Sh’mot: The Women’s March and the Burning Bush
Jacob Friedman is with IfNotNow NYC.
The Torah calendar radically rejects the temporality of the market in favor of something much more powerful- a story that connects us to our ancestors, and a parasha (portion) that we read on a set date. And this week, on the dawn of both Trump’s presidency and the Women’s March, the result is staggering. This week’s portion, Sh’mot (Names), is the first reading of Exodus- the start of our long march towards liberation. Sh’mot witnesses women resist Pharaoh, save Moses, and help him receive the most potent symbol of Jewish rebellion: the burning bush.
To honor the march, I’m going to focus on the bravery of women, who execute nearly every successful act of resistance in Sh’mot, ultimately making it possible for the people Israel to meet יהוה (we don’t pronounce this name, and say Adonai, Hashem, God, or something else instead), the liberating force who continues to inhabit us.
Story time!
At the start of Sh’mot, fearing a growing Israelite population and a potential slave uprising, Pharaoh orders the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah to kill all Hebrew baby boys. But Shiphrah and Puah let the boys live, brashly telling the Egyptian emodiment of empire that the Hebrew women are so vigorous that they give birth before a midwife can stop them. Pharaoh counters by demanding that all Israelites, not just the midwives, be responsible for killing baby boys, this time by throwing them in the Nile. But Jochebed, called simply “a woman” in Sh’mot, resists. First, she hides her son for three months. Then, unable to hide him any longer, she waterproofs a wicker basket, puts him in it, and places it in the Nile as her daughter Miriam watches. Pharaoh’s own daughter Bithiah finds the basket, sends a slave girl to fetch it, and takes pity on the boy, who she knows to be Hebrew. Then Miriam approaches with a plan to reunite her family. She asks Bithiah if she needs a Hebrew wet nurse for the boy, and when she says yes, Miriam fetches her mother, who weans the boy, her biological son, before bringing him back to Bithiah to be raised. She names him “Moses,” meaning, “I drew him out of the water.”
In just two chapters, Shiphrah, Puah, Jochebed, the Pharaoh’s daughter, her female slave, and Miriam thus collectively resist the imperial power of Egypt. This resistance unites women across class, age, and ethno-religious lines. It saves the life of the man who, reluctantly and with much less confidence than his sister, will be the vessel through which God liberates the people Israel. This is the kind of collective resistance to empire that we can and must show tomorrow and always.
And just who is God? Moses asks for the name of יהוה, for something solid to take to the elders of Israel. יהוה responds, “‘Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh’, continuing, ‘Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’” Ehyeh means “I shall be.” So in this momentous encounter, this start of the liberation march, God says to Moses, “I shall be who I shall be. Tell them ‘I shall be’ sent you.”
This exchange can give us hope in our own struggle for justice. As we explain to our own elders of Israel, the organized Jewish community, exactly who the imperial power is and what liberation looks like, we don’t have to speak only as ourselves. We speak on behalf of Adonai. We speak on behalf of that which shall be- on behalf of the future itself. As Abraham Joshua Heschel said about Selma,when we march, we pray with our feet. And we will be led and uplifted by women.
