Previous Commentaries

By Rabbi Rami Pavolotzky,
B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica

Translated by Inés Baum - Proofreading by Ellen Zindler

This week we start reading the book of Exodus, leaving behind the stories of our patriarchs and entering the emergence of the Hebrew people. A new Pharaoh rules Egypt, a monarch that does not know the work performed by Joseph on behalf of the Empire. This new king observes that the nation of Israel is growing in numbers, and fears for the security of his government. In order to prevent any risk he orders, first, to enslave the Hebrews, and later, to kill the newborn boys.

The Torah recounts that, despite the hard labor to which the children of Israel were subjected, they continued to grow in number. “But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad” (Exodus 1:12), says the text regarding the Hebrew people. This sentence became a symbol of the Jewish longing to continue living and overcoming adversity, of their freedom and sovereignty. Many scholars explain in this manner the presence of the roasted egg on the ritual Pesach dish, which is like the Hebrew people: the more it is heated the harder it gets, that is, the more it is provoked, beaten and hurt, the more courage and tenacity it shows.

Our sages emphasize that, in the original Hebrew, the verbs “multiply” and “spread” are conjugated in the future tense, when the usual in a sentence such as this is for them to appear in past tense, as they do above in the translation into English, to facilitate our understanding. Hence they deduce that the Torah is not referring just to the children of Israel who lived in Egypt, but to the Israel of every generation.

In our time, we are once again called to show that innate characteristic of the Jewish people, which show their courage facing the most difficult situations. Apparently, the thousands of missiles that fell these last few years on the south of Israel strengthened the will of our brothers in Medinat Israel, who decided that the time had come to put an end to these cowardly and miserable attacks against the civil population. It is not possible to live under the constant threat of projectiles from neighboring states. It is not possible to lead a normal life when, on a daily basis, the death arrows fall over homes, stores and institutions. That is not a decent life for a free and sovereign nation on its own soil.

We Jews living in the Diaspora must also be stronger than ever, in order to bear the disgraceful manipulation exercised by the massive communication media regarding what occurs in Israel and the Gaza Strip. Likewise, we must prove our ancestral fortitude so as to overcome the reappearance of anti-Semitic feelings which seemed dormant, but which are getting stronger by the hour, in an awesome and evil way. We must put up with the attacks from a part of the world that cannot totally digest the idea that the Jewish people, at last, own their State, and that they have the right to live there in peace and quiet.

In this parashah, God shows Himself to Moses for the first time, in the form of a burning bush that is not consumed. The Midrash (Shemot Rabbah 2:10) explains that God chose this form of revealing Himself as a metaphor of the eternal resistance of the people of Israel. It was when Moses was beginning to wonder whether the Egyptians would exterminate the Hebrews, that he saw the burning bush, and he said: “just as the thorn bush burns in the fire but is not consumed, so too the Egyptians cannot destroy the people of Israel”.

Once again, we must be strong.

This Parashah commentary was done by the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean, and may be reproduced quoting its source.
To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Torah commentary, send an e-mail to: UJCL_parasha@yahoo.com .
If you wish to dedicate the commentary to the memory of a loved one, or in honor of some family event, contact us at: UJCL_parasha@yahoo.com

Forwarded by Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, from Kol Shearith Israel Congregation, Panama.
Translated by Inés Baum and proofread by Ellen Zindler, from B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica.

Copyright © 2001, 2002 UJCL