone sees that Paro himself is volunteering and of course when everybody saw Paro the king of Egypt their God working every Egyptian started working as well including the Jews and uh in the meantime the task Masters recorded who did how much work they they filed they followed every Jew and they wrote down and then this became the norm people would volunteer and then slowly the people would stop volunteering except for the Jewish people and they would say you Jewish people are so good you're supporting our society you're the best please continue we're gonna send Egyptians to do other jobs and you volunteer and then they said you know what we can't afford to be without the volunteers now this volunteering becomes mandatory every Jew must work one day for free for the country and then slowly slowly they started adding days until the the Jews were working all seven days and when the when the the Jews started slacking off the Egyptian Tax Masters task Masters showed them the the record that when they were volunteering how well they were performing and they said you're not going to trick us we know what you're capable of and every Jew received his personal quota what is his um highest productivity rate and that's how they outsmarted them little by little they put them in there trap so verse 11 on page 295 says they appointed task Masters over it in order to afflict it with their burdens and the Jewish people built storage cities for Paro two storage cities pitom and rameses but and now we find the answer why the Jewish people were so blessed as much as they would afflict it so it would increase and so it would spread out the more Egyptians oppressed the Jewish people the more God blessed the Jewish people and they increased and multiplied until the Egyptians became disgusted because of the children of Israel there were so many Jews and every Jew represented success story so that Egyptians wherever they would look they were jealous and jealous and jealous and they become discussed they became disgusted verse 13 the Egyptians Enslaved the children of Israel with crushing harshness they imprinted their lives with hard work with mortar and with bricks and with every labor of the field all their labors that they performed with them were with crushing harshness very similar to Germans if you have slaves and you want them to produce a lot so treat them well feed them well and let them rest and and take care of them no crush them if you crush them they're not going to be able to work and that shows that they didn't care for work they care to destroy the Jewish people and that is why I would say just say they built specifically pitom and RAM says because these two cities were built on quicksand like ground that the heavier the structure became the more it would sink into the ground and therefore as they built it would either sink in or it would crumble because one part of the building would sink more than the other and the building would crumble and they would be punished for doing poor job and they would be forced to build again and the cycle would repeat itself again the the Egyptians were not interested in the high performance but rather just hurting the Jews and also trying to make sure the Jewish people don't have a chance to reproduce however it didn't help so Paro orders killing of the Jewish boys verse 15 the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives shifra and poor when you deliver the Hebrew women as they are giving birth and the baby sticks out his head if it is a sun you are to kill him as soon as the head comes out before the baby he kill the baby so that when by the time the baby comes out you can just Proclaim or it was still born it came out like that I didn't do anything and if it is a daughter she can live so the king of Egypt gave the midwives a a hint how do you know if the baby is a boy or a girl before he comes out only the head sticks out so he gave them a trick from the position and shape of the head to know if it's a boy or a girl one of the one of the tricks was that as the boy is born he's had his face is looking up and when the girl is born usually she is uh facing the I'm sorry the opposite the the boy is facing down the girl is facing up now verse 17. but someone is asking if that is true now and the answer is it is often true that there is such a phenomena where a baby instead of uh facing like this is facing the um upside down there are two ways sometimes the baby turns like this and sometimes the baby turns like this um okay so it does happen but the midwives feared God and they did not do as the king of Egypt spoke to them and they caused the boys to live The Midwives because they were Jewish some say they actually were Jewish and they were you have it and Maria and some say they were not you have the Miriam they were actually not Jewish but they converted and they risked their life for the new nation that they joined because they feared God imagine going against the government going against the decree of the king himself he's telling you make sure there are no baby boys born and you're producing British birth certificates with 50 boys what's happening at least produce 25 and say some of them happen to survive why why none of them are dying 50 50. the king of Egypt summoned The Midwives and said to them why have what have you done why did you do it that you caused the boys to live so not only they risked their life hoping the power is not going to notice he did notice and not only noticed he actually summoned them and he is demanding an answer the Midwife said to Paro they try to play dumb because the Hebrew women are unlike the Egyptian women and that is a great praise for the Jewish women the Jewish women are experts at giving birth even before the Midwife comes to them they have given birth in those times people gave birth at home and uh they would invite the midwife and they said they're so quick an expert that by the time we come they already have the baby in their hands and we can't kill him and that again follows the idea that Paro cared very much about his image he didn't want anyone to know that he's killing babies so he tried to hide it that is why they they're using his own worry against him you don't want anyone to know that we're killing babies do you that is why we can't kill them by time we come the mother is already holding the baby we can't kill him verse 20. God benefited the midwives he blessed them and the people increased and became very strong because the midwives protected the Jews the Jews were able to continue giving birth and multiplying verse 21. now we it doesn't say yet how did God benefit the midwives some say the people increased and became very strong that itself was a blessing the The Midwives shifran poor they love the Jews so much they were willing to risk their life for them and the fact that Jewish people are multiplying is the biggest blessing for The Midwives and now according to the opinion that shifra and Miriam were you have shifran poor where you have it in Miriam We Now understand where does Moshe get his love for the Jewish people that he is also willing to sacrifice his life for them from his mother and his sister now verse 21 gives us a different interpretation how did God benefit the midwives and it was because the midwives feared God that he made them houses God made them homes either physically they were able to acquire nice houses but specifically we're speaking about not physical homes but households famous households and they are the family of kohanim and the family of the living the Levites as well as the Kings you have it produced