Eitan Mayer
All of Egypt knelt at Yosef’s feet and begged sustenance, offering their money, their property, and finally themselves in exchange for food (Bereishis 47:13-25). But with the death of Yosef’s generation, the tables began to turn, and Yosef’s descendants found themselves slaves to the Egyptians. How could Bnei Yisroel have plunged so suddenly from privilege to persecution?
The roots of enslavement are struck well before Paraoh appoints taskmasters over Bnei Yisroel. Even during famine, when their lives depended on Yosef’s administrative wizardry, the Egyptians considered it "an abomination" to eat with him or his brothers (Bereishis 43:32); they looked upon the raising of sheep, the occupation of Ya’akov’s family, as another "abomination" (Bereishis 46:34). The Rashbam (Shemos 1:10) implies that even before the Egyptians enslave Bnei Yisroel, they look upon them as potential slaves and fear that this source of labor may one day develop feelings of independence and decide to leave Egypt.
The Seforno (1:8) develops this theme further, suggesting that even though Yosef’s deeds have been written in the official Egyptian royal history, the new king refuses to believe that someone as capable as Yosef could have been part of the nation he sees before him now. The Seforno adds (1:10) that what convinces Paraoh that Bnei Yisroel is the enemy are some of the elements which have fed anti-Semitism over the millennia: Bnei Yisroel have different customs (e.g., circumcision), a different language, a different culture and value system. This, the Seforno says, is behind the Egyptian refusal to break bread with Bnei Yisroel. Paraoh is not merely a leader facing a threatening group, he an anti-Semitic leader of an anti-Semitic society determined to maintain its source of cheap labor and defend itself against alien ‘inferiors.’
Several other hints complete the picture: the Torah uses the word "va-yishretzu" to describe the great increase in Bnei Yisroel’s population (1:7). "Sheretz" usually refers to swarming, rodent-like, creeping-crawling creatures, hardly the word we would choose to describe our own growth! Of the 29 times "sheretz" appears in Tanach, it refers to people in only one other place (Bereishis 9:7). In every other instance, "sheretz" is a swarming or creeping animal; for example, "All swarming creatures [sheretz] which swarm on the ground are disgusting; they are not to be eaten" (Vayikra 11:41).
If you wanted to describe a couple who had been blessed with many children, you would not say, "They multiply like rabbits!" or, "They swarm like cockroaches!" unless you meant to be disrespectful and dehumanizing. In fact, the frogs which are shortly to swarm over Egypt are described using this same word: "The river shall swarm ["sharatz"] with frogs" (Shemot 7:28; cf. Tehillim 105:30). By describing Bnei Yisroel’s growth in this way, the Torah hints that the Egyptians, frightened by Bnei Yisroel’s explosive fecundity and already accustomed to looking at Bnei Yisroel as a lower, alien class, feel threatened by their "swarming," rodent-like multiplication. The solution: Strictly enforced population control.
No Jew living in (or after) the twentieth century needs to be reminded that there is just a hair’s-breadth between thinking of a group of people as essentially inferior and actually treating them as subhuman. If you wanted to convince a group of economically productive people to stay in your area, you would offer them attractive incentives, but if you wanted to get a monkey to stay in your area, you would put him in a cage. It is only because the Egyptians think of Bnei Yisroel as sub-Egyptian that they are able to enslave them and murder their children.
When harsh slave labor fails to control Bnei Yisroel’s population growth (see Ibn Ezra 1:13), Paraoh instructs the midwives to kill all baby boys. But Paraoh soon discovers that his orders have been ignored. When he summons the midwives and demands an explanation, they respond with a ridiculous excuse: "The ‘Ivriyyos’ are not like Egyptian women -- they are ‘hayyos’; before the midwife can get to them, they have already given birth!" (Shemos 1:19). Daniel Jacobson suggested that Paraoh’s willingness to accept this explanation is another manifestation of the Egyptian view of Bnei Yisroel as inherently inferior. Paraoh is not surprised to hear that the women of Bnei Yisroel are "hayyos", "animals," that they give birth without the aid of midwives; this merely confirms his deeply held beliefs about Bnei Yisroel’s inferiority. These people, "swarmers who fill the land," not only reproduce in the numbers that the lower animals do, they even give birth as lower animals do. "Scientists" of Nazi Germany expended great effort and research "discovering" ways in which the Jew was biologically different than the Aryan. Once this had been "proven," it could be easily "demonstrated" that the Aryan was superior and the Jew subhuman.
Paraoh’s final step is to draft his entire nation in the effort to control Bnei Yisroel: "Paraoh commanded his entire people, saying: Any boy who is born, throw him into the river! Any girl, let her live" (Shemos 1:22). The Torah makes it clear that the entire nation is not only complicit but is actively involved in the murders. Anyone who has trouble imagining how "normal" people could drown helpless newborn babies in the Nile need only look back fifty years to witness how "normal" citizens murdered Jews of all ages with mindless efficiency.
Like other eras of Jewish persecution, the Egyptian exile produced "righteous gentiles" who protested the madness by saving Jews when they could, often at enormous personal risk. The Abravanel suggests that the midwives discussed above were indeed "righteous gentiles" -- that in fact, they were not midwives from among Bnei Yisroel, but Egyptian midwives who had been assigned to Bnei Yisroel (Abravanel interprets "me-yaldos ha-Ivriyyos" to mean "the midwives of Bnei Yisroel," not "the Israelite midwives"; he argues that Paraoh would never have trusted members of Bnei Yisroel to kill babies of their own people) and who flouted Paraoh’s orders to kill the baby boys because, as the Torah says, "they feared Hashem." In addition, Paraoh’s daughter, who finds Moshe floating in the Nile, realizes he is a child of Bnei Yisroel and nevertheless adopts him.
"Ve-zacharta ki eved hayyisa be-Eretz Mitzrayyim": our memories of how it feels to be powerless and crushed sensitize us to the suffering of the powerless among us. But we also remember the Egyptians and more recent others: ultimately, the only group dehumanized by the horrors they committed was them. By dehumanizing and demonizing those we perceive as enemies, whether internal or external, we condemn ourselves to ultimately behaving like beasts. No matter how critical the issue, our opponents are people like us and deserve the basic respect and human treatment due to images of God.
