Shemot - Conspiracy Fact

24 Tevet 5784
Erev Shabbat Kodesh
Parashat Shemot - Mevorchim

Modern and enlightened people simply do not believe in conspiracies.  Suggest that a group of people got together to plot and plan an evil act against an unknowing and defenseless group of people and they will laugh in your face and label you a nut-case with the words "conspiracy theory."

But, as I've pointed out here many times before, history is full of conspiracies which took root and produced a fruit so rotten that it killed millions.  This week's parashah (Shemot 1:8-22) describes a case in point.

A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph.

He said to his people, "Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than we are.

Get ready, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they increase, and a war befall us, and they join our enemies and wage war against us and depart from the land."

So they appointed over them tax collectors to afflict them with their burdens, and they built store cities for Pharaoh, namely Pithom and Ra'amses.

But as much as they would afflict them, so did they multiply and so did they gain strength, and they were disgusted because of the children of Israel.

So the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with back breaking labor.

And they embittered their lives with hard labor, with clay and with bricks and with all kinds of labor in the fields, all their work that they worked with them with back breaking labor.

Now the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one who was named Shifrah, and the second, who was named Puah.

And he said, "When you deliver the Hebrew women, and you see on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall put him to death, but if it is a daughter, she may live."

The midwives, however, feared God; so they did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but they enabled the boys to live.

So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this thing, that you have enabled the boys to live?"

And the midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are skilled as midwives; when the midwife has not yet come to them, they have [already] given birth."

God benefited the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong.

Now it took place when the midwives feared God, that He made houses for them.

And Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, "Every son who is born you shall cast into the Nile, and every daughter you shall allow to live."

"THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN."

~ SHABBAT SHALOM ~