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The True

Women’s Lobby

Sivan Rahav-Meir

I n the book of Bereishit there were This is the description of two extraor- midwives feared G-d, so they did not

matriarchs – Sarah, Rivka, Rachel,
dinary Hebrew women in Egypt. Their
do as the king of Egypt had spoken to
and Leah – who were singular
legacy is one of faith in G-d in the face
them, but they enabled the boys to live.”
women, unique in their generation.
age to resist conventional thinking and
What sort of generation came after of a brutal dictator, having the cour- In defiance of the Egyptian dictator, the
midwives did not kill the baby boys,
them? The book of Shemot introduces behaviors, together with the willing- and the Torah makes a point of telling
us to a generation that consists entirely ness to take risks for the sake of the us that these women made sure the
of powerful women. This is our first next generation, to persist in living the boys grew up strong by worrying about
encounter with a kind of Hebrew Jewish way. and caring for them in secret. Unlike
wonder woman, who has assumed Tzachi Michaeli shares a powerful per- Pharaoh, Shifrah and Puah see reality
mythological proportions down spective. These days we hear more and
through the ages: in a positive light – after all, Jewish
more about the “feminist lobby.” But boys are being born! And everything
“Now the king of Egypt spoke to the we need to be precise and acknowledge that happens is because they remem-
Hebrew midwives, one who was named that this lobby, that supposedly rep- ber that Hashem, not Pharoah, is their
Shifrah, and the second, who was resents half of our people, the female true king. Rashi comments with a quote
named Puah. And he said, “When you half, only raises its voice, like a shofar, from Yechezkel (19:2): “How was your
deliver the Hebrew women, and you see at events that protest the status of mother a lioness!”, reminding us that
on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall women, as if their voice represents that Israel is compared to a lioness. This is
put him to death, but if it is a daughter, of all Jewish women. the first women’s lobby: positive action,
she may live.” The midwives, however, I think that the real women’s lobby was faith, defiantly giving birth, and joy.
feared G-d; so they did not do as the established in the story of the Exodus.
king of Egypt had spoken to them, but Everything started there. For the first Up until this point, our focus has been
they enabled the boys to live. So the time, Israel receives the designation exclusively on the midwives. But there
king of Egypt summoned the midwives of ‘am’ or nation, albeit from Pharaoh. are other members of the feminist
and said to them, “Why have you done Among Pharaoh’s harsh decrees is an lobby. Notice what we are told imme-
this thing, that you have enabled the order for the Hebrew midwives to kill diately afterwards: Amram marries
boys to live?” And the midwives said to every Jewish boy at birth. How will the Yocheved and Moshe is born. What does
Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women women of this new nation, the nation his mother do?
are not like the Egyptian women, for of Israel, react?
they are skilled as midwives; when the “The woman conceived and bore a son,
midwife has not yet come to them, they Shifrah and Puah, who are actually and [when] she saw that he was good,
have [already] given birth.” G-d ben- Yocheved and Miriam, are, in fact, she hid him for three months. [When]
efited the midwives, and the people the first representatives of the Jewish she could no longer hide him, she took
multiplied and became very strong. nation, that only now has taken shape [for] him a reed basket, smeared it with
Now it took place when the midwives in Egypt, to appear in the Torah. clay and pitch, placed the child into it,
feared G-d, that He made houses for And how is the uniqueness of these and put [it] into the marsh at the Nile’s
them.” (Shemot 1:15–21) righteous women expressed? “The edge (Shemot 2:2–3).

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