Parshat Shemot: January 9, 2026

Dear TBZ Community,

Parashat Shemot, this week’s Torah portion, opens the great Jewish story of oppression and redemption. The beginning of our people’s descent into slavery, it is also the beginning of a long, complicated journey toward freedom. This journey is not just about God redeeming us, but about the humans who act as agents of redemption. Redemption does not happen through divine intervention alone: it happens through human action, through people who see injustice and decide to act.

The story begins not with miracles, and not with plagues (which will come later), but with acts of moral courage that are quiet, risky, and often invisible. It begins with resistance to the oppressive system itself: Shifra and Puah, the midwives who refuse Pharaoh’s command and save the babies; Miriam, who, according to midrash (commentary), challenges her parents when they stop bringing children into the world out of despair, warning that their response may be even worse than Pharaoh’s decree itself; and even Batya, the name given to the daughter of Pharaoh in the midrash, who saves a baby from the Nile, knowing who he is and where he comes from, yet allowing her compassion to override everything else. It is her compassion that ensures that this baby – who will one day become the leader and take the people out – can live. Shifra and Puah’s resistance, Miriam’s vision, and Batya’s compassion are the first steps of the liberation of the Israelites from the oppression of tyranny.

Moses’ story, however, is not so simple. He is a complicated figure in this entire narrative, due in large part to his upbringing, growing up in Pharaoh’s palace and raised as an Egyptian. He benefits from the very system that is crushing his own people. And then there is a moment of transformation, perhaps the moment when everything begins to change for him:

וַיְהִי בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם וַיִּגְדַּל מֹשֶׁה וַיֵּצֵא אֶל־אֶחָיו וַיַּרְא בְּסִבְלֹתָם וַיַּרְא אִישׁ מִצְרִי מַכֶּה אִישׁ־עִבְרִי מֵאֶחָיו

Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen (Exodus 2:11).

This is the moment Moses truly sees: not abstractly, not from a distance, he sees suffering and recognizes it as the suffering of his own people. And then:

וַיִּפֶן כֹּה וָכֹה וַיַּרְא כִּי אֵין אִישׁ וַיַּךְ אֶת־הַמִּצְרִי וַיִּטְמְנֵהוּ בַּחוֹל

He turned this way and that, and seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand (Exodus 2:12).

The Torah does not soften this moment. Moses responds to injustice with violence – and with secrecy. The rabbis are deeply uncomfortable with this. Many commentaries rush to defend Moses: the Egyptian, they say, committed a sin punishable by death; Moses was merely carrying out justice; the act was justified. But if we are honest, this is not such a simple story about Moses. Moses reacts to oppression using the tools of the system that raised him. He uses violence and power. He uses his privilege to both act and to then hide the act. This story raises a deeply relevant question: do the ends justify the means? Does responding to injustice justify an act of violence?

This is, in a way, Moses’ aha moment, in which he awakens to injustice. But it is also a moment that is deeply flawed.

The next day, he tries to intervene again:

וַיֵּצֵא בַּיּוֹם הַשֵּׁנִי וְהִנֵּה שְׁנֵי־אֲנָשִׁים עִבְרִים נִצִּים

When he went out the next day, he found two Hebrews fighting (Exodus 2:13)…

And he is rejected:

מִי שָׂמְךָ לְאִישׁ שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט עָלֵינוּ

“Who made you chief and ruler over us” (Exodus 2:14)?

Suddenly Moses understands that not only is Pharaoh’s system against him, his own people do not yet trust him. When Pharaoh hears of what happened, Moses runs.

By going away, everything changes for Moses. He has to leave both the palace and the power. Later, in the story of the burning bush (where he will encounter God, and where God will reveal Godself through God’s name to Moses), Moses will become the person who can truly face Pharaoh. Perhaps he has to learn that good instincts are not enough, that wanting justice does not automatically make our actions just. And he cannot do this alone. He needs his brother: Aaron, who not only can speak for him, but who is described as rodef shalom, a pursuer of peace. Aaron comes from among the people who are oppressed, while Moses comes from inside the system of oppression. Together, they form leadership that is trustworthy and effective. Moses can face Pharaoh because he knows that world; Aaron can speak to the people because he belongs to them.

This matters.

Perhaps what the Torah is trying to teach us is something deeply relevant, something that some of us can find uncomfortable, and something that remains undeniably urgent. Many of us live inside systems of oppression, even when we oppose them, even when we are angry about them, even when our hearts are in the right place. Like Moses, we are part of the system.

But anger or instinct alone does not redeem. Good intentions alone do not redeem. And violence – physical or moral – often reproduces the very harm we are trying to end.

We are living in a moment when injustice is everywhere we look, and despair is present in our daily lives. When a government that excuses the taking of another sovereign country’s ruler in the name of “justice” (and clearly in the pursuit of power) raises feelings of confusion and alarm, the question of ends and means becomes painfully relevant. We are witnessing in real time a regime that is no longer pretending to follow the rules of democracy or diplomacy. And we know that democracy is not a guarantee, but a choice we must make again and again.

And there is the heartbreak and fear we experience as we witness the brutal reach of systems that dehumanize – through immigration enforcement, through policing, through policies that treat some lives as disposable. We mourn Renee Nicole Good, who was killed in Minnesota by an ICE agent. Her death is a devastating reminder of how power, fear, and violence intersect, and how easily human life is erased.

Torah comes to inspire us and to remind us that the journey toward liberation and redemption is complicated, that much learning is required along the way. We need to find within ourselves the resistance, the vision, and the compassion of the midwives, Miriam, and Batya. And like Moses, we must be in relationship with God, with people, and with humility, recognizing our own power, our own privilege, and our own responsibility, and then learning how to use them for good.

May this Shabbat give us the courage to see injustice clearly, the humility to examine our own power, and the wisdom to act – not alone, not violently, not secretly, but in partnership, in relationship, and in pursuit of a freedom that does not leave anyone behind.

May we find strength, courage, and patience.
May all who are ill or suffering find healing.
May the brokenhearted be comforted.
May we stay open-hearted in a world that teaches us to close.
And may we continue to seek, in prayer and in action, a path that honors all life.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rav Claudia