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The Commentaries
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Notwithstanding its shortcomings, Israel is still one of the Middle East’s rare functioning democracies, with an intense public debate. Its press is combative and free. Moreover, a significant layer of intellectually and politically active people steers public discussions toward the core issues of its society.
Israel did not enter Gaza with the intention of killing Palestinians, just as the Palestinians entered Israel with the intention of killing as many Israelis as possible (without regard for other nationals). Israel’s intention is to free those who were kidnapped and to retribute the direct perpetrators for their atrocities.
“ Our country doesn’t have a problem with Jews. Our Prophet Muhammad married a Jewish woman. Not just a friend—he married her. Our neighbors were Jewish,”
תנ׳׳ך
TaNaKh
Reading the Book of Exodus-שמות Today
Starting with the Book of Exodus (Shemot)- and throughout the following three remaining books of the Torah- the figure of Moses is the guiding force. He is, in fact the single most central figure in the TaNaKh.
The miracles reported in the Bible were supposed to strike the reader as miraculous. Even if some natural phenomena can be found at the heart of the Ten Plagues, the theology rather than the natural history of the plagues intrigued the biblical authors and inspired them to tell the tale of the plagues as they did.
To paraphrase Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Jews do not keep their faith because of the miracles they experience. It is their faith that leads them to interpret their life as miraculous.
all through Jewish history, from the Exodus to the Maccabean Revolt to the rising from the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust to the creation of the modern State of Israel, the end result was not the to-be-expected consequences. It was something that surprised even the most optimistic speculations about human capacity.
“The Hebrew midwives disobey Pharaoh. His own daughter thwarts him, and her maidens assist. This Egyptian princess schemes with female slaves, mother and daughter, to adopt a Hebrew child whom she names Moses. As the first to defy the oppressor, women alone take the initiative which leads to deliverance.”
The Pharaoh of the Book of Exodus is possessed of a ruthless and stubborn character. He is an egocentric, unemotional human being, devoid of all compassion, incapable of feeling the pain of others, shame, or guilt.
What really happened that night, on that day hundreds and hundreds of years ago, when the Book of Exodus tells us that
Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt… And he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said: ‘Rise up, get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. Take both your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone; and bless me also.’
“…we cannot ignore the possible inclusion of the expulsion of the Hyksos in the source materials which was available for literary activities. One may assume that the Hyksos experience was retold in different ways and in different circles through time. This is not to say that the Hyksos experience should be identified with the story about the Israelites living Egypt. However, the Hyksos event could have been part of the … common tradition which the biblical narrator used for background […] exodus and the consequent wanderings in the wilderness are part of a historical chain of happening and traditions […]”
Line- by- line Biblicaltext and commentaries: https://www.21stcenturyjudaism.com/the-book-of-exodus/
Jewish Holidays
The unpredictable, inexplicable help that we encounter With the exodus from Egypt, something radically new happened: history took an unexpected turn, and the world suddenly changed. Exodus, the book that recounts this event, tells us that…
Pessah 2024 The incommensurable suffering of the families and the hostages of the October 7 pogrom; the orphans, widows, parents, brothers, and sisters of the soldiers dying in the war Hamas has imposed upon Israel; the 300…
Jewish Theology
“The four centuries in Egypt pass without a tale worth telling. As with much of Israel’s desert period and the later Babylonian captivity, the Bible considers this sojourn devoid of noteworthy events.”
This kind of historical “blackout” has driven critics to ask: “What was God doing during those years the Israelites suffered under the Egyptians?”