[Avodah] Moshe Rabeinu and his family

[Arie Folger]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:
> Only if you think Open Adoption is a mitzvah.

> Seriously, though, how does the revealing or not revealing her guess
> that his nursmaid was his mother a function of her willingly accepting
> ol 7 mitzvos?

I see I did not express myself clearly enough. I don't claim that
Bat Par'oh (who, as R' Grossman pointed out, doesn't need to be Bitya
of Chronicles - though I stand by the fact that Bitya wasn't called
Batya) told Moshe who his birth mother was, nor that she knew (though
the narrative strongly implies this was clear to all participants -
but that narrative also makes the adoption final, as the birth mother
accepts being demoted to a wet nurse). No, what I claim is that Bat
Par'o imparted a Jewish identity and a sense of justice to Moshe.

And I didn't say a word about 7 mitzvot BN - who would have been the
talmid 'hakham who would teach her those? We don't know, as the text is
silent about this. But Moshe emerges with a strong sense of justice,
and a strong sense of who his brothers are, so those feelings had to
come from somewhere, and what's more natural than that it was imparted by
his adoptive mother who had defied her father and saved a Hebrew boychik?

[Email #2. -micha]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:
> Seriously, though, how does the revealing or not revealing her guess
> that his nursmaid was his mother a function of her willingly accepting
> ol 7 mitzvos?

I should add that any Midrash claiming that she went to immerse in
the Nile to cleanse herself migilulei beit aviha need not be taken
literally. She surely occasionally took baths, and they didn't all need
to be ritual ablutions. I do not think that the Midrash is trying to
teach us about the kashrut of a river as a mikveh (which is a matter of
disagreements among Rishonim, based on the gemara), but rather to tell
us that in noticing and caring about Moshe, it is evident that she had
turned her back on her father's ways. The tevilah language is simply the
lomdishe way to say that, but the baalebatishe way need not be incorrect;
it could be the truth, with the lomdishe description being exactly that,
a way to hammer home how significant her turnaround was.

-- 
Arie Folger,
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