{"id":62552,"date":"2020-01-15T13:28:08","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T18:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=62552"},"modified":"2020-01-15T13:28:08","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T18:28:08","slug":"the-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/the-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"The Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

The birth of Moshe represents a turning point of the Jewish saga in Egypt. This would-be savior arrives as the Jewish slaves are being mercilessly crushed by Egyptian oppression. Pharaoh had legislated that all Jewish infants be flung into the Nile river and delivered to their inevitable death; Egyptian discrimination had begotten slavery and slavery had morphed into genocide. It appeared as if the entire Jewish nation was slated for annihilation. At this dark moment the greatest man to ever inhabit our planet is born.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The epic birth of Moshe is preceded by verses describing the \u201cmarriage\u201d of his parents- Amram and Yocheved. Stunningly, these verses conceal the true identity of Moshe\u2019s parents. The Torah merely narrates about a \u201cman\u201d from the house of Levi who married a \u201cwoman\u201d from the house of Levi, subsequently giving birth to Moshe. Why is Moshe\u2019s birth introduced with the story of his parent\u2019s marriage which had occurred decades earlier? After all, Moshe was the third child and this couple had already produced two older siblings- Aharon and Miriam. Why is the birth of this future \u2018savior\u2019, who transformed Jewish history, framed with this mysterious marriage of people whose identities are disguised? <\/span><\/p>\n

The Midrash fills in the blanks and provides an interesting \u201cbackstory.\u201d Facing devastating Egyptian cruelty, Amram, Moshe\u2019s father, separated from his wife Yocheved. Whether he formally divorced her is unclear, but he certainly discontinued normal marital relations. Expanding their family under these circumstances would be pointless and even pathetic – as it would just provide more fodder for the crocodiles of the Nile. Without any horizons of hope, continued family life seemed futile and ridiculous and Amram, at least initially, chose the only practical option- surrender. <\/span><\/p>\n

His daughter Miiam- Moshe\u2019s older sister- intervened, pleading with her father to reconsider his fateful decision. As Amram was a high-profile leader, his decision would inevitably trigger \u201ccopycat behavior\u201d leading to wide-scale divorces and the complete unraveling of Jewish family life in Egypt. Heeding his daughter\u2019s warning, Amram reunites with his wife Yocheved, reinforcing the value of Jewish family despite the unbearable pressure of Egyptian torture. For this reason, Amram\u2019s \u201cdecision\u201d is presented anonymously: his \u201cpersonal\u201d decision to reunite with Yocheved had ripple effects for countless \u201cother\u201d marriages and therefore his decision is described in collective or generic terms. <\/span><\/p>\n

This private decision ultimately reshapes human history. Amram faces a nightmarish world in which newborn babies are fed to voracious beasts. He sees no purpose in further expanding his family so he \u201cfolds his tent.\u201d However, he soon discovers that, although we can\u2019t always control the broader calculus of our \u201cbroken world, we can author our own personal decisions in response the surrounding chaos. We never abdicate the ability to maintain the \u201cmoral line\u201d and make decisions of \u201cconscience\u201d even if the surrounding world doesn\u2019t accommodate those decisions.\u00a0 <\/span>For reasons which often lie beyond human comprehension, G-d sometimes allows evil to flourish. It is difficult to decipher this mystery and we often struggle to understand Divine logic in a bleak world of rampaging evil. Despite these \u2018unknowns\u2019 and the frustration it sometimes causes we are empowered to maintain our own religious and moral convictions even if we can\u2019t calculate how these values will impact an uninviting world. Like Amram we often must act with moral courage and rely upon G-d to \u2018solve\u2019 the broader calculus.<\/span><\/p>\n

I often ponder Holocaust survivors who quickly remarried and rebuilt their families while bringing new babies into their world. What were they thinking and how could they introduce new life into such a bleak and nightmarish world?\u00a0 <\/span>Little did they know that the children born in the immediate aftermath of WWII would, one day, march in the fields of redemption and pioneer and new era of history. Little did they know that children born in refugee camps, or in temporary havens across the globe, would one day resettle the Jewish homeland on behalf of Jewish history. <\/span><\/p>\n

They couldn\u2019t have foreseen this outcome and yet they labored on under unimaginable conditions, maintaining their moral courage. Human beings often must take the initiative, exhibiting fortitude and defiance even if the arch of history is confusing and the ultimate trajectory of their actions unclear. Our inability to decipher the broader equation doesn\u2019t acquit us from responsibility to sustain our religious and moral duties. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chazal mention that after this reunion Yocheved \u2013 aged 130- experienced a physical rejuvenation, enabling her to become pregnant with a little boy named Moshe. Had Amram not heeded Miriam\u2019s call, this miraculous rejuvenation may not have occurred. Even it did, it may not have mattered, as Yocheved would have remained unmarried. G-d often awaits human initiative and provides supernatural intervention only after humans have defied their conditions and launched their own redemptive cycles. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Amram saga also reminds us that moral energy, and not headline-grabbing events, drive human history. Amram\u2019s \u201cepic\u201d decision, hatched privately and without fanfare or public notice, changed history. It was a quiet decision to continue building family life under crushing conditions of persecution that turned the tide. In a modern world of fanfare and self-promotion, it is ever more crucial to remind ourselves that it is the daily \u2018unnoticed\u2019 moral decisions which alter history. Politics come and go and policies and decisions of one generation are quickly swept away by the sands of time or erased by future generations. Even military confrontations, which appear to deeply impact the shape of human experience, leave only temporary impressions upon history. More often it is the quiet moral decisions taken day after day \u2013 which go largely unnoticed- that shape our own lives and deeply impact the lives of our families and communities. The impact of these decisions can ricochet for generations- long after political and military influences have faded. With all of Pharaoh\u2019s decrees and public posturing, it was a quiet decision of a husband and would-be father that turned the tide of history. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The birth of Moshe represents a turning point of the Jewish saga in Egypt. This would-be savior arrives as the Jewish slaves are being mercilessly crushed by Egyptian oppression. Pharaoh had legislated that all Jewish infants be flung into the Nile river and delivered to their inevitable death; Egyptian discrimination had begotten slavery and slavery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133782,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Decision - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/the-decision\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Decision - OU Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The birth of Moshe represents a turning point of the Jewish saga in Egypt. 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