Amalek and Evil

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Whatever the so-called International Court of Justice’s interim ruling on the genocide accusation – you will know their decision before reading this – two things should be clear. The first is that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. The second is that it was and is incredibly irresponsible for Israelis, whether they be Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, rabbis, or just people, to say anything that can be plausibly misunderstood to indicate that they would commit genocide, or believe that genocide could be justified.

This is also true for Jewish Zionists everywhere, and especially in America. We are blessed with a body politic much less morally absurd than the ICJ. But we also need to maintain positive support and not just avoid negative verdicts.   

In my honest opinion, the use of Amalek as an analogy for any current situation violates our responsibility. Moreover, it is sometimes in fact a dogwhistle to the worst elements of our community.

I appreciate and understand why Summer Beit Midrash alum (and Atlantic columnist) Yair Rosenberg and other serious people have defended PM Netanyahu’s use of the term. It is certainly true that the commandment in Devarim to blot out the memory of Amalek does not automatically translate into the attempted genocide of 1 Samuel. My friend Rabbi David Debow argues further on his Times of Israel blog that the Torah categorizes the war with Amalek as eternal (from generation to generation) to teach us that ideologies cannot be wiped out militarily, But the merits of these arguments cannot disguise the fact that they apparently require separating the meaning of Torah from halakhah.

The strongest argument I’ve heard for continuing to use the Amalek analogy is that it serves as a necessary reminder that evil genuinely exists. That argument assumes that Amalek is a unique signifier of evil in Jewish tradition. I challenge two aspects of that assumption below.

Amalek came and gave battle to Israel in Refidim . . .

Yehoshua weakened Amalek and his nation by swordmouth . . .

It happened that when Mosheh raised his arm – Israel triumphed,

but when (he) lowered his arm – Amalek triumphed . . .  

Aharon and Chur supported (Mosheh’s) arms . . .

Hashem said to Mosheh:

Write this as a memorial in a scroll,

and place (it) in the ears of Yehoshua

that I will surely erase the memory of Amalek from under the heavens . . .

The account of the war with Amalek in this week’s parshah resembles a G-rated movie trailer. There are no explicit deaths on either side. What happens to Amalek is described, perhaps euphemistically, as “weakening”. There are no women. The major action scene (probably) focuses on appealing to G-d. G-d gets the key line of dialogue.

It’s unclear why any of this would appeal to viewers of the Plagues miniseries, which is famed for special effects, the sharply drawn characters-in-conflict of Mosheh and Pharaoh, and the terrifying Massacre of the Firstborn. Nonetheless, the trailer ends with a promise or threat of infinite sequels.

The second trailer, released in Sefer Devarim, Parshat Ki Teitzei, mostly adds to our confusion. It’s a sort of flashback in which none of the characters from Beshalach reappear – no Mosheh, Yehoshua, Aharon, or Chur. Amalek is presented as picking off stragglers rather than as offering battle. The obligation to remember Amalek is transferred from Yehoshua to all Israel, while the commandment to destroy the remembrance of Amalek is apparently transferred from G-d to all Israel. However, Israel’s obligation is suspended pending a hypothetical future in which the Jews are ensconced in the Land of Israel with peace on all its borders.

In Star Wars fashion (l‘havdil), Nakh presents two sequels even though the original movie was never released.

1Shmuel 15 harks back to Devarim but take place several centuries later. Shmuel tells Shaul that G-d recalls (pkd rather than zkhar, however) what Amalek did in the original war and (therefore) has commanded its extirpation. Shaul defeats Amalek and massacres them entire, but he and ‘the nation’ choose to spare its king Agag and best cattle. Shmuel informs Shaul that this choice has ended his reign and dynasty. Shmuel then kills Agag in a dramatic and bloody scene, and so far as we know Amalek is finished.

Megillat Esther does not mention the name Amalek, but refers to Haman five times as “the Aggagite”. Tradition understands this to mean that Agag sired a child during the time that Shaul spared him, and that Haman is a direct descendant of that child. )Note: “Amalekites” also appear twice in Shmuel after Shaul’s war, but as “the Field of Amalek” also appears in Bereishit 14:7, its not clear that the valence is consistently ethnic.)

The plot of Esther initially seems parallel to Shemot. Amalek initiates the war, and the Jews respond with human initiatives explicitly dependent on G-d’s help.  But the last several chapters are mostly graphic mass killing and execution scenes. This perhaps forces us to recognize that the fundamental driver of the action in the book is the rape culture modeled by King Achashverosh, which Haman takes advantage of, and Esther redirects (because only the king is entitled to rape her). Megillat Esther is anything but G-rated.

Nothing anywhere in the story arc explains Amalek’s motivation directly. Some Chazalic texts suggest that Amalek became the repository of Esav’s worst feeling about his brother Yaakov. Others suggest that his mother Timna was a rejected convert who took rejection badly; her reaction is presented as overdone but not wholly unjustifiable.

Bil’am’s stand-alone movie provides an Easter egg describing Amalek as reishit goyim. Oddly, Rashi does not list Amalek as one of the things for which the world was created, “b’reishit”, even though he does mention Israel as “reishit tevuato”. But many others understand Bil’am as establishing some sort of parallel between Israel and Amalek. Here is Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch going full Hegel:

Yehoshua only weakened Amalek,

whose ultimate downfall will happen only in the end-days.

Israel had also not matured sufficiently.

Until Israel achieves adulthood,

there is a need for the existence of Amalek as an opposition,

for the sake of Israel’s development.

Rav Hirsch (along with the majority of halakhists) recognizes a distinct eschatological tinge throughout the narratives and laws regarding Amalek. Bil’am predicts that Amalek’s acharit will be utter devastation, but acharit itself suggests that this will happen at the very end. Shaul and Shmuel apparently wipe out Amalek, and yet Haman happens. Both Beshalach and Ki Teitzei contain contradictory obligations of memory and erasure of memory, and Beshalach seems to suggest an eternal war.

If the obligation to wipe out Amalek is eschatological; especially if Rambam is correct that it can be fulfilled either by converting them or by killing them; and especially if Rav Hirsch is correct that Israel cannot develop properly in the absence of Amalek, why did Shmuel order Shaul to attempt a genocide? The halakhic explanation that this was a hor’at sha’ah, a one-time measure rather than an attempt to fulfill the law, only intensifies the question.

The best explanation I can see is that Shmuel thought he was living in the end-time, yemot hamoshiach. His original opposition to the monarchy was based on a sense that the Jews were not fully mature yet as a people, and therefore not ready for an anointed king/moshiach. But Shaul’s success in rallying them against the Pelishtim changed his mind. That’s why he takes it so hard when Shaul fails. Shmuel – and through him, the Jewish people – needs to learn that there is a very long way between a successful king and a Messiah, and everything goes blooey when we mistake one for the other. This lesson is reinforced when Shaul dies in a battle that seemingly reverses all his military accomplishments. (Lest the lesson be taken too far, G-d also insists that Shmuel anoint Shaul’s successor. It is necessary to hope for and believe in the possibility of the Messiah.)

Why is Amalek’s continued existence necessary in ordinary time? The most parsimonious explanation is that Amalek’s continued existence reminds us that the times are not Messianic, that much work remains to be done before Jewish and world society can deserve Redemption. In such times, the halakhah agrees with Rabbi Debow that total violence is no solution, and calls for the physical destruction of Amalek are a marker of false messianism.

Amalek is therefore the symbol of ordinary evil in Jewish tradition. Amalek arrives in Beshalach as the rude awakening for a Jewish people that believes it can demand miracles from G-d. Ordinary villains seek out weakness rather than head-on attacking the center of the enemy’s strength. The Jewish people are defined in part by our hope for Messiah, which entails a belief in the possibility of progress. Ordinary villains deny progress. Amalek is not the symbol of extraordinary evil.

We have better candidates for that position, and better traditional analogies to current villains and evils. For example, as Rabbi Jonathan Ziring pointed out to me, Pharaoh’s depraved indifference to his people’s suffering during the Plagues is right on point for Hamas and Gazans. But we have no record of Amalek on this issue. Similarly, while Eikhah 5:11 describes rape as a Babylonian weapon of war, Amalek is never associated with misogyny.

Two elements nonetheless make the Amalek analogy attractive nowadays. The first is the Soloveitchik family derashah that takes Haman as the exclusively defining representation of Amalek, and therefore associates Amalek with all forms of genocidal antisemitism.  The second is the belief that we in fact live in protoMessianic times.

I have explained many times why the first is wrong – see for example https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-not-to-talk-about-amalek/.  Surely anyone who reads the Haggadah understands that Lavan is at least as good a symbol of genocidal antisemitism. (Amalek is also a grandchild of Esav and unrelated to Yishmael). But I understand why and how the analogy can be defended. Rhetoric can be defensible in principle and yet irresponsible in context.

The graver danger is that we repeat the mistake of Shmuel HaNavi, and risk subjecting the state of Israel to the fate of Shaul. (Like Shmuel, we might then blame the State for not being genocidal enough).  And as we are not prophets, this time we might have a very long wait for the next annointee.

Every Soldier’s Death Diminishes Me

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Two people walking in the desert, one of them holding a canteen of water, such that either can drink it all and survive, but neither will survive on less than all – Bar Petora taught: “Let them both drink, and let neither see the death of the other”. This position held sway until Rabbi Akiva came and taught: “And your brother will live with you – meaning that your life takes precedence over your brother’s life”.

Bava Metzia 62a

What if the canteen belongs to a third party? Talmud (Sanhedrin 74a and elsewhere) rules that if an overlord orders X to murder Y on pain of death for failure or disobedience, X may not kill Y, because “what says that your blood is redder?!” Rabbi Akiva’s derashah establishes an exception to this principle. Since that exception does not apply to third parties, they presumably must give each traveler half the water, even though this means that neither will survive.

Or not. If one understands the Talmud’s principle as banning one from acting in a way that values one life more than another, maybe even Ben Petora would allow a third party to pass the canteen on the basis of a coinflip. Making the outcome random also makes it egalitarian.

Dov Weinstein asked me last month whether Rabbi Akiva’s exception must be understood narrowly and literally. The Talmud (Bekhorot 35b and elsewhere) rules that “His wife is like his own body” – might Rabbi Akiva allow a third party to give the water to their spouse rather than to a stranger? If yes, could one extend the principle to one’s children, parents, or closest friends?

This sort of question is addressed by Tosafot in the context of the mitzvah to redeem captives. Mishnah Gittin 45a teaches that “We must not redeem captives at more than their cash-value, for the sake of tikkun haolam”. Yet a beraita on Ketubot 52b teaches:

If (a wife) was captured and they ask up to ten times her cash-value,

the first time – (her husband) must redeem her;

thereafter – he may redeem her if he chooses to.

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says:

We must not redeem captives for more than their cash-value, because of tikkun haolam.

Tosafot ask: How can we require the husband to overpay the first time, if this contradicts tikkum haolam?!  The first answer is that the decree was never intended to prevent a person from overpaying to save their own life, and “his wife is like his own body”.

Tosafot then ask further. Here on Gittin 45, the Talmud attempts to prove that the decree against overpaying for captives does not apply to private parties from the case of Levi son of Darga, who redeemed his daughter at an exorbitant price. Abayyay responds that Levi may have violated the decree, but his answer is obviously forced. Why not answer instead that the decree was never intended to apply to daughters? Tosafot’s response is that children are not “his body” in quite the same way.

This might be a technical answer, as follows: The ketubah puts a lien on all the husband’s assets to the extent necessary to fulfill its obligations, and ransoming from captivity is such an obligation. So the wife is in a sense ransoming herself, which would not be true of a daughter.  Note, however, that this does not explain why the husband has permission to overpay a second or third time.

Alternatively, Tosafot might be making a claim about the nature of the relationships. I need to be clear: not about their depth or importance, just about their nature. Spouses can be extensions of each other in a way that children should not be extensions of their parents. This may depend on whether one understands Adam’s statement (Genesis 2:24) and they will become one flesh as referring to the male and female becoming sexually intimate, or rather to their becoming parents.

Ramban suggests a different resolution. Maybe Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel forbids overpaying even for the redemption of close relatives, but Levi bar Darga was acting in accordance with the position of the Rabbis (i.e. the anonymous position in the beraita in Ketubot), who permit this for wives and daughters because spouses and children are part of one’s self.

We could then read Ramban back into Rabbi Akiva, and permit choosing spouses and children over third parties in cases where Rabbi Akiva permits choosing oneself over others. Should we? If yes, should we draw the line at children? At first-degree blood-relatives? Or should we allow the extension to friends, either within Rabbi Akiva or in the context of redeeming captives?

It is tempting to respond by noting that Rabbi Akiva’s verse is and your brother will live with you, which read literally excludes “brothers” from one’s self. But that seems hyperliteral to me. A better reading of the verse is that it promotes all human beings toward whom you have an obligation lehachayot (= to sustain their life) to the status of brother, so that you may not choose among them.

But granting that one can’t choose among “brothers”, and that one can choose oneself over a brother, any extension of Rabbi Akiva’s exception past the physical self raises the question of whether one may choose among “selves”.

That question may depend on whether we understand Rabbi Akiva as generating an obligation or rather a permission. If Rabbi Akiva mandates choosing one’s own life, but otherwise asks “who says that X’s blood is redder than Y’s?”, he probably forbids choosing among selves. If Rabbi Akiva permits but does not mandate choosing one’s own’s life, he probably allows choosing among selves.

We can also ask: If Rabbi Akiva is generating a permission, does it work both ways? If I am allowed to choose my life over my brother’s, may I also choose my brother’s life over mine? Or does Rabbi Akiva only permit choice in one direction? In other words: I can drink the whole canteen myself; but if I don’t want to do that, does my acquiescence allow you to drink the whole canteen?

Tosafot and Rambam famously disagree as to whether one is permitted to give up one’s life rather than violate a prohibition outside “the big 3” of avodah zarah, gilui arayot, and shefikhut damim. But I see this as a separate issue. Here, the question is not whether one may give up one’s life for Hashem when Hashem has not asked you to, but rather whether one may give up one’s life for the life of another human being.

Toward the end of Yabia Omer 10:6, “the Entebbe teshuvah”, Rav Ovadiah Yosef asks whether the Israeli government is permitted to risk soldiers’ lives in missions to rescue hostages if a negotiated prisoner exchange is possible.

The practical answer is yes, because the captors may not keep their promises, and released prisoners may kill again. But asking the question is important, because it emphasizes that Israeli soldiers are human beings toward whom the state, its citizens, and the Jewish people have moral obligations.

One function of the state is to risk some lives for the sake of others, and one function of serving in the army is to accept that risk.

We owe enormous gratitude to those who accept that risk. In a halakhic sense, we should probably expand our sense of self to include them, and those whose selves already include them. Donne wrote that

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

This is true and essential. But it’s not clear to me that it is emotionally healthy, or even survivable, even on the smaller scale I am suggesting here. Moreover, this attitude can detract from the unique anxiety, and HaMakom yenachem the grief, of spouses, family, and friends. Carrying your fellow’s burden (nosei b’ol chaveiro) must not become a claim of ownership.

With all those caveats, this dvar torah is dedicated l’ilui nishmat Zechariah Haber hy”d, and for the consolation of his parents Aharon and Miriam, his immediate and extended family, and the Yeshivat Har Etzion community. As his uncle Professor Michael Segal said in his hesped, may we soon see the realization of the nevuot nechamah of Sefer Zechariah.

SoBFLaBMoBHoLDoF and Free Will

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

There is no discernible pattern in Pharaoh’s reactions to the plagues.  Let me show you what I mean.

There really are (at least) ELEVEN DEMONSTRATIONS rather than TEN PLAGUES. Mosheh’s first appearance before Pharaoh involves his and Aharon’s staffs turning into snakes. Everything about that episode formally matches the structure of the plagues; it’s just that the audience is limited to the Egyptian Court. So we’ll number the elements of the narrative 0-10, with zero being SNAKES, one being BLOOD, and ten being FIRSTBORNS. (Rabbi Yehudah would have generated the acronym: SoBFLaBMoBHoLDoF.)  

Here are what I see as the four key elements of the Torah’s descriptions of Pharaoh’s reactions.

A. What is the root of the verb which describes the effect on Pharaoh’s heart?

0) chzk  1) chzk  2) kbd  3) chzk  4) kbd  5) kbd  6) chzk  7) chzk  8) chzk  9) chzk  10) NA

B. Does Pharaoh’s heart chzk/kbd itself; does Pharaoh chzk/kbd his own heart; or does G-d chzk/kbd Pharaoh’s heart?

0) itself  1) itself  2) Pharaoh  3) itself  4) Pharaoh  5) itself  6) G-d  7) itself  8) G-d  9) G-d  10) NA

C. Does the Torah say that Hashem predicted Pharaoh’s reaction?

0) Yes   1) Yes   2) Yes   3) Yes   4) No  5) No  6) Yes  7) Yes  8) No  9) No  10) NA

D. Does Pharaoh at first make an admission of guilt or a concession?

0) No  1) No  2) Yes  3) No  4) Yes  5) No  6) No  7) Yes  8) Yes  9) Yes           10) NA

The absence of patterns almost jumps off the page even within each variable, let alone if one tries to correlate the variables. What does this mean?

One possibility is that the Torah uses different roots interchangeably, there is no significance to whether a verb is passive or active, and so on.  We might call this an Ibn Ezra approach. 

A second possibility is that the story is not, in its details, the inexorable unfolding of a Divine plan. G-d and Mosheh and Aharon don’t know in advance how Pharaoh will react to their provocations. Sometimes Pharaoh confounds His and their expectations and sets the whole process back, and they have to retrace the steps of his conditioning.

I have a bias toward the second approach. Let’s see what opportunities it opens for interpreting Demonstration 5, the plague of MURRAIN/dever. Here’s the relevant text (9:4-7):

G-d will distinguish between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Mitzrayim

and there will not die from all that belongs to Israel anything (davar).

Hashem set a time, saying:

Tomorrow Hashem will do this thing (davar)in the land.

Hashem did this thing (davar) on the morrow

All the cattle of Egypt died

but from the cattle of the Children of Israel not one died (lo meit echad).

Pharaoh sent

and behold! There did not die from among the cattle of the Children of Israel even one (ad echad)

Pharaoh’s heart hardened

and he did not send forth the nation.

The psychological difficulty in the passage is evident. Pharaoh sends to verify G-d’s prediction that no davar belonging to a Jew would die. The report he receives confirms the miracle; lo meit ad echad. Yet he does not free the Jews!

Literarily, the best reading would have Pharaoh reaffirming his defiance because of the report.  But can that make any psychological sense?

The passage has three descriptions of what happened to the Jewish cattle. G-d predicts to Mosheh that no davar from among them will die; the narrator confirms that not one (echad) among them died; and then Pharaoh receives a report confirming that not even up to one (ad echad) among them died. It seems plausible to suggest that the differences among these reports are significant.

I have not however found any explanations of the difference between davar and echad (other than suggesting that davar is a play on the potential cause of death, the murrain/dever). But the commentators offer a plethora of explanations for the difference between echad and ad echad. Most of these assume that echad expresses the Divine perspective while ad echad expresses Pharaoh’s.

Let’s start with Shemot Rabbah 11:4.

“What is the meaning of ‘ad echad’?

Even a head of cattle belonging half to a nonJew and half to a Jew did not die”.

The semantic claim of this midrash is that ad echad means “even less than one”, with ad perhaps translated as “approaching”. The sociological framework is fascinating. Jews and Egyptians owned cattle together, as formal partners!

A semantic difficulty is that Shemot 14:28 states that the waters of the Reed Sea covered over the charging Egyptian troops until ad echad of them was not left; does this mean that even half-Egyptians died? If yes – patrilineals, matrilineals, or both? 

(The same difficulty applies to Judges 4:16, where Sisera’s army has not ad echad left, and 2 Samuel 17:22, where David’s entire entourage escapes across a river.)

Netziv points out that this midrash can explain the continuity of the murrain demonstration. Pharaoh sought a way to avoid facing the implication of the plague’s differentiation between Jewish and Egyptian cattle. What if jointly owned cattle survived? Pharaoh could regard them as Egyptian, and thus as evidence that the plague had not gone as Mosheh predicted.

However, Netziv does not agree that ad echad includes animals owned by partners. Perhaps the existence of such a partnership would not match his conception of a master-slave society, or perhaps he thought that Pharaoh would understand that Mosheh’s prediction would come down on the side of such animals surviving. Netziv suggests instead that ad echad included animals that were owned by Egyptians but rented by Jews for their milk or shearings.

Ibn Ezra notes that a midrash to Shemot 14:28 takes ad echad in the opposite direction, leaving open the possibility of one survivor – Pharaoh himself. Ibn Ezra rejects this out of hand because Tehillim 106:11 states that “not echad of them was left over”, and Tehillim 136:15 states that G-d drowned “Pharaoh and his soldiers”. 

The midrash might reply that Pharaoh was drowned along with his men, but not drowned to death.  But how would it understand ad echad in our context? Which animal uniquely survived, and thus justified Pharaoh’s disbelief?

Various commentators come up with ways for one Egyptian to have illicitly possessed one animal that G-d considered Jewish, but none of these are compelling.

Malbim takes ad echad back the other way. On the basis of Mosheh’s prediction, Pharaoh expected one animal to survive that did not. Recall the existence of one human being who was half-Jewish and half-Egyptian; the son of Shelomit bat Divri and the Egyptian man who ends up cursing G-d (Vayikra 24:10-12). Since before Sinai the halakhah used patrilineal descent to determine Jewishness, G-d treated him as Egyptian at this stage, and killed his animal. But Pharaoh regarded him as Jewish, and therefore saw his animal’s death as undoing Mosheh’s prediction that no Jewish cattle would die.

(We could easily reverse Malbim’s argument, and have the animal confound Pharaoh by surviving.  But Malbim thinks that Vayikra makes clear that the Jews did not see the man as Jewish without conversion, and he thinks the way to explain that is by saying that matrilineality was the law only for children born post-Sinai. Pharaoh may have used the Nuremberg standard.)

All these approaches beg an important question. They assume that the plague failed to convince Pharaoh because he made an error of fact or law, whereas G-d knows all.  But couldn’t G-d have solved the problem by acting in accordance with Pharaoh’s erroneous assumption, and thus brought the Jews out five plagues earlier? Maybe not. Maybe G-d cannot act dishonestly even for a just end.

Or: Maybe human beings have an infinite capacity to find linguistic loopholes in predictions. No matter how closely G-d tried to match Pharaoh’s expectations, he would have found a gap. Whichever way G-d intended, he would have interpreted the facts as defying the prediction. 

Ultimately, we are only convinced when we are willing to be convinced. This is true of the Jews as well as Pharaoh.

This seems to me the best explanation of the psychological messiness of the plague narrative. G-d cannot manipulate Pharaoh absolutely, or else He would be able to manipulate us absolutely. 

A perfectly linear Exodus narrative would have taught the Jews that G-d’s grant of human free will is not sincere. Watching Pharaoh struggle with G-d teaches us instead that He is sincere, and that we cannot blame Him for our own choices.

This does not mean that all interpretations are equally likely. Room for interpretation equals room for free will. But we are responsible for our misinterpretations, as Pharaoh was responsible for his. This is the case for both history and halakhah.  

Was Mosheh Rabbeinu an American Religious Zionist?

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

How old was Moshe when he first went out to his brothers? Shemot Rabbah appears to root three different positions in the acerbic response he gets from a Jew the next day:

וַ֠יֹּאמֶר:

מי שמך לאיש שר ושפט עלינו

He said:

Who made you

a man

officer

and judge

over us?

Rabbi Yehudah said:

Mosheh was twenty years old at that time;

They said to him: 

You are not yet fit to be an officer-and-judge over us, because discernment comes at age forty.

But Rabbi Nechemyah said:

He was forty years old;

They said to him:

Certainly you are an adult, but you are not fit to be an officer-and-judge over us.

But the Rabbis say:

They said to him:

Aren’t you the son of Yocheved? Why do they call you ‘son of Bityah’? 

You seek to be an officer-and-judge over us?! We’ll inform about what you did to the Egyptian!

Rabbi Yehudah says that Mosheh was perceived as a hothead youth; maybe someday a leader, but not yet. Other versions of his position make Moshe twelve years old, or twenty-five; the point is the same. The Rabbis argue that Moshe was rejected utterly as a poseur. Rabbi Nechemyah’s position seems to be that Mosheh was rejected simpliciter, with no specific reason. (It’s not clear to me whether “the Rabbis” convey a separate position or an explanation of Rabbi Nechemiah’s. They are cited in Aramaic, the others in Hebrew, but I have not made a serious effort to retrace the redactional process.)

If Rabbi Yehudah is correct, perhaps Moshe can become more effective just by growing older (perhaps even just appearing older would work). But the Rabbis need some other form of change. (They may also need the blackmail threat to recede, but I don’t think that would be sufficient.)

All three positions attribute the rejection to a “they”, whereas the Torah puts it in the mouth of a “he”, specifically in the mouth of the man whom Mosheh has just called רשע = wicked. 

Chazal famously identify the two Jewish combatants as Datan and Aviram, equally wicked, although the text suggests that Mosheh addressed only one of them as rasha. So perhaps “they” refers to Datan and Aviram. 

But that reading does not compel me. I think the midrash reads the man as speaking for all the Jews when he rejects Moshe. Moshe in turn sees the man as a representative Jew, and concludes that the Jews do not deserve his intervention. 

I don’t know whether this mutual rejection was “part of the plan”. If the Jews had responded to Mosheh’s rebuke by repenting, would redemption have happened immediately? If Mosheh had responded to rejection by meditating deeply on the psychology of reproof, would he have been able to win them over? 

When G-d calls Mosheh to leadership, he reassures him that all the people seeking your nefesh (i.e. seeking to kill you) have died. Generational change apparently left Mosheh with name recognition but otherwise an almost blank slate. The question is whether he and/or the Children of Israel and/or other circumstances have changed in ways that will allow him to lead effectively. 

Shemot 2:23-25 describes one set of apparent changes:

וַיְהִי֩ בַיָּמִ֨ים הָֽרַבִּ֜ים הָהֵ֗ם 

וַיָּ֙מָת֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרַ֔יִם 

וַיֵּאָנְח֧וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל מִן־הָעֲבֹדָ֖ה 

וַיִּזְעָ֑קוּ 

וַתַּ֧עַל שַׁוְעָתָ֛ם אֶל־הָאֱל-ֹהִ֖ים מִן־הָעֲבֹדָֽה:

וַיִּשְׁמַ֥ע אֱ-לֹהִ֖ים אֶת־נַאֲקָתָ֑ם 

וַיִּזְכֹּ֤ר אֱ-לֹהִים֙ אֶת־בְּרִית֔וֹ אֶת־אַבְרָהָ֖ם אֶת־יִצְחָ֥ק וְאֶֽת־יַעֲקֹֽב:

וַיַּ֥רְא אֱ-לֹהִ֖ים אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל 

וַיֵּ֖דַע אֱ-לֹהִֽים.

It was in those many days

the king of Egypt died;

The Children of Israel groaned from the labor; and they screamed;

Their plea rose to G-d from the labor;

G-d heard their torment;

G-d remembered His covenant with Avraham, with Yitzchak, and with Yaakov;

G-d saw the Children of Israel;

G-d knew.

This paragraph emphasizes the drumbeat of G-d’s k’b’yakhol experiences; He hears, remembers, sees, and knows. But it’s key that the Children of Israel do not turn to Him – they merely scream, and that scream makes its way up to G-d despite not being directed toward Him. There is no religious revival. The only possibly relevant change in Bnei Yisrael is a deeper experience of oppression. 

Moreover, it seems that the action resulting from G-d’s experience is His call to Mosheh at the Burning Bush. We are not given any time-relationship between G-d’s “knowledge” and that call. It seems plausible that G-d “knows” soon after Moshe flees, but that the call takes place as many as sixty-eight years later. In other words, G-d’s response cannot become manifest until Mosheh is ready.

I suggest more radically that G-d “knows” early enough that His initial response is Mosheh going out to his brothers. When that fails, redemption must wait until Mosheh is ready to try leading again.

How does Mosheh change in the interim, aside from growing (much) older? He shepherds his father-in-law’s sheep. Many commentaries use this as an occasion for paeans to the meditative and religious qualities of pastoral life, along the line of early olim reading Kant while shepherding. We can imagine Mosheh discovering a stable and mature faith in G-d over those years. But this seems likely to be a projected fantasy, like almost all pastoral poetry. 

Others contend that Mosheh was hiding from Pharaoh, so he took the kind of menial profession that allows anonymity and where no one would suspect that he was actually an Egyptian aristocrat. 

Many rishonim had access to a Chronicles of Mosheh that described his adventures conquering Ethiopia, and marrying an Ethiopian wife. They differ as to whether those adventures came before or after he killed the Egyptian. Those stories seek to provide Moshe with leadership experience. But it’s hard to give these stories plot-significance when the Torah leaves them out.

What the Torah tells us is וישב בארץ מדין וישב על הבאר = He yashav in the Land of Midyan and yashavnext to the well. Some commentaries read the two yashavs as creating a commonality, meaning that when he settled in Midyan, it was near the well. Others read it as a pun deliberately creating contrast: he settled in the Land, and sometime after, he found occasion to be sitting by a well. The first version is simply prudent behavior in a desert, especially for a stranger to the land. The second, however, suggests that he was looking to marry. 

It teaches us much that Mosheh thinks the best way to find a wife is through chivalrous deeds, or alternatively, that he cannot keep to an agenda in the presence of injustice. The latter failing, or virtue, might have created a need to flee again, but a new adoptive father comes along. Note however that Mosheh’s intervention may not have positive social justice consequences, any more than his intervention in Egypt did. Yitro’s sheep may be forced to more distant wells, and that in turn, or fear of retaliation, may force Mosheh to replace Yitro’s daughters as shepherds. So Moshe may not have learned anything new about leadership. But the intervention certainly gets him a wife.

It is therefore tempting to say that marrying Tzipporah is what makes Mosheh fit for leadership. Possibly Mosheh thinks this, which is why he initially takes Tzipporah and the children along toward Egypt. Tzipporah plays an explicitly crucial role when she circumcises (whichever child she circumcises) at the inn and thereby saves both father and child. Then she disappears from the story, and plausibly she never actually makes it down to Egypt. So that single episode must be what makes Mosheh a viable leader. What does he learn from it?

The easy answer is that no matter how much Mosheh invested himself personally in the Jewish people, he could not be the Jewish leader until he bound his descendants’ fate as well. We may not appreciate how hard this decision was for him, to the point that his wife had to make it for him. 

In general, it is useful to understand that making a decision for oneself can be much easier than imposing that decision on one’s children; and conversely, that people who have made decisions that bind their children have legitimately grounds for resisting mussar from people who bind only themselves, no matter how deeply and sincerely.  Nonetheless, the Jews in Egypt might have saved themselves a lot of trouble, and formed a much better society, had they responded differently to Mosheh’s original critique.