Joy Despite Suffering

We read in this week’s parsha and its accompanying commentaries and midrashim about the physical and psychological torture that the enslaved Israelites endured. Pharaoh says in the opening verses of the parsha that the Israelites have grown “too numerous” for the Egyptians to manage and begins his regime of terror with the statement “הָבָה נִתְחַכְּמָה לוֹ פֶּן־יִרְבֶּה – let us deal shrewdly with them so that they will not increase.” While Pharaoh’s fear that the Israelites would revolt against him was driven by contemporary politics, it’s ironic that ultimately, the Israelites only revolted in response to Egyptian enslavement.

To ensure that the Israelites don’t realize their power, Pharaoh instructs the Hebrew midwives to discreetly kill newborn Israelite boys during labor. After that doesn’t work, he decrees for all Egyptians to throw newborn Israelite boys into the Nile – a starkly violent departure from what he had instructed the midwives. While not stated explicitly in the Torah itself, we can safely assume that baby girls weren’t targeted because they wouldn’t grow up to fight in the rebellion Pharaoh feared so greatly. To me, it seems like Pharaoh didn’t order the girls killed so that he could still guarantee the next generation of future slaves.

I cannot imagine the fear that Israelite women must have felt. In addition to not being exempted from the physical labor of building storage cities, they had to go through their entire pregnancy before knowing the fate of their child. And yet, midrashic tradition teach us that instead of abstaining from sex with their husbands to avoid pregnancy, the enslaved Israelite women went out of their way to conceive.

The midrash in Shemot Rabbah states:

initially, Pharaoh decreed and commanded the taskmasters to pressure the Israelites so that they would produce their quota of work and they would not sleep at home. He thought to diminish their procreation. He said: If they do not sleep at home they will not have children.

 According to the midrash, the Egyptian regime was not only one of physical enslavement and infanticide but of population control.

The midrash goes on:

 בִּשְׂכַר נָשִׁים צִדְקָנִיּוֹת שֶׁהָיוּ בְּאוֹתוֹ הַדּוֹר נִגְאֲלוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל מִמִּצְרָיִם.

On account of the righteous women who were in that generation, Israel was redeemed from Egypt. What did they do? When they would go to draw water, the Holy One blessed be He would arrange for them small fish in their jugs, and they would draw half water and half fish. They would take it to their husbands and would place two pots on the fire one with hot water and one with fish. They would feed them, bathe them, anoint them with oil, and give them to drink, and they would consort with them. 

Or, to put it more plainly, the women would go out to their exhausted husbands who slept in the fields because of Pharaoh’s manipulation and remind them of all the ways that they were still human. They would feed them freshly cooked food, wash them, and be intimate with them how only a wife could – and in an era without contraception, every act of martial intimacy was a potential pregnancy. A pregnancy that would end with infanticide or raising your child as a slave. And yet, the midrash teaches us that the Israelite women refused to let Pharaoh’s edicts stand in their way. They would have normal relationships with their husbands, and they would conceive and bear the next generation of Israelites. The midrash teaches us that their actions were an act of radical faith in God – and I’m inclined to agree.

As a pregnant woman, the everyday bravery of the Israelite women is resonating with me differently this year. My positive pregnancy test was already weeks after the events of October 7th, when we were discovering more and more of the depravity that occurred that day. At some point I turned to my husband and said “can we bring a child into a world like this? What gives us the right to be happy when so many strollers sit empty?” He responded by reminding me that it’s always a leap of faith to have kids – and that it’s never a bad thing to bring about more simcha, more joy, in the world.

I know I just dropped a bomb there – so I’m going to take a moment to answer the questions I’m sure you’re all going to ask. I’m about thirteen weeks pregnant, due in July, feeling exhausted and queasy, and we won’t be sharing if it’s a boy or girl. Our parents are thrilled, and the dog knows something is up because she won’t leave me alone. Yes, this is why I’ve been disoriented or late to services over the past few months. Yes, we are terrified and nervous but mostly excited and impatient to meet our kid, who we hope will bring more love and light and good to this broken world. And I know that soon, my first trimester symptoms will be much less important than the baby who’s currently causing them. This baby who is already so loved by their parents. This baby whose existence will – please God – bring joy to their parents, to their family and friends, to this congregation, to the Jewish people.

And that leads me to my challenge for you all – to channel the Israelite women’s everyday bravery. I’m not saying that you should have a baby – for many of you, that stage of life has already passed, and for some others it is a distant potential future option. But you don’t have to have a baby to be joyful in a time of pain and evil. It can be as simple as reaching out to an old friend who you haven’t talked to in a while, or buying flowers to brighten up your dining room, or choosing kindness when someone’s really annoying you. I challenge you all not to let the endless stream of bad news, the fear for your loved ones in Israel, or the rise in antisemitism determine your behavior or diminish your joy. Be like the Israelite women and live despite it all.