Parsha for Kids: Shemot 2023
Below is the transcript for this week’s episode of Parsha for Kids, Shemot 2023.
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Season 2 Episode 1:
Hello! My name is Chana, and this is Parsha for Kids. The Parsha of the week is Shemot, or Shemos. Shemot means “Names.”
But whose names? And why are we mentioning names?
This refers to the names of all the members of Bnei Yisrael who came down to Egypt with Yaakov.
But wait! Didn’t we already learn this information back in Sefer Bereshit?
We did.
So why are the names repeated here?
Rashi brings down a beautiful idea. He says that even though they had already been listed while they were still alive, now God is mentioning them after their deaths. Rashi says that Bnei Yisrael are compared to the stars. There is a verse that is later stated by the Prophet Yeshaya (in Chapter 40, verse 26 of his book) that says that God takes out the stars from beyond the horizon and makes them visible in the sky. God also brings them back in by number and by name. In the same way that God knows the name of every star, so too he mentioned every member of Yaakov’s family by name.
As I mentioned previously, at this point Yosef had died. But not only had Yosef died, but everyone from that generation died.
God had previously promised that He would make Bnei Yisrael multiply. He began to make this happen. Bnei Yisrael were fruitful and swarmed and increased and became very very strong, and the entire land of Egypt was filled with them.
How do you think the Egyptians felt about this?
TRANSITION
There were two different ways the Egyptians could feel about this. After all, the land of Egypt was their land while the land of Canaan was the land that the Israelite God had said would belong to Bnei Yisrael.
So maybe the Egyptians wouldn’t like that so many members of Bnei Yisrael were being born. Maybe they would be concerned there wouldn’t be enough room for Egyptians and Hebrews to live in Egypt.
Alternatively, maybe the Egyptians were still grateful to Yosef, who had saved the generation that had died out from the harsh famine. Maybe because they were grateful, they would be happy to share their land with the Hebrews.
The Torah tells us that a new king rose over Egypt, one who didn’t know Yosef.
It’s not surprising that a new king wouldn’t know Yosef. After all, Yosef and his brothers and that entire generation had died out. But wouldn’t the new king know of Yosef? Wouldn’t he know the story about the Hebrew who had saved all the Egyptians from famine?
There are rabbis who ask this question. And so some rabbis believe that this actually was the same Pharoah who had been king in Yosef’s day. But now he pretended like he didn’t know Yosef.
Why would someone pretend like this?
Because it means that they don’t have to be grateful. When you are grateful to another person, you won’t hurt them. Because you recognize they did something good for you and you appreciate the good thing they did. The difficulty was, this Pharoah didn’t want to be grateful to Yosef because he was worried about so many Hebrews being born and multiplying in Egypt.
The new Pharoah- whether he was truly a new king or one who simply acted in a new way, pretending he had never heard of Yosef- told his people: “Bnei Yisrael has become larger and stronger than us. Come, let us outsmart them, because otherwise they will continue to increase and one day a war might start and they will join our enemies and fight against us and leave the land.”
It makes sense that Pharaoh wouldn’t want Bnei Yisrael to fight against the Egyptian nation. But wouldn’t it be a good thing if Bnei Yisrael left the land of Egypt? Isn’t the whole reason Pharoaah started to feel afraid was becauase he worried that there were too many Hebrews in the land? Shouldn’t he be happy if the Hebrews want to leave?
Rashi is also bothered by this question. He suggests that what Pharaoh really meant was that if Bnei Yisrael joined his enemies, they would take the land of Egypt for themselves and force the native Egyptians to leave. But this was such a terrible thought that Pharaoh did not even want to articulate it.
TRANSITION
The Egyptians had been living alongside the Hebrews for a number of years. So they didn’t just transition to being cruel all at once. The first thing Pharoah did was command Bnei Yisrael to come work for him. They needed to build store cities for Pharoah. This was not so unusual. It happens often that people who live in a country need to pay a tax, whether by paying money to their government or by having to perform work or serve in the army of their government. Pharoah thought that Bnei Yisrael would be so tired from building these store cities that they wouldn’t have time to have more babies.
But this didn’t happen. In fact, Bnei Yisrael ended up having even more children! So Pharoah had the taskmasters intensify the work. Now Bnei Yisrael were actually enslaved. They had to perform farech, backbreaking labor that crushes the body. They each had to make a certain number of bricks every single day and would be punished if they did not meet their quota.
Then Pharoah spoke to the meyaldot ha’ivriyot. The words meyaldot ha’ivriyot could either mean the Hebrew midwives, which would refer to women who themselves were Hebrews and who helped women give birth to babies. Or it could refer to Egyptian midwives who helped Hebrew women have babies. Rashi thinks that the midwives were Hebrew women. But a different commentator called the Malbim believed they were Egyptian women. Either way, they were named or titled Shifra and Puah.
The Malbim, also known as Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel Wasser, lived from March 1809 until September 1879. He explained that Pharoah did not only talk to two midwives, because many more midwives had to assist so many Hebrew women have their babies. Rather, he interprets the words Shifra and Puah as referring to jobs, not names. He says Shifra referred to the the midwife who helped the mother give birth. Puah referred to the midwife who cut the umbilical cord and took care of the new baby. Pharoah spoke to women who served in both of these poitions, thinking that these Egyptian women would follow his commands.
And what were those commands? Pharoah ordered that when the midwives were summoned to help a Hebrew woman give birth, they should look at whether the baby being born was a boy or a girl. If it was a boy, they should quickly kill him and then pretend he had simply died in the process of being born. But if it was a girl, they should let her live.
Of course Hebrew midwives would not want to do this to their fellow Hebrews. But the impressive part has to do with the approach that these were Egyptian midwives. The Egyptian midwives feared God and so they refused to kill the Hebrew baby boys. In fact, they worked hard to save them.
We can learn something incredible from this.
Sometimes an important leader, a king or the government might order us to do something we know is wrong. For example, it was clear to the Egyptian midwives that murdering little baby boys was wrong. And then you have to choose. Should you do the thing your powerful king or government is telling you to do? Or should you do the thing you know is right?
The midwives did the thing they knew was right. This was very dangerous because Pharoah could have punished them for their choice. But they did it anyway.
TRANSITION
Pharoah called the midwives to him again and asked why they weren’t following his commands. They explained to him that the Hebrew women were not like the Egyptian women. The Hebrew women gave birth very quickly, so that by the time the midwives were called to their house, they had already delivered their baby. At that point, there would have been no secret way to kill the baby and pretend he had simply died while being born.
In Hebrew, it says in the pasuk that because the midwives feared God, he built houses for them. What does that mean?
Rashi thinks the midwives were Hebrew women, and therefore he explains that God is the “he” in the pasuk. He, God, made sure that these women would merit to have people who were Leviyim, levites, kohanaim, or priests, melaachim, or kings born from them.
But Malbim says the “he” in the pasuk is Pharoah. Pharoah built houses for the midwives so they were under royal guard, and they were not allowed to leave the houses unless they had permission from the guard. Pharoah wanted to make it impossible for the midwives to hide what they were doing, and to force them into killing the baby boys.
But the midwives still did not obey Pharoah. They were heroic.
So Pharoah went to an even more extreme measure. He announced to the entire Egyptian nation that now they should throw every baby boy that was born into the Nile and let the girls live. That meant that the Egyptian midwives might do their best to save a Hebrew baby boy’s life, but another Egyptian might come along, snatch the boy away, and throw him into the Nile to drown.
TRANSITION
Around this time, a man from the tribe of Levi married a woman from the tribe of Levi. The woman gave birth to a son. When he was born, she saw that he was good. The words in the pasuk are ki tov.
What does that mean?
Rashi looked back into Bereshit when God created the world. The first time it says that something is ki tov it refers to God seeing that the light was good. Because of this, Rashi thinks that when this baby was born, a miracle occurred and the whole house filled with light.
Somehow, this mother was able to hide her baby from the Egyptians for three months. Rashi explains that the reason this was possible was because she gave birth to the baby prematurely, after six months and a day of pregnancy. The Egyptians wrote down everyone’s due dates and so they were only expecting her to give birth at nine months, which is why she had three months where she could hide him.
Realizing she could no longer hide her child, and knowing that the Egyptians would come search her house for him, the mother took a reed basket and smeared it with clay and pitch so that it would float and be waterproof. She placed her son inside of it and then put the baby in the basket on the Nile river.
The baby’s sister watched from far away to see what would happen to her brother.
TRANSITION
Bat Pharoah, Pharoah’s daughter went down to bathe in the Nile. She had maidens who walked with her. She saw the basket floating in the water and asked one of her maidservants to bring it to her.
She opened the basket and saw the boy. He was crying and Pharoah’s daughter felt compassion for him. She said, “This must be one of the children of the Hebrews.” At this point, she could have thrown him into the Nile, as her own father’s law said she should. But that is not what she did.
The baby’s sister approached the daughter of the king. She asked whether Pharoah’s daughter wanted her to bring a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. Pharoah’s daughter agreed and the sister went off to get her mother.
Pharoah’s daughter asked the woman, not knowing it was in fact the baby’s mother, to nurse him. Bat Pharoah told the woman she would pay her for performing this service. Over time, the child grew up and did not need to nurse anymore. The woman brought the child to Bat Pharoah who treated him like he was her own son. She named him, calling him “Moshe” ki min ha’mayim mishitihu- for from the water I drew him out.
It seems remarkable that Pharoah’s own daughter would defy his command. But we should not be so surprised. We already saw that according to the Malbim, the midwives were Egyptian women who were courageous and heroic and knew that killing baby boys was the wrong thing to do. Similarly, Bat Pharoah thought that it was the wrong thing to do.
This is the first story in the Torah of adoption. Even though Bat Pharoah was not Moshe’s biological mother, she was the mother who raised him. It is likely that she instilled in him the same courage and willingness to do the right thing that she possessed.
This means that Moshe was raised with many advantages. His biological mother nursed him and likely showered him with love. His adoptive mother treated him like her own son and raised him even knowing that this was against her father’s rule. Since he was being raised by her in the palace, Moshe did not have to perform the backbreaking labor and slavery that other Hebrews were forced to do. But he was also taught by his adoptive mother that sometimes the right choice is not the easy choice, but rather the difficult choice. It is more important to do what is right than to do what is easy.
TRANSITION
Moshe grew up. He was a Hebrew baby being raised by an Egyptian mother. What would he end up believing? Would he feel the pain of his fellow Hebrews who were working so hard every day as slaves? Or would he identify as an Egyptian, and think that it was right to enslave the Hebrews?
One day Moshe went out to his brothers and looked at their burdens. He saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man.
What would Moshe do?
Moshe looked in both directions and saw that nobody was watching him. Then, he killed the Egyptian man and buried his body in the sand.
By doing this, Moshe made a choice. He identified with the Hebrew slave, the poor, downtrodden and oppressed. Even though he was being raised by a princess, and it would have been easier for him to pretend not to see what was happening, and to act like other Egyptians, he did not choose that. Because what was happening was wrong and Moshe had a strong sense of justice.
Moshe went out the next day as well. He saw two Hebrew men fighting with each other. According to Rashi, one of the men had raised his hand to hit the other. Moshe asked him, “Why are you going to hit your friend?”
The man who had raised his hand said to Moshe, “Who made you a man, a prince and a judge over us? Do you plan to kill me the same way you killed the Egyptian?” Moshe then realized that someone had seen him kill the Egyptian. Moshe became afraid that Pharoah might kill him when he found out what he had done.
Indeed, Pharoah found out what happened. According to Rashi, the very Hebrews Moshe had been trying to help turned against him and informed Pharoah of what he had done. Pharoah tried to kill Moshe so Moshe ran away to the land of Midian. He sat down next to a well.
TRANSITION
How would you feel if you were Moshe right then?
You would probably feel discouraged. Here Moshe was trying to do the right thing. He was trying to help the Hebrews. And then some of the Hebrews turned against him and informed on him! It might make Moshe feel angry or upset. Why should he bother helping anyone? His trying to help had just gotten him into trouble.
As Moshe sat at the well, he noticed seven women approaching. They were the seven daughters of the priest of Midian, a person who served in a high position. These women were trying to water their sheep. But the male shepherds came and chased them away.
This upset Moshe. It was not right. And Moshe decided he wasn’t done helping people. Even if some people weren’t grateful for his help, that wasn’t a reason not to do the right thing. And so he decided to help these women. He rescued them and watered their sheep.
The women came home to their father Re’uel. He was surprised they returned home so quickly because it usually took a long time until the male shepherds would let them water their sheep.
They explained that an Egyptian man had rescued them from the male shepherds. He even drew water for them and gave it to the sheep.
(You may notice that this is similar to what Rivkah did when she drew water for the camels of Avraham’s servant. Or what Yaakov did when he rolled the stone off the well and gave water to Rachel’s sheep. That is because the well is a significant place in the Torah, and important meetings happen there.)
You may be wondering why the women called Moshe an Egyptian. It was because he was wearing Egyptian clothing. He had, after all, been raised by Bat Pharoah, an Egyptian princess.
The women’s father rebuked them for not having shown their gratitude to the man who saved them. “So where is he?” he asked. “Why did you leave him? Invite him, and let him eat bread.”
Moshe agreed to stay with the man, and the man gave his daughter Tziporah to Moshe as a wife. They had a child, a boy, and Moshe named him Gershom, because he said “Ger hayiti b’eretz nachriya” - I was a stranger in a foreign land.
TRANSITION
Many days later, the Pharoah died. Bnei Yisrael groaned in pain, and they cried out, and God heard their cry. And God decided that it was time to redeem His nation from Egypt.
Moshe was a shepherd in those days. He cared for the sheep of his father-in-law, Re’uel, who had another name as well, Yisro, or Yitro. Moshe was pasturing the sheep and he came to the mountain of God, Chorev.
And an angel of God appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a thorn bush. And the bush was burning with fire but it was not consumed.
Moshe became curious. He said, “Let me turn and see this great sight- why does the thorn bush not burn up?”
What Moshe did in this moment, as indeed he had been doing his whole life, was choose to be chosen. From the time Moshe was younger he had decided to care about other people. He cared about the Hebrew man who was being hurt by the Egyptian, which is why Moshe killed the Egyptian man. He cared about the Hebrew man who was striking his fellow Hebrew which is why he tried to intervene. He cared about the women who were being forced away from the well by the male shepherds, which is why he saved them. But it was not only that Moshe was caring and compassionate and had a strong sense of justice.
He was also curious. And it was his curiosity that made him turn in this moment. Curiosity that made sure he would gain access to an incredible opportunity.
God saw that Moshe had turned and God called to him from within the thorn bush. God called, “Moshe, Moshe!”
Moshe said, “Here I am!”
God said “Do not come close. Take your shoes off your feet, because the place where you stand is holy land.” Then God said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Avraaham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.” Moshe covered his face because he was afraid to look at God.
Then God told Moshe that He had seen the pain that Bnei Yisrael were in and that He had decided to rescue His nation and bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey, the land of Canaan. He told Moshe that he was going to send HIM, Moshe, to Pharoah to take God’s people out of Egypt.
How do you think Moshe reacted to this? How would you react?
Maybe you would feel honored God had chosen you and excited about the task. Or maybe you would wonder why you had been chosen.
Moshe’s response was, “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah and that I should take Bnei Yisrael out of Egypt?”
You see, Moshe was a very humble person. He could have thought that he was exactly the right person to do this job- after all, he had been raised by the princess of Egypt, so he knew what it was like to talk to royalty! But that’s not the way he thought of himself.
God told him that He would be with him, and He gave Moshe a sign. He said that when Moshe took the people out of Egypt, they would ultimately come and worship God on that very mountain.
TRANSITION
Moshe had some other concerns. He thought Bnei Yisrael would ask him what God’s name was. God told Moshe to tell Bnei Yisrael that his name was Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh- I will be what I will be. This meant that God was the God of the Past, the Present and the Future.
God predicted that Pharaoh would not listen to Moshe’s requests for the Israelite people to leave Egypt. God told Moshe that he would smite Pharoah and his nation with plagues, and that eventually the Hebrews would be able to leave. But they would not leave empty handed, since according to the deal God made with Avraham in the Brit Bein HaBetarim, God had promised they would not. They would leave carrying much silver and gold.
Moshe worried that Bnei Yisrael would not believe him. So God gave him signs to prove He had appeared to Moshe. First, he had Moshe’s staff turn into a snake, and then back into a staff. Next, he had Moshe put his hand next to his chest. It turned white with Tzaraat, a special kind of leprosy. When Moshe put his hand back, it went back to normal skin color again. God also told Moshe that if Bnei Yisrael did not believe either of these miracles, Moshe could take water from the Nile and spill it on the dry land, and the water would turn into blood.
Moshe stil protested Lo ish devarim anochi- I am not a man of words. Kvad peh u’kvad lashon anochi- I am heavy of mouth and tongue. Moshe did not feel like he was eloquent or a good speaker. Rashi explains that Moshe spoke with a stammer.
God asked, “Who gave man a mouth, or who makes one mute or deaf or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? So go- I will be with your mouth and I will instruct you what to speak.”
Moshe still wanted God to send someone else. At this point, God got angry. He told Moshe that his brother Aharon would be able to help him. In fact, Aharon was coming to visit Moshe, and God told Moshe that when Aharon saw him, his brother would rejoice in his heart. Moshe would speak to Aharon and give him the words to say and God would be with Aharon’s mouth and Moshe’s mouth.
TRANSITION
Moshe told Yitro that he wanted to go back to Egypt and see whether his brothers, meaning the Hebrews, were still alive. Yitro told him he could go.
God also told Moshe that the people who had once wanted to kill him had died.
Moshe took his wife and sons- now he had two- put them on donkeys and began traveling to Egypt. He held his staff in his hand.
God told him it would not be easy to get Pharoah to let Bnei Yisrael go, and that God would strengthen Pharoah’s heart. But Moshe would still need to tell Pharoah that Bnei Yisrael was God’s firstborn son and that Pharoah needed to send them out.
Moshe was on his way and he stopped at an inn. Then, surprisingly, God tried to kill him. But why would God do that? Rashi says it was because Moshe had not performed a brit milah on his second son, Eliezer. He had good intentions regarding why he didn’t do it- he thought it would be dangerous to perform the brit milah on his son right before they traveled. But he should have done it the first chance he got, and instead he busied himself with arrangements for the inn that he and his family were staying at.
Luckily, Moshe’s wife, Tzipporah, understood what was happening. She took a sharp stone and she performed a Brit Milah on her son, saving Moshe’s life.
TRANSITION
God told Aharon, Moshe’s brother, to go to the desert. Aharon met Moshe at the mountain of God and he kissed him. Moshe told Aharon all the things God had told him. They dropped Tziporah and her sons back off with Yitro, and Moshe and Aharon set out together instead to go do what God had commanded.
Aharon spoke the words and performed the signs in front of Bnei Yisrael and the people believed and they kneeled and bowed down.
Then Moshe and Aharon went to Pharoah. They said, “So said the Lord, God of Israel, Let my people go and let them sacrifice to me in the desert.”
But Pharoah said, “Who is this God that I should listen to Him? I do not know God, and I will not let Bnei Yisrael go.” Because by this time Pharoah and the Egyptians liked having the Hebrews around since the Hebrews were performing slave labor for them.
Moshe and Aharon explained that the God of the Hebrews had appeared to them. They told Pharoah they needed to go on a three day journey in the desert to sacrifice to God so that God would not harm them. But once again, like we saw earlier in the parsha, they didn’t really mean that God would not harm them- they meant that God would not harm YOU, Pharoah, but they spoke respectfully to Pharoah.
Pharoah said, “Why are you disturbing the people from doing their work? Go back to your own work. You are stopping the people from doing their work.”
And Pharoah commanded the Egyptian taskmasters not to give straw to Bnei Yisrael anymore. Now Bnei Yisrael would still have to make their quota of bricks, but they would have to go find the straw for themselves. Why did Pharoah do this? Because he figured if Bnei Yisrael had time to send Moshe to make demands of him, they had gotten used to the work. He figured he needed to make the work harder so they would forget about serving their God in the desert.
The people were angry with Moshe and Aharon because they had caused this change. They complained, telling them that Moshe and Aharon had basically placed a sword in Pharoah’s hands to kill them.
And Moshe cried out to God saying, “Oh God! Why have You harmed these people? Why did you send me? Since I came to Pharoah to speak in your name, you have harmed this people and you have not saved them.”
But God replied, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharoah, for with a mighty hand, yad chazakah, he will send them out and chase them away from this land.”
There is an expression you might have heard before- sometimes things get worse before they get better. This situation was an example of that. It seemed like Moshe had made Bnei Yisrael’s situation worse. But this was only temporary. In the end, God was going to make sure that Pharoah sent out Bnei Yisrael- and he would do it in an unforgettable way, a way that we still discuss nowadays every single Pesach, or Passover.
TRANSITION
So here’s what we learned this week!
Being grateful is extremely important. There is at least one approach that the Pharaoh who started oppressing the Hebrews simply decided not to be grateful to Yosef anymore. That was the wrong choice.
According to the Malbim, the midwives who refused to kill the baby boys were Egyptian women. This shows that people from all nations and religions can and do know right from wrong. These women were heroic and courageous, risking their lives to do the right thing.
Similarly, the woman who saved Moshe was Bat Pharoah, the daughter of Pharoah. She was willing to do the right thing even when it meant going against her own father’s rules. She, a non-Jewish woman, was the person who named Moshe “Moshe,” and that is the name we call him for the rest of his life as a way to honor her. Based on both of these cases, we learn that sometimes we have to take risks to stand up for people who are oppressed even if they are not from our family, nation or religion.
Moshe was the kind of person who did what was right even when it was not easy. We should strive to be like him and make the right choices, not just the easy choices.
God chose Moshe even when Moshe felt like he was not the right fit for the job. Similarly, sometimes in your life God might put you in a situation where YOU have to do something hard or difficult for you. You might not feel like you are the right choice. But you might be the person who is chosen nonetheless, and it is important that you rise to the occasion and lead.
If you have any questions or comments on this week’s episode, please email me at parsha4kids (at) gmail.com. That’s parsha the number 4 kids at gmail.com. Good Shabbos!