Marching Like a Mensch

This Shabbat we begin the Book of Exodus, our people’s national origin story. Commentators notice that a key Hebrew root of this parasha is ra’ah, to see.

When Moses is born—premature, according to tradition—his mother Yocheved looks at him carefully to see that he is healthy and whole. Pharaoh’s daughter sees that the baby is crying. Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s house, a member of the royal family. One day, his eyes are opened to the suffering around him and he sees the plight of the Israelite slaves. He sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating an Israelite and, seeing no one about, he comes to the slave’s defense, killing the Egyptian. Moses flees to the desert and there he sees the bush burning, unconsumed.

There is a lot of seeing, noticing and witnessing in this week’s Torah portion.

The incident that causes Moses to leave Pharaoh’s house and truly begin his journey of liberation for his people is suggestive. It is the first detail we read about Moses the man. Up to this point, we have read only about Moses the baby, rescued and then adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. The narrative skips forward in time: “Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:11-12).

One commentator suggests that the use of the word “kinsmen” (echav) means that Moses somehow knew he was an Israelite. Perhaps Pharaoh’s daughter had told him or maybe it was whispered about the palace. Now he sees the oppression of his people with his own eyes.

What happens next is particularly relevant to this moment in our American calendar. Moses looks around and, as the text has it, “saw that there was no one about” (“va-yar kee ein eish”). This could mean that there were literally no other people around, save for the Egyptian taskmaster, the Israelite slave, and Moses. Rather than reading that phrase as Moses looking around to be sure he would not be seen by anybody who could report on his actions, one teacher reads that phrase less literally. This was in the middle of a work day, so there were probably many others about. But there was no one there who was willing to be a mensch, a human being guided by compassion, ready to stand up in the face of oppression.

Moses had to be that mensch, he had to be the one to come to the aid of the most vulnerable.

This weekend, we celebrate that type of leadership as we remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Wednesday marked the 50th yahrtzeit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great intellectual, spiritual and moral leader who stood arm-in-arm with Dr. King many times and who famously said that he was “praying with his feet” when he marched in Selma, protesting against the injustice and oppression of segregation.

When we see injustice, when we witness oppression, we are called to be menschen—women and men of integrity, compassion and goodness. Our parasha calls us to open our eyes so that we might see what needs fixing in our broken world. And once we have identified what needs repair, we—like Moses, Miriam and Pharaoh’s daughter, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and so many others—must stand up and take action.