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Talmud Class: In All of Egypt, Why Were There Only Two People to Stand Up to the Pharaoh?
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This week we begin the Exodus story which offers humanity a one-two punch. First, a cruel new Pharaoh who demonizes a vulnerable and marginalized minority and commands “all his people, saying: Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” Exodus 1-22. In other words, baby-killing is state policy. Infanticide is the law of the land. Second, in the face of such cruelty, in all of Egypt, only two people, Shifrah and Puah, stand up to resist. At most two in a whole land fight against manifest cruelty. The rest of the country went along. Why only two? Where was everybody else? How to explain indifference to manifest immorality? In class we will not only read the story of Shifra and Puah, but also a piece of stunning biblical scholarship by an Israeli scholar named Judy Klitsner which sees the Exodus story as what she calls the “subversive sequel” to the Tower of Babel story in Genesis. Brilliant insight which will leave us thinking: what does all of this mean to us now?
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