It has been said that the test of true character is how you behave when no one is around or watching you. I’m not talking about picking your nose in the car or looking around before adjusting your underwear. Do you pick up lost items in the street and try to find their owner? If you see a piece of trash on the beach, do you throw it away? Throughout the Torah we see examples of individuals making choices, believing no one will see them. The second book of the Torah begins with one such story. 

This week’s parshah serves as the turning point between the leadership of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to that of Moshe. Shemot leads us quickly through the change in leadership in Egypt as a new Pharaoh, who isn’t so keen on the Israelites, decrees that all males born should be put to death. Thankfully the midwives ignore this decree, and Moshe is kept alive. As an adopted Egyptian, Moshe joins the palace, but later learns he’s an Israelite. He flees out of fear for his life, marries a Midianite woman, and starts his own family.

As Moshe is enlightened to the injustice around him, he has a decision to make. Does he act? Does he risk his position? When Moshe sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, he “sees no one is around” and then chooses to act. Why does he look over his shoulder? Could it be because he knows he’s about to do something that would forever change the way he’s seen by Egyptians? Is it because he thinks he can get away with it? Or, perhaps because he’s hoping someone else will step up, and he only acts when he knows he’s the only one who could step in?

One of my favorite teachings in Pirkei Avot is from Hillel: “In a place where there are no people, strive to be a person.” I like to believe that Moshe stood up because if he didn’t, no one else would. It’s important to know that each of us has a voice, even if there’s not a chorus of other voices joining in.

We renovated our house more than four years ago, and part of the renovation included adding a mudroom. So why, after all this time, do my kids still forget to put their shoes in their cubby in the mudroom when we come in? The joy of having a mudroom (and individual cubbies) is that each family member has their own space for things, and the rest of the house stays cleaner and relatively free of mud. However, to be fair to them, the “shoes off at the door” policy wasn’t mandatory year round when I was growing up. In our house we had a bench by the garage door that was mostly used in the winter months for taking off shoes caked in mud and snow (and probably soaked). Needless to say, I didn’t always remember to take my shoes off at the bench either. 

As an adult, on the other hand, I can’t wait to remove my shoes. I love nothing more than a cozy pair of slippers in winter and the cool floor on my feet in summer. Both of those feelings connect me to the feeling of being home, in my own space. As much as I’d love to be barefoot at work or wear slippers in the office some days, I don’t, and having that separation is helpful. Although there are exceptions in some cultures and religions, the removal of shoes is usually reserved for private spaces. But that’s not the case in this week’s Torah portion.

This week’s parshah, Shemot, serves as the turning point from the leadership of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to that of Moses. Shemot leads us quickly through the change of rulers in Egypt as a new Pharaoh who isn’t so keen on the Israelites decrees that all males born should be put to death. Thankfully the midwives ignore this decree, and Moses is kept alive. As an adopted Egyptian, Moses joins the palace, but later learns he’s an Israelite. He flees out of fear for his life, marries a Midianite woman, and starts his own family.

As Moses is out tending to the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, he happens upon a special place, the mountain of God, Horeb. He sees an angel of God in a blazing fire that is engulfing a desert bush, but somehow not consuming it. Moses is mesmerized. As he’s contemplating what is happening before his eyes, God calls out to Moses and makes a peculiar request for someone standing in the middle of the desert. “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”

Why on earth would God ask Moses to take off his shoes? Yes, the presence of God is pretty significant, but why here and not at some of the other holy sites previously visited in the Torah? Perhaps this is a moment when Moses needed to be grounded, literally. After all, this is the moment God calls out to Moses and informs him that he’s going to be the one to lead the entire Israelite nation out from Egypt. Feeling the earth on his feet is a reminder that God is connected to him and the line of creation from Adam to Abraham to Moses. 

When we take off our shoes, it’s not just that the space we’re in is holy and sacred; it’s that we ourselves are holy, and making a direct connection – holy to holy – is one small way we can connect ourselves to everyone and everything that came before us.

I am a fighter. Not in the boxing ring, and not even with other people usually; I’m a fighter for justice, for what I believe in, and for what I want to accomplish. Like lots of kids, I had my own obstacles early on in life. I struggled to make friends easily, and I often felt on the outside of large groups. I always seemed to be on the periphery instead of experiencing those tight connections others were making. This also manifested itself in my grades and school performance. In my pre-college academic career I was a B average student, and my high school guidance counselor didn’t think I’d get into the University of Michigan.

At some point I realized that each time one of these obstacles came at me, I had a choice. I could let the internal and external negativity affect me. I could let it get me down and stop pushing myself forward. Or I could fight hard, learn coping strategies, and work my way into the place where I wanted to be. This wasn’t easy, and there were and still are plenty of times when I feel like throwing in the towel, when I feel like I don’t have any fight left in me. Somehow there’s always a new spark of energy, a new drive to fight.

This week we read Parshat Shemot. This parshah serves as the turning point from the leadership of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to that of Moshe. Shemot leads us quickly through the change in leadership in Egypt as a new Pharaoh, one who isn’t so keen on the Israelites, decrees that all males born should be put to death. Thankfully the midwives ignore this decree, and Moshe is kept alive. As an adopted Egyptian, Moshe joins the palace, but later learns he’s an Israelite. He flees out of fear for his life, marries a Midianite woman, and starts his own family.

In the wilderness, Moshe comes across an odd sight. He sees a blazing fire coming out of a bush but not consuming the bush. As Moshe takes note of this spectacle, God calls out to him to remove his shoes, respect the sanctity of the moment, and hear God’s promises.

Plenty has been said about the fire, but what about the shrubbery itself? Interestingly, the exact plant is often understood to be a thorn bush. Why would God choose a type of bush which by nature pushes others away? Why not an olive tree or a sycamore? Ancient philosopher Philo teaches that the bush burning and not being consumed symbolizes the Jewish people, perpetually attacked and endangered, but perpetually surviving. The thorn bush, the humblest bush, is just doing what it needs to survive, and it comes back, it is not consumed.

Parshat Shemot is just the first in a long line of narratives about the Israelites (later the Jewish people) in which we will be met with fire, yet not consumed. The call of God from the bush is the reminder to us all that the earth we stand on is holy because we are holy, and the fire of others cannot consume us. 

How do you really understand discrimination and oppression until you see it? With Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day coming up on Monday, we celebrate his enormous work in civil rights, and at the same time awake to the sobering reminder that even to this day we forget our common humanity.

For better or worse, our view of the world is based largely on assumptions and second-hand information until we witness the world with our own eyes. And when you’re finally exposed to the facts, they might change the reality you’ve known up to that point. I didn’t fully understand the suffering of the indigenous people in Guatemala until I went and saw it in person on my trip a year ago. Up until then, it felt disingenuous to speak out about causes that I hadn’t verified first-hand. I’ll admit it’s partly because perhaps I didn’t want to imagine the cruel reality. In this way, we allow ourselves to be blind until the truth is staring back at us. 

In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Shemot, we begin to see how miracles are going to play out in the text and what it takes to believe in them. First there’s a reminder that a new king has taken over Egypt, one who does not know the goodness the Israelite nation brought. The story continues with the fear this new king felt because the Hebrews seemed so different. But he doesn’t see them with his own eyes to confirm his suspicions. The king doesn’t engage one-on-one with the Israelites, he simply makes a xenophobic judgement call and then bans them from procreating without verification of any facts. Of course we know how the narrative continues – with Moses being rescued from the Nile, his life in the palace, and his rise to leadership.

When you think about it, it’s really Pharaoh’s daughter who is the savior of an entire nation. Why? Because she witnessed something with her own eyes. There are several conflicting viewpoints on how she may have felt about her father’s rule. Rabbi and Jewish mystic Isaac Luria believes that she went along with her father’s policies until, in chapter 2, verse 5, she comes down to the Nile to bathe and sees the endangered Hebrew child. Until that moment, the plight of the Israelites and these “foreign” people had all been an abstraction, so she was able to believe the worst in them. However, when she sees the tiny, helpless Moses in the river, she recognizes her common humanity with his people.

Pharaoh’s daughter acts because she sees the truth: people are people. As we once again approach Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, perhaps this is a reminder for all of us in all times. It’s easy to turn a blind eye to others when we see them as different. Instead, if you’re able to empathize and identify yourself in someone else’s story, you are instantly linked through your humanity. And by doing so, Pharaoh’s daughter does in fact change the world.

“You won’t know unless you try.” It’s that little bit of encouragement used for helping a friend who’s feeling nervous about a new experience or a child who’s about to taste sweet potatoes for the first time. When in life does the fear of what might happen or what might be unpleasant hold you back from doing what could actually bring positive rewards? In most cases it depends on your ability first to weigh the consequences of the action to evaluate potential outcomes. In other words, what result would be bad, what result would be good, and is either one worth the risk?

The Torah is constantly teaching us this lesson as our patriarchs and the Israelite nation come into their own. Especially in this week’s parshah, Shemot, we see this lesson come to life. This parshah serves as the turning point between the leadership of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to that of Moshe. Shemot leads us quickly through the change in leadership in Egypt as a new Pharaoh who isn’t so keen on the Israelites decrees that all males born should be put to death. Thankfully the midwives ignore this decree, and Moshe is kept alive. As an adopted Egyptian, Moshe joins the palace, but later learns he’s an Israelite. He flees out of fear for his life, marries a Midianite woman, and starts his own family.

The circumstances surrounding Moshe’s birth are intense, as you can imagine. Pharaoh has made a decree that all baby boys should be put to death, thus reproduction among the Israelite community slowed quite a bit. According to the midrash, many Israelite couples even went as far as splitting up so that they wouldn’t procreate and have to watch a male child be put to death. In fact, when Moshe is born we learn that his parents are recently married, which doesn’t really make sense since we know they have two older children, Miriam and Aaron. So how, in those days, could they be newly married?

The midrash fills in this puzzle by explaining that Miriam thought this separation was the wrong choice. It teaches that Miriam persuaded her parents to return to each other by saying basically, “You are worse than Pharaoh. Pharaoh only threatens the males; you eliminate the possibility of any child. Pharaoh’s decree may not be carried out, but your decision not to have children certainly will be.” Miriam is able to convince her parents to reunite, and Moshe was born, luckily for the Israelites.

When you’re tasked with weighing potential outcomes, it’s hard to know which decisions will have major implications and which ones minor. Miriam’s strength and conviction in insisting that we must consider all repercussions of our decision making illustrates this point perfectly. If you don’t look at an issue from all sides, you might miss the decision that would change the world.