Editor’s note: With the start of a new book of the Torah, Radical Torah would like to welcome another new contributor, Ben Pachano, who has written for the Earth First! Journal
“When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son…. Some time after that, [Moses] went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their toil.”
—Exodus 2:10-11
“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth…. It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ‘This is not just.’”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
This week, we arrive at one of the most dramatic, narratively detailed par’shot in the Torah. And no wonder: although we read the entire Torah every year, it is this story in particular that we are commanded to recount to our children, that is given as the reason for commandments both ritual and moral—because you were slaves in Egypt. We are commanded to tell it in the present tense, so as not to consign the struggle for freedom to a distant past. And it is told in such detail, I would suggest, because in this detail it presents a veritable blueprint for revolution. The rest of the Torah will command us to create a world of justice; the Exodus story shows us what that struggle looks like.
Of the four par’shot that make up the story, Sh’mot functions mostly as a prologue. We read of the new king’s rise to power and his fear of the Israelite nation. He first enslaves the Israelites, then attempts to exterminate them. This genocide is clandestinely resisted by the Hebrew midwives, so Pharaoh enlists “all his people” in the effort. These details will prove significant in the chapters to come, but for now they merely set the stage for the entrance of the story’s central figure. For by focusing on the personal life of Moses, the par’sha teaches that all revolutions begin, inevitably, with individuals.
Moses is a child of privilege. Though born to slaves, he could easily leave these humble beginnings behind for a life of luxury in Pharaoh’s court. Yet something in him will not allow this. He decides to go walking among the slaves, and there he kills an Egyptian for beating one of them. But when he sees two Hebrews fighting, his response is quite different: He reprimands them.
Something critical has happened here. Moses is willing to kill an Egyptian—one of his own people, remember—but when he sees the Hebrews fighting, it strikes him as wrong. Instead of fighting amongst themselves, he thinks, they should be uniting against their oppressors. In these two brief episodes, the Torah shows us that Moses’ identification has shifted from Egyptians to Israelites. This shift is radical in the extreme, and it destroys the world as he has known it. The story reflects this physically, as Moses is forced to flee Egypt.
Yet once more, fate favors Moses with a life of comfort. But the change that began with his killing of the Egyptian is still at work. And so one day, while tending his father-in-law’s flocks, he sees a burning bush. And here’s the thing: he stops to look.
“When HASHEM saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him.” Why does God wait until Moses stops to look? Because deep inside, Moses knows what is about to happen—and for the first time in 40 years, he is ready. Because Moses stops, God knows that he will answer the divine call by saying, “Hineini. Here I stand. I’m ready.”
Everyone involved in political struggle for the long haul has had this moment. The moment when you realize that you simply cannot abide the world the way it is, that no matter what turmoil it may bring to your own life, you can no longer be a bystander. When you hear that divine command in terrible clarity, and feel yourself with no choice but to act.
That moment first came for me—believe it or not!—while herding sheep. I was in northern Arizona, helping one of the traditional Dine’ (Navaho) families there resist dislocation by the U.S. government. It had been a rough year. Two police in my town had murdered an unarmed 18-year-old and walked away with cash awards; my friends had gone to Seattle and come back rasping from tear gas. I thought about these things as I stood on that reservation, listening to a cop tell us that this poor Indian family owed the government money for each of its sheep. That their sheep might be confiscated due to overgrazing, never mind that the authorities were the ones who had created the overgrazing problem, never mind that mere miles away Peabody Coal was stripping the Earth unmolested. And suddenly the realization took hold of me: I was living in a police state. The decrees of the powerful are enforced with violence, and always have been; that could not have been more obvious to my indigenous hosts. And I wanted nothing to do with it.
Like Moses, we are children of privilege. We are the beneficiaries of an economic system that cannot function without slavery, ecocide and war. Let’s not mince words: we can’t have cellular phones without genocide in Africa; there is no electricity without global warming or strip mines; and there is no material affluence without a working class kept deliberately poor.
When Moses realizes what he is being called to do, he hides his face. He proclaims his weakness and unworthiness. But God answers that Moses is not supposed to be perfect; he only needs to play his role.
Flawed as we may be, God needs us to bring about a revolution in this world. So when the oppressed of the world cry out from their bondage, with whom do you stand?
Hineini.