Parashat Shemot
by Rabbi Jill Hammer
“Just as they oppressed [the Hebrew people], so it increased and spread out…”
There is a fierce assertion at the beginning of the book of Exodus that the oppressed will not be stifled by oppression. In Exodus 1:12, we hear that as the Hebrews are forced into slave labor, they continue to increase. “Yirbeh,” the word for “it increased” refers to fertility: they bore children and became many. Yet I hear other echoes in “yirbeh.” In that word we find the word “rav,” master, and the implication of autonomy. “Yifrotz,” it spread out, can refer to the increase of a people, as when Avraham was told “ufaratzta,” you shall spread out. Yet “yifrotz” can also mean “it burst out,” as in Peretz, the child of Judah and Tamar, who “made a breach for himself” in coming out of Tamar’s womb. I hear in this verse the implication that long before Read More >