The Infant Shepherd

INSIGHTS
The Extended Arm
What to do when there’s nothing to be done
The Cosmic Editor
With your computer, you can juggle words, rearrange sentences and move entire chapters with ease. Now you can do the same with your life

We all know the story of how Moses’ mother, to save him from Pharaoh’s decree that all newborn Jewish males be drowned in the Nile, placed the three-month-old infant in a basket and concealed it in the rushes that grew along the riverbank; and how Pharaoh’s daughter discovered the weeping child when she went to bathe in the river, and raised him in the royal palace.

There is one detail in this story that is the subject of some confusion. Where, exactly, was Moses’ basket placed? In the Torah’s account, we read: “And she placed it in the rushes, on the bank of the river.”[1] According to this, Moses was not placed in the Nile itself, but on the Nile’s shore.[2] A few verses later, however, the Torah tells us that Pharaoh’s daughter named the child she found Moses (“the drawn one”), “because I have drawn him from the water.”[3]

The Torah is G-d’s blueprint for creation, whose every detail is of eternal relevance to our lives. If the Torah tells us that Moses’ mother placed him on the riverbank, this means that she could not have placed him in the Nile itself; if the Torah tells us that Pharaoh’s daughter subsequently took him from the Nile’s waters, this means that it was crucial that he be in the river at that time. And if the Torah troubles itself to tell us all this, this means that it is important to our understanding of the event and its application to our lives today.

The Gaon of Rogachov (Rabbi Joseph Rosen, 1858-1936) offers a halachic (Torah-legal) explanation for the basket’s change of location. Moses’ mother could not have initially placed him in the Nile itself because the Nile was worshipped by the Egyptians as a god, and it is forbidden to make use of an object of idol-worship even to save oneself.[4] However, Torah law also stipulates that if an idol-worshipper renounces his idol, it becomes “nullified” and permissible for use.[5] Our sages tell us that Pharaoh’s daughter “came down to the river to bathe”[6] not only in the physical sense, but also “to cleanse herself from her father’s idols.”[7] Her renunciation of the paganism of Egypt nullified the river’s idolatrous status, and its waters could now receive and shelter Moses. It was at this point that Moses’ basket entered the Nile.[8]

Why was it important that Moses should be in the Nile? The Midrash tells us that Pharaoh’s astrologers had told him that “the savior of Israel will meet his end by water,” which was why Pharaoh decreed that all male Jewish babies should be thrown into the Nile. When Moses was in the river, the astrologers told Pharaoh, “The savior of the Jews has already been cast into the water.” Thus Moses’ entry into the Nile brought the end of Pharaoh’s decree.[9]

Very little rain falls in Egypt. Agriculture is completely dependent on the Nile, whose overflow fills a network of irrigation canals. The ancient Egyptians therefore deified the Nile, regarding it as the ultimate source of sustenance and the ultimate endower of life.

This was the deeper significance of Pharaoh’s decree to drown Jewish children in the Nile. Pharaoh knew that if the next generation of Jews were submerged in the Nile-cult of Egypt—if they were raised to regard the natural purveyors of sustenance as gods—the Jewish faith would be obliterated. The message of a One G-d who is the creator and source of all, which so threatened his pagan oligarchy, would be silenced forever.

One can say that Nile-worship is as prevalent today as it was in the days of the Pharaohs. Today’s “Nile” may be a college degree, a career, social standing—anything that is venerated as a provider of sustenance and life. These are tools of sustenance, as the Nile is an instrument of G-d’s sustenance of those who dwell along its banks; but when the vehicle is confused with the source—when a person submerges his entire self in the “Nile,” investing his choicest energies in the perfection of the instrument rather than the cultivation of his relationship with its divine wielder—this is idolatry.

Moses is the raaya meheimna, the “faithful shepherd” of Israel.[10] The words raaya meheimna also mean “shepherd of faith”—i.e., one who feeds faith to his flock.[11] Moses’ primary role was to nurture the faith of his people, to broaden it, deepen it and develop it so that they became completely permeated with a knowledge of G-d and the understanding that “There is none else besides Him”[12]—that all the “Niles” of the world are not forces or realities in their own right, but merely vehicles of divine sustenance.

Moses was eighty years old when he took the people of Israel out of Egypt, led them to Mount Sinai, and fed them the ultimate infusion of divine knowledge, the Torah. But he was already a “shepherd of faith” at the age of three months, when he was instrumental in dethroning the arch-idol of Egypt and putting an end to the drowning of Israel’s children in its waters.

Based on the Rebbe’s talks on Shabbat Parshat Shemot of 5722 (1962) and 5723 (1963)[13]

The Torah relates that “Pharaoh’s daughter ... saw the basket among the rushes; and she dispatched her maid (ammatah) and took it.”[14]

Another interpretation of this verse renders the Hebrew word ammatah as “her arm” rather than “her maid.” Accordingly, the verse reads, “...she dispatched her arm and took it.” What does it mean that Pharaoh’s daughter “dispatched her arm”? Our sages explain that the basket holding the infant Moses lay far beyond her reach. Nevertheless, she extended her hand toward it. A miracle occurred and “her arm was extended for many arm-lengths,” enabling her to take the child and save him from her father’s decree.[15]

There is a profound lesson here for each and every one of us. Often, we are confronted with a situation that is beyond our capacity to rectify. Someone or something is crying out for our help, but there is nothing we can do: by all natural criteria, the matter is simply beyond our reach. So we resign ourselves to inactivity, reasoning that the little we can do won’t change matters anyway.

But Pharaoh’s daughter heard a child’s cry and extended her arm. An unbridgeable distance lay between her and the basket containing the weeping infant, making her action seem utterly pointless. But because she did the maximum of which she was capable, because her hand did not hang idle while a fellow human being needed her help, she achieved the impossible. Because she extended her arm, G-d extended its reach, enabling her to save a life and raise the greatest human being ever to walk the face of the earth.

What is the difference between a good piece of writing and a poorly-written one? What, for that matter, is the difference between a book that brings joy and enlightenment to its readers and a work that espouses prejudice and hate? Both are comprised of the very same letters and punctuation marks. It is only their configuration that is different.

The same characters that, lined up one way, make a work of art, are a boorish scribble when arranged differently. The same words might form a celebration of goodness or a diatribe of utter virulence, depending on the sequence in which they are placed.

With this analogy, the Kabbalah explains the mystery of evil. If everything comes from G-d, and G-d is the essence of good, where does evil come from? But evil is a nonentity, explain the Kabbalists, devoid of any reality or substance. What we know as “evil” is merely a corruption of good—the same letters differently configured.

This explains how we have the power to “transform darkness into light and bitterness into sweetness.”[16] When confronted with the enormity of evil in our world, we should remember that evil is not itself evil—it is goodness in the form of evil. We need not vanquish the darkness and generate light in its place; we need not eradicate the bitterness and manufacture the sweetness to replace it; we need only rearrange the letters. All the world needs is a good editing.

For thousands of years, the writer who did not “get it right” the first time had to start all over again.

Whether engraving in clay or stone, inscribing on papyrus or parchment, or banging away at a typewriter, the writer’s first efforts usually ended up being discarded. He or she could erase, apply white-out fluid, cross out words and insert others between the lines or in the margins—up to a point. In the end, a fresh, new sheet would invariably be rolled into the typewriter for a “clean” (and hopefully) final copy.

Then came the computer and, with it, the word processor. Now the writer could juggle words, move sentences from one page to another, salvage lines from failed paragraphs and save them for use in another context. Across the globe, the sound of balled-up pages being thrown into the wastebasket began to die out.

Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidism, taught that, “Everything that a person sees or hears should teach him a lesson in his service of the Almighty.” Everything—whether it is a natural phenomenon, a quirk of human nature, a technological development or a news story—can tell us something about our life’s purpose. Because the world in which we live—our own everyday, mundane world—is a mirror of the spiritual cosmos.

We know that history is a process—a process by which the whole of creation advances toward the fulfillment of its function as a home for G-d. The climax of history is the era of Moshiach—a time when all ignorance, animosity, suffering and want will be eliminated from the face of the earth. A time when the letters of creation will be perfectly configured, so that the very forces that formerly spelled “evil” will now be channeled as forces for good.

The evolution of writing reflects our world’s progression toward this ideal. In earlier generations, the task of “editing” the forces of creation was beset with false starts, abandoned efforts and wasted resources.[17] But today we live in the age of electronic writing; today, the task of aligning the letters of our lives in their proper configuration is more accessible and more “user friendly” than it has ever been.

The following is a freely-translated excerpt from a letter the Rebbe wrote in the fall of 1961 to a Jewish woman living in Madagascar:

...It was with pleasure that I received regards from you and your husband, through Rabbi Joseph Weinberg, upon the latter’s return from his visit in your community. It was a double pleasure to hear from him about your and your husband’s warm and willing response to the task of unifying the Jewish families in your area and bringing them closer to the practice of Judaism; especially that your husband has taken it upon himself to teach the children, which is of increased importance in our times, for today it is the children who influence their parents.

Certainly you and your husband are aware of the principle of “specific divine providence”—a principle that is a mainstay of our faith in general, and of the teachings of Chassidism in particular. “Specific divine providence” means that every event, great or small, that occurs in the world, whether involving an inanimate object, a growing thing, an animal or a human being, in its every detail and sub-detail, does not occur by chance, G-d forbid, but is specifically ordained by G-d as part of His intentions and purpose in His management of the world.

Therefore, it goes without saying that when a Jew finds himself in a distant corner of the world, far from his homeland, far from any established Jewish community, this is certainly not by chance. This Jew should see himself as an emissary of the Omnipresent through whom G-d’s word may reach also this corner of the world, bringing about an increase of justice and righteousness among all its inhabitants, and spreading the teachings and observances of Judaism among its Jews.

In such a case, one should not look upon the number of individuals that one has the opportunity to influence. Our sages have said, “Whoever upholds a single Jewish soul, it is as if he has upheld an entire world.”[19] If this is true at all times, how much more so does it apply to our generation, after the destruction, Heaven forfend, of such a significant portion of our people. Today, every surviving Jew is a “brand salvaged from the fire”[20] who must not only fulfill his own role, but also take the place of those who perished in sanctification of G-d’s name...[21]

[9]. Midrash Rabbah, Shemot 1:24. The true import of what Pharaoh’s astrologers saw was that it would be decreed that Moses die in the desert as a result of the “waters of contention,” as related in Numbers 20:1-13.

[17]. Ultimately, of course, there is no “waste” in G-d’s world. Everything has a purpose, and every expenditure of human potential—even the most misguided and erroneous—contributes to the realization of the divine plan. However, Chassidic teaching distinguishes between two types of negative phenomena: a) negative things or states that can be rectified and transformed into good; b) negative things and states “whose destruction is their rectification.” The latter category are things that exist only in order to serve as challenges to us, so that they fulfill their purpose by being overcome and destroyed.

Thus, a negative experience is “utilized” when we uncover the strength within ourselves to put it behind us and make a fresh start; the time and effort expended might have been a “waste” in the literal sense, but, in truth, they have contributed to our development. However, there also exists a higher level of utilization, exemplified by the “word processor” model—when the ”false start” itself is transfigured into the final product.

[18]. Editor’s note: The talk on which this article is based was delivered by the Rebbe in the summer of 1953. In that talk, the Rebbe used the analogy of the advancement of printing technology from the linotype method—in which an entire line or page of type had to be discarded if a mistake was made—to more advanced typesetting machines—in which type could be rearranged more freely—to illustrated his concept of a more readily “editable” world. In this article, we have employed the model of a more recent technological advance in the publishing field to illustrate the same point.