D’var Torah – Shabbat Hol Hamoed Pesach 5769

Rabbi Maurice Harris

On Thursday morning this week we read from the Torah verses assigned by the
sages to the first day of Passover. The scene is the slave ghettos of Pharaoh’s
Egypt just before the arrival of the 10th and final plague, the slaying of the first
born of Egypt. Moses calls together the elders of the people and says to them,
“Go, pick out lambs for your families, and slaughter the Passover offering. Take
a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the
blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts. None of you shall
go outside the door of your homes until morning. For when the Eternal goes
through to smite the Egyptian first born sons, God will see the blood on the lintel
and the two doorposts, and God will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer
enter and smite your home.”

In recent years much has been written about how the Passover story begins and
ends with birth imagery, and I’ve talked about this here in the past as well. In the
haggadah we used yesterday at the community seder, we read the following (and
I paraphrase):

How was the desire for freedom first aroused? By the midwives, Shifrah
and Puah, who resisted Pharaoh’s decree to kill every Israelite boy. By
Miriam, who watched over her brother Moses to insure his safety as he
floated in a basket down the Nile. … In the birth waters and in the Nile,
these extraordinary women saw life and liberation. … The waters of
freedom open and close the Passover story, taking us from the Nile to the
Sea of Reeds.

A baby, Moses, is given life thanks to midwives and then pulled from the water by
a princess – the birth imagery is striking. A nation passes through the narrow
cavity of the path that God opens through the Sea of Reeds and emerges out the
other side, alive and free. Birth imagery again. What struck me as I took a
closer look at the Torah verses we read Thursday morning was that I was
reminded that we have more birth imagery here in the middle of the story, at this

1
crucial moment, just before the 10th plague brings grief and sorrow to so many in
ancient Egypt, just before the Pharaoh finally summons Moses and Aaron and
spits out the words, “Up, depart from among my people, you and the Israelites
with you. Go, worship the Eternal as you said! Take also your flocks and your
herds, as you said, and begone! And may you bring a blessing upon me also!”

In that moment when Moses instructed the Israelites to take a lamb, slaughter it
as an offering, put its blood in a basin, and then paint the blood on the top and on
the side posts of the doors of their homes, we are confronted yet again with a
visual image of a people getting ready to pass through a birth canal, out of a
holding chamber and into a new existence.
The Torah is full of literary links that tie together these thematic echoes – this is
part of its artfulness and beauty. The text that describes the placing of the lamb’s
blood on the doorposts offers us one of these marvelous literary links. The key
word is the Hebrew word for basin – saf – spelled with a samech and a final fay.
This is the basin that Moses tells the people to put the lamb’s blood in, and out of
which they will take up the blood to paint it on their doorposts.

Saf is a somewhat unusual word, and it calls our attention to a key word in the
other two moments of birth that I spoke of. In the first instance, which describes
baby Moses being placed into the Nile and then drawn out of the water by the
Pharaoh’s daughter, the text tells us that Moses’ mother placed the basket
containing her beloved child in the reeds of the river. The Hebrew word for reeds
is soof, spelled almost identically to saf. In the second instance – the liberation
of the Israelites after they cross the divided Sea of Reeds – the word soof
appears again – this time as part of the name of the body of water from which
they emerged.

Let’s take a closer look at these little Hebrew words, saf and soof, and see what
other connections emerge, and let’s also expand our examination of the birth
imagery that is so present throughout this story. What I’d like to suggest is that

2
we find elements, or at least hints, of death, blood, and rebirth in all three of
these key moments in the story.

At the beginning of the Passover tale, Moses is a baby marked for death. When
his mother and sister send him afloat upon the Nile, they give him over to almost
certain death. Listen to how the ancient Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria,
retells this moment of the story in his book, On the Life of Moses.

Moses’ parents … with many tears exposed their child on the banks of the
river, and departed groaning and lamenting, pitying themselves for the
necessity which had fallen upon them, and calling themselves the slayers
and murderers of their child… Then, as was natural for people involved in
a miserable misfortune, they accused themselves as having brought a
heavier affliction on themselves then they need have done. “For why,”
said they, “did we not let him die as Pharaoh ordered at the moment of his
birth? But we, in our affection, have nourished him these three entire
months, causing ourselves by such conduct more abundant grief, and
inflicting upon him a heavier punishment, in order that he, having at last
attained to a great capacity for feeling pleasures and pains, should at last
perish in the most grievous of evils.” And so they departed in ignorance of
the future, being wholly overwhelmed with sad misery…

So as we see, the story of the rescue and adoption of baby Moses is fraught with
the potential of death. It also offers us an obvious moment of birth, when the
Pharaoh’s daughter sees the helpless baby and has compassion on him, drawing
him out of the waters and taking him for her own. Let’s listen to Philo’s
interpretive telling of this moment as well:

Now the king of the country had an only daughter, whom he tenderly
loved, and they say that she, although she had been married a long time,
had never had any children, and therefore, as was natural, was very
desirous of children… And as she was always desponding and lamenting,
so especially on that particular day was she overcome by the weight of her
anxiety, that, though it was her ordinary custom to stay in doors and never
to pass over the threshold of her house, yet now she went forth with her
handmaidens to the river, where the infant was lying. And there, as she
was about to indulge in a bath and purification in the thickest part of the
marsh, she beheld the child, and commanded her handmaidens to bring
him to her.

3
Philo also adds a story that, after keeping the baby a while, she faked a
pregnancy, stuffing things into the abdomen of her clothing, in order to create
appearances of having birthed the child herself. If we assume that Philo was
relaying folklore and early midrash in his elaborations on the story we find in the
Torah, which mentions very little about the Egyptian princess, her feelings, or her
back story, we see one of the most well known birth motifs found in the Hebrew
bible being attributed to the princess – the pain of being unable to conceive a
child and the arrival of a miraculously unexpected child to solve the problem.

I think there’s blood imagery here too, though it’s only hinted at. Later, during the
10 plagues, the Nile will be turned to blood. But also in this story, reading
between the lines, it may be that the Pharaoh’s daughter was heading to the Nile
to purify herself ritually following her menstrual cycle. If so, then Moses’ arrival
represents a miraculous reversing of a lack of conception and birth.

When we look at the Torah text from yesterday morning, which tells the story of
the 10th plague and the angel of death passing over the homes of the Jews and
slaying the first born of the Egyptians, we also see a story that presents us with
death, with blood, and with birth. The vividness of the lamb’s blood in the basin –
the saf – being painted on the doorposts and lintels is there – it’s a birth canal the
Israelites will pass through after the destroying angel has passed over them.

And finally, in the closing part of the Passover story – the marching through the
miraculously divided Sea of Reeds, there are once again hints of death, blood,
and images of birth. The word for “reeds” – soof – bears close resemblance to
the Hebrew word for “end,” which is sof. The Yam Soof – the Sea of Reeds – is
also a pun for what the Israelites are afraid it really will be for them, namely the
Yam Sof – the Sea of their End, their deaths. And with the Egyptian chariots
pressing in on them, the death they are terrified their about to experience is going
to be a bloody one. But then the Sea of Death turns into an unexpected birth
canal, and when the people march across the sea to freedom and then the sea

4
closes in and drowns the Pharaoh’s armies, the violent birth of this nation is
complete. And on either side of the sea, we find two lone figures with the
strangest of relation to the newborn. Miriam and Pharaoh are the two figures the
Torah draws our attention to, one on each side of the sea. The Pharaoh,
grandfather to Moses, stunned and defeated on one side, and Miriam, sister to
Moses and therefore a sort of granddaughter to Pharaoh, leading the women in
dance on the other. A defeated, would-be god on earth on one side. A
prophetess – and by the way, Miriam is the first person in the Hebrew Bible to be
called a prophet – on the other.

Death, blood, birth. It’s there throughout this story. I’d like to close with one last
image – also from Philo. Philo lived in the Jewish community of Alexandria in
Egypt about 2000 years ago, and his life’s work involved harmonizing Greek
philosophy and Torah. What I’d like to leave you with his is explanation of the
allegorical meaning of the burning bush miracle, later in Moses’ life, when he
finds himself upon Mt. Sinai, tending his father-in-law’s flocks, and sees a scrub
brush bush on fire, but notices that the little bush isn’t being consumed by the
flames. Here is what Philo wrote about this:

For the burning bush was a symbol of the oppressed people, and the
burning fire was a symbol of the oppressors; and the circumstance of the
burning bush not being consumed by the fire was an emblem of the fact
that the people thus oppressed would not be destroyed by those who were
attacking them, but that the oppressors’ hostility would be unsuccessful
and fruitless to the oppressed. This bush – the briar – is a most weak
and supple plant… It was not consumed by fire, but on the contrary it was
preserved by it… All of this is an allegory … almost crying out in plain
words to persons in affliction, ‘Do not faint; your weakness is your
strength. You shall be saved rather then destroyed … so that you shall
not be overwhelmed by the evils with which they afflict you, but when your

5
enemies think most surely that they are destroying you, then you shall
most brilliantly shine out in glory.”

Shabbat shalom.