January 9, 2009 | 23 Tevet 5770

Psychologists, self-help experts and other helping professionals urge us to be pro-active in our lives whenever we can act in that manner. “Don’t wait until you have to react,” they urge us. “Act now while you can shape and even dictate the nature of your actions as you see fit.” But sometimes we have little choice but to react rather than be pro-active.  Life doesn’t always allow us to anticipate situations. Sometimes we just have to respond.  Sometimes for any number of reasons, it can be difficult to respond to those situations that have actually occurred. Imagine how unsettling and unnerving it can be to react to conditions that haven’t yet occurred, but which one imminently anticipates! Such was the situation that Amram and Yocheved, Moses’ parents, confronted according to a midrash based on our parasha.

The Rabbis imagine that Moses’ parents were married at the time Pharoah gave instruction to the Hebrew midwives to kill every newborn Israelite male (Exodus 1:15-16).  Only after this encounter between Pharoah and the midwives does the Torah explicitly inform us of Amram (“a certain man of the house of Levi”) and Yocheved’s (“a Levite woman”) marriage (Ex. 2:1).  With this background in mind, the Rabbis imagine that, in the wake of Pharoah’s instruction to kill newborn males, Amram and Yocheved separate so as to preclude the birth of any sons. Miriam, their daughter, “comes to the rescue” in order to assure the eventual birth of her brother, Moses:

Rabbi Judah ben Zevina said that Amram followed the counsel of his daughter. A Tanna taught: Amram was the greatest man of his generation. When he saw that the wicked Pharoah had decreed, ‘..if it is a boy, kill him (Gn. 1:16),’ he said: In vain do we labor. He arose and divorced his wife. All of the Israelite men followed suit and divorced their wives. Miriam said to her father: Father, your decree is more severe than Pharoah’s. Pharaoh decreed only against the males whereas you have decreed against the males and females… In the case of the wicked Pharoah there is doubt as to whether his decree will be fulfilled or not, whereas in your case, though you are righteous, it is certain that your decree will be fulfilled… (In response to what Miriam had said) Amram arose and took his wife back; and they all arose and took their wives back (Talmud Sotah 12a).

What was Miriam saying to her father? In effect, she said: By divorcing my mother, you, Father, are acting definitively for all time on the basis of a possibility. Perhaps the possibility is really a probability, but you have no control over Pharoah’s actions. You can only control your own actions. You have decisively acted to end the possibility of new Israelite life… a decree even harsher than the one Pharoah offered... and a decree that might never be implemented!

Of course, none of us will ever face circumstances remotely resembling the ones put forth in our parasha and in this midrash that seeks to shape our understanding of the story.   Nonetheless the lessons of this midrash may speak to us even when the particular circumstances described in it do not.

We ought to strive to act in proactive ways. But when that is not possible and we must react, before we act, we best stop for a moment, think and ask ourselves, “Am I responding to a real situation, one that has actually occurred or am I responding only to a possibility?” If the answer is the latter, you best resist your desire to act, take some time to reflect and wait to act.

Shabbat Shalom.