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The little actions in life

Written by daniel fine

Parshas Shemos; It’s a Small World After All…

Parshas Shemos is where it all starts going downhill. Here are the highlights: The children of Yaakov have enjoyed a life of prosperity and wellbeing, when a new king (or a changed old king) decides to put them into slavery and eventually throw all the male newborns into the river. We are told about the birth of Moshe and his upbringing in the house of Pharaoh. Moshe then flees to Midyan after killing the Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a Jew, where he finds a wife (Tziporah) and encounters the famous burning bush. At the burning bush, HaShem tells Moshe that he is to be HaShem’s agent for redeeming the Jewish people from Egypt (with Aharon as his spokesperson) – which means that Moshe is to go back to Egypt and demand the release of the Jews from Pharaoh. After reaching Egypt (and surviving the near-death experience in the hostel via Tziporah performing an emergency bris milah on their child), Pharaoh refuses Moshe’s request (as HaShem had said), and actually makes the tasks harder for the Jews. In fact, the sedra ends on a ‘cliffhanger,’ with the people upset at Moshe and Aharon at their making the slavery more difficult, and HaShem assuring Moshe that the best is yet to come.
In the midst of all this action, we are told of the bravery of two women. These women were the midwives for the Bnei Yisrael and their Egyptian names were Shifrah and Pu’ah (1:15). Instead of obeying Pharaoh’s orders to kill the Jewish male babies, they allowed the children to live. In fact, Rashi (1:15) tells us that these Shifrah and Pu’ah were none other than Miriam and Yocheved; Moshe’s sister and mother respectively. So what are these names Shifrah and Pu’ah then? On one level, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky makes the prudent observation that all Egyptian names had to have one of the core letters of the name ‘Pharaoh’ (I.e. the letters peh, reish, or ayin) – such was the law; to reflect the subservience of the people to Pharaoh. Thus, if Miriam and Yocheved were to have any Egyptian names, these names had to have had those core letters in them; which the names ‘Shifrah’ and ‘Pu’ah’ do. However, this does not explain why these names were chosen; there are plenty of other names which have the core letters of ‘Pharaoh’ in them – why these ones? A good place to start is by understanding what these names mean. As Rashi tells us, the name Shifrah was given to Yocheved for it conveys the fact that she put the babies into good/improved physical condition (le’shaper means ‘to improve/correct’ – note the connection to the word ‘shofar;’ the vehicle/catalyst for our self-correction on Rosh HaShanah). And the name Pu’ah was given to Yocheved, for it conveys the fact that she would make noises to calm the babies, as well as speaking to the babies. However, this raises a question that should jump out at all of us; a question which should provide the central theme of our discussion this week.
As we said, the names Shifrah and Pu’ah connote the midwives’ care of the babies; that they looked after the babies and spoke to them to calm and reassure them. Is that the only accolade the Torah can give them?! They risked their lives to save others, and the Torah decides to praise them for only speaking to the babies – why not give them names that convey their main achievement; that they risked their lives to save these babies’ lives?
Rav Ruderman zt’l gave an answer via an important principle. Often, one can only tell a person’s true greatness via the little actions that they do. Many people would be prepared to stick their neck out and perform an act of tremendous self-sacrifice, for they know that everyone will hear about this heroic act. But the true mark of greatness is for someone to perform continuous small acts which nobody will ever hear about. This is why the Torah gives Yocheved and Miriam names which connote the small actions that they did – for it tells us that they even performed the small, little (‘unnecessary’) actions that they knew would not feature in the headlines. This shows us their true greatness. The truth is that I have witnessed this for myself. I was visiting a certain major Rabbi to get hold of one of the tests that he sets on a portion of gemarra, and he insisted that he would go and photocopy the test questions for me rather than me doing the photocopying. He did not have to insist that he do that, nor does he have much time generally, but this was a little action which does not grab any headlines, yet reflects on what type of person someone is.
It is not only the little actions that can reveal major things about someone. It is also the little events in life which can prove to be major crossroads in the long term. Often, we make small decisions, which can end up having long-standing effects on the direction of our lives. Alternatively, sometimes seemingly insignificant events can spark off a major life decision. For example, someone my wife knows decided to turn her life around after coming out of the bathroom in a club on Saturday night and saying the bracha of asher yatzar. Suddenly noticing the dual-identity that she was living (a club is not a particularly spiritually positive/uplifting experience and does not go particularly hand-in-hand with the praising of HaShem in the asher yatzar bracha), she decided to give up clubbing and gradually raised herself up to a much higher spiritual plane. As the Kotzker Rebbe points out, Moshe had one of these ‘decision moments’ in this week’s sedra.
Moshe is raised in the house of Pharaoh, and as he grows up, he decides to wander outside. What he witnesses is an Egyptian taskmaster hitting a Jewish slave. The pasuk (2:12) reports: ‘And he [Moshe] turned this way and that way, and saw there was no man [looking at him], and he killed the Egyptain and buried him in the sand.’ Explains the Kotzker Rebbe, that this was the moment of decision for Moshe. He was Jewish but had been raised in the most Egyptian home possible. Thus, Moshe knew that his core was Jewish, but he had no doubt been fed ‘healthy’ doses of Egyptian culture, beliefs, and norms. When he decided to hit the Egyptian, this was not merely an act to protect the Jew. It went much deeper than that. It was also the internal smiting of any Egyptian part of Moshe that remained until then. In light of this, the Kotzker reads our above pasuk in the following clever way: Moshe ‘looked this way and that way inside himself, and noticed that he was part Egyptian and part Jew, and he realised that this is no way to be a man (to live). So he killed the Egyptian part that was inside of him, and buried it deep down in the sand.’
In fact, we have one other example of a little action/event leading to big impacts in our sedra. The pasuk (1:8) tells us that ‘a new king reigned over Egypt; one that did not know Yosef.’ The Targum translates this as ‘a new king reigned over Egypt; one that did not renew the laws of Yosef.’ What does this mean? The Brisker Rav explains that when Yosef was in power, he made sure to enact laws which favoured the Jewish People; he legislated that they be exempt from taxes, and at one point they were financed from the royal coffers too. But the ‘new king’ of Egypt’s first step in ushering the Jewish People’s into slavery was to rescind those laws that Yosef enacted. Again, we see the importance and relevance of ‘small actions;’ here, it was a small action (of rescinding Yosef’s laws) which was the first step in putting the Jewish People into slavery which lasted for generations.
So, in summary, we have seen three examples of the importance of small actions/events in our sedra; the names Shifrah and Pu’ah, Moshe’s moment of decision in smiting the Egyptian, and Pharaoh’s first step of annulling Yosef’s laws. In a sedra full of big events, it is worthwhile noticing that it was the little things which sparked everything off.
On a practical level, small actions are not something that should be shunned; on the contrary, they should be valued and cherished, for they often reveal more about the person than the bigger actions, and it is the smaller actions that are the building blocks for a bigger character. One final story. A couple were having marriage problems, and they went to someone for advice. This person took the husband apart, and privately told him ‘make sure that you say ‘good morning’ to your wife each morning, and ‘goodnight’ every night.’ Then he took the wife aside and said to her ‘make sure that you compliment your husband on one thing every day.’ Weeks later, they reported that all their marriage issues had been solved and they were living happily ever after!
It’s often the small things that make a big difference.
Have a great Shabbos!

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