SHEMOT_EXODUS I:1-VI:1
Yaacov and his sons have passed away. The Galut, the exile of the Jewish people begins. While a member of Yaacov’s immediate family was alive, there was a palpable link to the Land of Israel and the stay in Egypt took on a passing character. With the death of Yaacov’s sons, the strong attachment with the ancestral land is lost and residence in Egypt acquires permanence. The descendants begin to integrate into the Egyptian environment and culture, and according to the Midrash, they abandon the practice of circumcision, which distinguished the descendants of the patriarch Avraham.
After Yosef’s death, the Egyptians question his relationship with the Hebrews. Pharaoh gathers his advisors to ask for their advice: What should be done with them? The fact is that the Egyptians had become slaves of the state because Yosef had given them the seeds necessary to sow their fields and as payment, the peasants became the servants of Pharaoh, to whom they had to deliver twenty percent of their labor.
The Hebrews, however, remained as an independent group within the State, a group that in some future date, could ally itself with any invader that would come to overthrow the regime. According to the Midrash, Pharaoh met with three advisors: Bileam, Iyov, and Yitro, and asked them: did Egypt owe a permanent debt to Yosef’s descendants? It had been the consequence of Yosef’s policies which consisted in storing the overproduction of the years of plenty, that enabled Egypt to become the first power of the known world at that time. Now that Yosef had passed, was there still a relevant issue of gratitude to his descendants, to the Hebrews?
Bileam, jealous of the Hebrews for their ties with God, since he had promised the patriarchs that he would make them a great people, demonstrated again his antipathy for this people and opined that they represented a danger to the stability of Egypt and, therefore, it was necessary to end their independence and stop their growth. Despite his prophetic abilities, which some commentators equate to those of Moses, Bileam opined that Egyptian gratitude should be limited to the person, to the individual Yosef. His descendants did not necessarily need to enjoy the effect of the well-being that Yosef had brought to Egypt.
Although Iyov is described by the Bible as a whole and correct person, God-fearing, he was unwilling to go beyond what was strictly required in his conception of justice. Judaism preaches the notion of Lifnim mishurat hadin, the goodness of living according to an ample spirit of justice and not necessarily abiding only the strict letter of the Law. Judaism teaches that there are circumstances and cases in which the help offered should not be measured. For example, the honor that is dispensed to parents has no limit, nor the help that is offered to a poor person. Iyov remained silent in the face of Pharaoh’s question. By not responding, he avoided allying himself with Bileam, but he also did not explicitly defend the Hebrews, and, in many cases, silence has a negative effect. Silence, which is not far from indifference, is usually very painful for the affected. This is expressed by many survivors of the Holocaust of the past century.
Yitro disagreed with Bileam and, while thinking he was in the minority, decided to leave the meeting. Yitro took the risk of becoming a minority of one and thereby demonstrated the traits of an even-tempered personality, who would later become Moses’ father-in-law. Although Yitro did not identify with Bileam’s position, on the other hand, he was also not convincing enough to change the course of the conversation, which concluded in a series of decrees whose purpose was to weaken the Hebrews morally and materially, including the cruel order to throw newborn males into the Nile.
Eventually, the Hebrews were enslaved and had to perform the most arduous physical tasks, the basic purpose of which was to break their sense of self-worth and pride and nullify any aspiration for freedom. As in many other cases, effective leadership was required to break the chains of slavery. Moses is chosen by God for a double task: to convince Pharaoh to allow the Hebrews to leave and, at the same time, to carry out an equally difficult task: convince the Hebrews that freedom is one of the most important values for preserving the dignity of the human being.
