“How Could You Do This Thing?”: Mobs and Midwives, Then and Now

Rabbi Noa Kushner

Parashat Shemot 

“How Could You Do This Thing?”: Mobs and Midwives, Then and Now

1. 

I just kept thinking of the story of the Golem of Prague

See in the story 

The Maharal of Prague 

Created a large, living creature out of clay 

animated it with kabbalistic name of God, 

It was a mindless brute, a golem 

He did it to protect his community from outsiders and danger

A strange means supposedly for a greater end 

Only, what happens in the story is 

The golem starts to outgrow the vision of its creator 

And it gains strength, running wild, it becomes violent 

Takes innocent lives 

The rabbi and all the townspeople are forced to destroy the golem — 

Or some say the golem goes crazy and runs away. 

And as I sat this week, stunned, like you, like the rest of the country 

Watching the mob of white supremacists, conspiratory theorists, anti-semites and marauders desecrate the capitol 

I just kept thinking of the golem 

This power that, once fully unleashed, 

grew tremendous and violent, out of control

Taking on on monstrous proportions 

Because once uninhibited 

This mob was bent only on degradation, vandalization

Its stance the opposite of deferential — 

The opposite of what we would expect in that regal space, 

Instead it was bullying 

As if forcing the country to bend to its will. 

You could say Trump is the golem, the band leader 

The means to an end for millions of people 

Means that got out of hand

Or you could equally say the mob — the heartless, volatile combination of greed, fear, and racism that Trump built for years and unleashed 

— a combination that sprung to action before our eyes — 

Perhaps that mob is the golem 

A means for Trumpland’s end of staying in power 

And perhaps there is no way to separate the two, 

As they are two heads of the same beast. 

However, underneath the desecration of the proverbial house 

Something else was revealed, something harder to repair than torn art and broken glass. 

Underneath the symbolic destruction, 

Behind the people smoking in the halls, 

Putting their feet up on desks 

And vandalizing the walls 

There was an absence of any kind of moral aspiration, there was a vacuum of moral authority.

See, in this senseless attack, no policies were requested, and there were no banners of protest 

because this golem had nothing to ask for, nothing to even say

There was no moral argument to be made because they were not even trying to capture moral high ground.

Rather, the message for those few hours, 

as well as the message of Trump’s presidency, 

was that the project of seeking to build a common morality itself — is useless, pathetic, sad — 

Only power rules. 

2. 

While no rabbi, no one I know personally contributed to single handedly making this golem (chas v’shalom) 

I am, like you, am uncomfortably familiar with how we got here.

We’ve been watching the story unfold for years

This latest violence is simply the world that Trump has now unleashed in full view — an amoral world cajoled and coaxed to the surface, beginning with Trump’s slander of President Obama years ago.

This world has been built, brick by brick, with the permission of 

those who thought we could accrue economic advantage without also feeding the Golem

Those who thought they could separate their vote from a populist movement, from white golem supremacy

Those who rode the back of the Golem for the thrill of the ride, for the clicks, for the votes 

Those who shook hands with the Golem in order to get a quick embassy moved, an Israeli territory signed over

Those who deluded themselves that tolerating moral corrosion, that the cruelty was somehow worth it 

And those of us who got worn down, who just normalized it, or tried to ignore it 

For business relationships

For prestige 

So as not to rattle things 

So we could get on with our lives

All of us unwittingly fed the Golem in its nascent and invisible and semi-visible forms. 

If we are shaken now 

It is because we know the golem rode in on our collective inability to destroy it before it was too late. 

And we Jews know better, we know from our own history — 

Once moral aspiration, once a country stops seeking and demanding a common pursuit of righteousness, 

Once moral aspiration is off the table 

violence is never far behind. 

3.

Pharaoh was not known for being a great listener

In fact, in this week’s parasha, shemot, for the whole beginning of the story

Pharaoh doesn’t even talk one on one with anyone at all 

He speaks only in pronouncements, to the collective

(I am not sure if he had access to capital letters or not but I feel if he had them, he would have used them with abandon)

Pharaoh is also disinterested in the past, and pretends not to know the history of his own country 

So it is not surprising when he also starts a baseless conspiracy theory against the Hebrews saying that one day the Israelites will rise up and fight against the Egyptians — 

Not surprising he makes the world into “us” and “them”

And, in the beginning of the story, no one stops him. 

But fifteen verses in, Pharaoh lowers himself to have his first direct conversation — with two midwives

Shifra and Puah — because he needs them. 

Now Pharaoh commands the midwives to kill the Hebrew baby boys, on the basis of his conspiracy theories — 

But see, midrash tells another story: 

That Pharaoh had learned from his magicians that one day, a Hebrew baby would take his own place

So it seems his brutality is only and completely because Pharaoh is afraid of losing his own power. 

That’s all he cares about 

It has nothing to do with his people, or a future imaginary war 

And the midrash even points out that Pharaoh is so paranoid, so afraid

He commands ALL the Egyptians to throw all their own babies in the river

No price is too high 

See, without moral aspiration, without a moral framework, everyone is quickly expendable 

And the possibility of violence is never far away — 

Then, after Pharaoh tells the midwives to kill the baby boys and they don’t

Importantly, because they have an awe of God —

a God greater than Pharaoh — 

Pharaoh asks them in Torah, 

מַדּ֥וּעַ עֲשִׂיתֶ֖ן הַדָּבָ֣ר הַזֶּ֑ה

How could you do this thing? How could you let the babies live? 

I want you to take in the absurdity of this question: 

“How could you let the babies live?”

This absurdity is caused by a world without moral aspiration 

How could you do this thing? How could you let the babies live?

It is like asking a doctor how he could heal or promote safety

It is like asking a firefighter why she puts out a fire 

It is like asking elected representatives how they could ratify an election that expresses the will of the people 

How could you let the babies live?! 

What a question! 

Bringing babies into the world is what a midwife does.

Except that in a world where brute power is the only currency 

In a world where moral aspiration is taboo 

The midwives are forced to answer this question as if it is an appropriate question

And this is, in large part, how our country has felt under this past administration. 

4. 

And you know, the pressure Pharaoh puts on the midwives to participate in his plan is substantial — 

He offers power, positions and status

Apparently he tries to seduce them (!) 

One midrash even says Pharaoh threatens to set the midwives on fire.

But there is one thing Pharaoh does not do — he never appeals to the moral sense of the midwives

He never tries to make the case that he is doing the right thing, 

Only that he has the power to get away with doing what he wants 

And so, in the end, none of this pressure works

Because none of Pharaoh's bullying matches the midwives’ fear and awe of God —

their innate moral language which they are somehow able to keep regardless of whatever he throws at them. 

And so there is nothing Pharaoh can do — 

And make no mistake: Because the midwives refuse to live fully in the absurdity of the moral vacuum Pharaoh has created,

Moses is born and lives. 

See, the minute a moral universe is created and even partially sustained, 

Redemption always follows close behind 

5. 

In spite of all Trump and the golem mob have done

On the very same day, at practically the same moment, there was also a new baby born in Georgia, or maybe I should say twins were born, twin senators  

We could say much about them: Reverend Doctor Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff 

Their partnership

The fact that one is Jewish 

The fact that another is a preacher of the liberal tradition, a progressive religious political leader

That he will not be giving up his pulpit at the famous Ebenezer Baptist church — the place where the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior once stood and led 

Much deserves to be said about them but this shabbat I want to focus on their midwife, their “doctor” and mastermind Stacey Abrams

Whose courage and refusal to live in a moral vacuum of our day in no small way brought these senator twins into the world 

Remember Abrams, after she was defeated by voter suppression 

Rather than taking the lesson that corruption and fear tactics were the only way to win 

Abrams  “…spent a decade building a Democratic political infrastructure in the state, first with her New Georgia Project and then with Fair Fight, the voting rights organization she founded in the wake of her losing campaign for governor in 2018” (NY Times) 

So, for example, “…In 2019, …Fair Fight helped Kentucky Democrats file a lawsuit that restored to the rolls some 175,000 voters who had been purged by the Republican governor” 

AND, importantly ….Ms. Abrams stressed that efforts like these matter little if citizens do not buy into the act of voting itself — in other words, …if the barrier to participation is not so much a law or policy 

but a belief that the system has never valued one’s voice to begin with.”

What I am saying is that Abrams restored votes, and she also worked to rehabilitate a belief, a moral aspiration that in a functioning democracy, that every voice is valued. 

See Abrams saw the same golem we all did — 

You could say, in weathering her losing campaign, 

She saw the golem and all the power it unfairly protected 

How unruly and obstinate and brutal and cruel and uninterested in morality it was. 

And Abrams fought that golem, she fought that Pharaoh

Not on its own terms 

But by bringing belief and moral aspiration back into the equation 

Back into the conversation 

And because of her work, now there are twins 

Twins that have been born in Georgia.

You know there’s a tradition that Puah 

As the younger midwife, would act as a ‘bleater’ — that is, someone who would cry out and get the baby, while it was still inside its mother’s womb, to cry and so emerge as fast as possible. (Da’at Zkenim) 

For the past ten years, Abrams has been like the holy midwife of our Torah 

For all the voters who had never trusted the polls

She was listening for their cries before they were ready to be born

Listening, ear to the ground, for all that goes unheard

Listening for all the cries in the night

The wishes that went unsaid

Listening for the moral questions and challenges and arguments and aspirations and language that might be revealed along with those cries

Maybe crying them into existence herself, from time to time 

Coaxing those cries until they were ready to emerge and exist in the world 

And now, twins have been born in Georgia 

This is not the end of the story, it is not the end of Abrams’ story, not the end of Georgia’s story, certainly not America’s 

There are many more cries that need to be brought into the world, let alone heard 

It is just the beginning

But make no mistake: Something is beginning, a new redemption has been born.