Parsha Shemot - Does Your Name Personify Good or Evil?

Our Torah portion this week, Shemot, Exodus 1:1 - 6:1, begins the story of the Hebrew exodus from Egyptian slavery. Shemot means Names, and the chapter opens by repeating the names of Jacob's sons, emphasizing that these men didn't assimilate into the Egyptian death culture while they resided within it. 

However, this dedication to a higher code of conduct and belief isn't universal among the Hebrews in Egypt. Over the years spent in exile, many do adopt cultural norms of idol worship, voodoo spirituality, and sexual deviance. This descent into paganism parallels their experience of incrementally imposed slavery as ordered by government intent on maintaining power. In the mystical way that God manages human affairs, the spiritual axiom, as within, so without, applies. Our inner attitudes and ideas determine our physical circumstances. Breaking the life giving connection with God leads to bondage, suffering and sorrow. Renewing it brings freedom, healing and happiness.

This Torah portion includes many iconic events. Let's look at a few of them in this context. One is government decreed child murder of all Hebrew male infants concomitant with all Hebrew female infants destined as sex slaves. Immediately after this heinous order, Amram, who will beget Moses, loses faith in Providence. He halts marital relations by divorcing his wife. All the other married Hebrew couples follow suit. Miriam, Amram's daughter, inspires her Father to forego this extreme reaction; instead, she suggests he serve as a faithful example to his community by remarrying his wife and having lots of children. He does and they do. Faith restored, future events take an unexpected turn. Though child murder is required of all Egyptian residents, key players in the story defy it. Many Hebrew mothers and their midwives refuse to comply, and Pharaoh's own daughter rescues baby Moses. Later in the drama, Hebrew leadership, under pressure of increasing atrocities towards their people, realize the need for Heaven's help, and accept Moses' pitch for God directed deliverance.

The personal journey from idolator to believer dramatized in the Exodus story applies universally to people of all walks of life at all times. This animating force underlying all human experience accounts for the ongoing struggle between life and death we see played out at home and abroad in culture and politics.

We each have a role in this ongoing human drama. Our inner attitudes towards God and our fellows determine our actions and future outcomes. We can and must maintain a strong faith in God's love for us as we promote His world here on earth. As this inward approach informs our actions in concert with Divine will, social disintegration brought about by idolatrous promotion and dependency on government funded anti-human policy and propaganda will end. As God consciousness and a desire for rectification expand among the people of the world, child murder and its evil cousins will fade away, ushering in the radiant and good land promised to our enslaved ancestors in Egypt. 

Cecily Routman 

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and good life upon us and upon all Israel. Amen.