Disobedient Midwives of the Hebrews

God told the trees they should produce
all fruit according to their kind,
with leaves and bark producing juice
that brings fruit flavor to the mind.

Rejecting Him, the trees refused
to taste like fruit that they produced,
and though First Adam was accused
of disobedience, Eve seduced
her husband only when he tasted
the fruit that from a knowing tree
had grown, not fruity as commanded.

Yet trees got off from God scot free,
while Eve and Adam were remanded
in custody, and then expelled
for disobedience, imitating
trees which also had rebelled.

The Primal Sin was not the Mating
of Eve and Adam but their choice
of freedom which God never gave
our parents, “Use the passive voice”,
behaving as obedient slaves,
until He gave to their descendants
the Sabbath, representing freedom,
the destiny of their descendants
while fruitfully they’d freely breed ‘em,
the Sabbath thus the paradigm
that leads to what is for us written
on the Bell which does not chime,
constructed for free men in Britain,
proclaiming the same freedom for
Americans as for the Jews,
based on the Sabbath, made before
King George the Third a war would lose.

This echoes how Egyptian midwives
saved Israel’s fate when they disobeyed
Pharoh’s order to end all lives
of Jews like Moses. Unafraid
to fight perhaps their own regime —
Egyptians, possibly, and citizens.

The word ha’ivriot’s a meme
denoting “of Hebrew ivritizens,”
a rhyming word that I’ve here coined
for Jewish citizens, as if Jews
all speak in Hebrew, which we’re enjoined
to do to God, praying not to lose.

Though Moses grew up in the palace
of Pharaoh, he supported Jews,
opposing antisemites’ malice
which midwives also would refuse
to show to boys they never drowned
like tea Bostonians would drown,
opposing George, whose head was crowned,
sans Pharaoh’s  Exodus renown,
before the exodus of Britain,
whose army’s most calamitous collapse
occurred when beaten, its royal bulldogs bitten,
as were the Germans and the Japs
by USA and Brits, delighted
to win a later war, united.

In “The “Egyptian” Midwives: Who were the midwives who risked their lives to save male Hebrew babies—Israelites or Egyptians? A text discovered at the Cairo Genizah sheds new light on this exegetical conundrum,” thetorah.com, Moshe Lavee and Shana Strauch-Schick discuss Exod. 1:15, which states that the king of Egypt, concerned about the large population of Hebrews in his borders, tells their midwives, named Shifra and Puah, to kill any male child they deliver:

שמות א:טו וַיֹּאמֶר מֶלֶךְ מִצְרַיִם לַמְיַלְּדֹת הָעִבְרִיֹּת אֲשֶׁר שֵׁם הָאַחַת שִׁפְרָה וְשֵׁם הַשֵּׁנִית פּוּעָה. א:טז וַיֹּאמֶר בְּיַלֶּדְכֶן אֶתהָעִבְרִיּוֹת וּרְאִיתֶן עַל הָאׇבְנָיִם אִם־בֵּן הוּא וַהֲמִתֶּן אֹתוֹ וְאִם בַּת הִוא וָחָיָה.
Exod. 1:15 The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 1:16 saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool: if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” (NJPS)

The midwives, fearing God, ignore Pharaoh’s orders. When Pharaoh confronts them, they make up an excuse, claiming that Hebrew women are “vigorous” (lit. “animals,” חָיוֹת) and give birth before the midwives even show up:

א:יט וַתֹּאמַרְןָ הַמְיַלְּדֹת אֶל פַּרְעֹה כִּי לֹא כַנָּשִׁים הַמִּצְרִיֹּת הָעִבְרִיֹּת כִּי חָיוֹת הֵנָּה בְּטֶרֶם תָּבוֹא אֲלֵהֶן הַמְיַלֶּדֶת וְיָלָדוּ. 1:19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.”

Moshe Lavee and Shana Strauch-Schick point out that:

Although some medieval and pre-modern peshat readers of the text favor narrative context over the grammatically correct translation of the MT, the classical rabbinic / midrashic interpreters from late antiquity generally follow the grammatical meaning of the text (=Hebrew midwives) reflected in the (later) preserved vocalized text; some go on to embellish and fill in the text with the tradition that these two midwives are Yocheved and Miriam. And yet, the alternative translation, that the midwives were ethnic Egyptians, seems to have taken hold in some obscure midrashic texts, including in a genizah fragment from a previously lost midrash.

This observation inspired my coinage of the word “ivritizens” in this poem’s  second verse.