By Judith Siegal

Judith: “The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from bondage rose up to God.”

Reader 1: “Please, someone....here our cries! We are tired of working away our lives as Pharoah’s slaves. We are treated so badly.....we can’t take it anymore! This is no way to live!”

Reader 2: “Oy, oy, oy....I am too old to lift rocks and do manual labor. I have worked my entire life, as did my father and his father before him...and for what? I have nothing to show for it.”

Reader 3:“Help me, help my children....someone must do something to change the future for our children...they must have a better life than this.”

Reader 4:“Why us? Why do we Israelites have no freedom? Why, why?”

Judith: It was only then that “God heard their moaning, and God remembered the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites and took notice of them.” (Exod. 2:23)

So, what happened…did God forget the covenant for four hundred

years? Where was God during all that time that the Israelites were suffering under the oppression of slavery? After all, God promised Jacob in Genesis that God would “descend” with him into Egypt (Gen. 46:4)

The people’s cries “rose up before God.” They did not cry out directly. The people did not address the God of their ancestors. This seems to be emphasized by God “remembering” the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Did the people know or remember the covenant? No, the relationship with God and the people’s realization of the covenant does not come until Moses tells them about God sometime later. After four hundred years of oppression, the Israelites probably knew of a God and had heard mention from their ancestors, but they felt no personal connection or reason to address God directly. Shemot marks the beginning of the relationship of the people with God....and sets the scene for divine redemption. The people will come to know God soon, but right now all they are doing is crying out to anyone who will listen.

Let us look at this more carefully: God has only been mentioned so far in this parashah when Adonai establishes households for the midwives who saved the Jewish babies that Pharoah told them to kill. There is no mention of God at all until the groaning and moaning of the Israelites and God remembering. Here we see Adonai responding to humans in two different ways: rewarding the good deeds of the midwives and “remembering” after hearing the moans and groans. OK, but how do we think the Israelites were acting until this point? Was this the first time they had cried? Did God respond because the people had been crying out for so long? What was it about those particular moans and groans that made God remember the covenant?

Menachem Fisch, professor at Tel Aviv University and at the Shalom Hartman Institute suggests a covenant of “confrontation” - a religious partnership which is not aabout blind following. We have to hold up our part of the deal by doing acts of Tikkun Olam. The Midwives deeds could have been the necessary action that caught God’s attention and helped remind Adonai of our covenant.

The Sefer Aggadah tells us that Rabbi Akiva said: “Pharoah’s executioners used to suffocate Israelites by immuring them in the walls of buildings. These would cry out from the structure, from its walls, and the Holy One heard their moaning.” Rabbi Akiva’s answer seems to imply that God responded to these particular cries because they were so desperate. Adonai took notice, because the cries were from people who were truly suffering.

The great modern Jewish thinker Michael Alper asks a very important question, “why do we tend to think that God is not there for the suffering but that God is always there during moments of great joy?” Maybe God was with us all along in Egypt, but God was waiting for the right crop of Jews....and for Moses to grow up...when God heard the right crop of voices, it was a reminder. It is possible that God is there for both the good and the bad and we only turn to God in our moments of great need and searching.

We don’t know where God was during our servitude in Egypt, while our people suffered in slavery. God may have been hiding from us, crying with us, or trying to help us but for some reason not able to do so for 400 years. God made a covenant with our ancestors that Adonai would make the children of Abraham as numerous as the stars in the sky. Although we as a people have been through thousands of years of different kinds of persecution, Jews are still here. God has kept up the bargain.

Now let’s get back to the groans and moans of the Israelites. Harold Kushner says that “Prayer, when it is offered in the right way, redeems people from isolation. It assures them that they need not feel alone or abandoned. It lets them know that they are part of a grater reality, with more depth, more hope, more courage, and more of a future than any individual could have by himself.” This helps put the moans and groans of the Israelites into perspective. The prayers were not just a reminder of the covenant to God, but also to the people. By crying out together, they reminded each other that they were all in it together.

We can learn from this parashah the importance of responding to each other’s cries. When we have faced difficult times, we have prayed together in this congregation and in this community. Our cries may reach God, and remind God that we are here and in need. Our cries will also hopefully reach each other....and, will remind each other that there is suffering in this world, and that we can help each other through acts of lovingkindness. In this way, we can be instruments of God as we answer each other’s cries.

According to Brachot 7, God prays, “Let my capacity for kindness come before my capacity for anger.” God, at times, needs to be reminded by our expressions of sorrow or our acts of Tikkun Olam when we are not able to get God’s attention. In the meantime, let us try to help each other to face the challenges and the joys that lie ahead.

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe. We cry out to you. Help us to help each other.

Amen