Comment
Moses' Mother

One of the colorful figures in in the Talmud is a certain Rabbi Yirmyiah, famous for his incessant, unrelenting questioning. No sooner is a law cited, than Rabbi Yirmiyah has a half-dozen scenarios with which to test it: what if the situation were reversed? what if it were bigger, smaller, darker, lighter, nearer, farther?

At one point, the patience of his colleagues reached its limits. They were discussing a certain law regarding food preparation on the festivals which differentiates between a pigeon found within 50 cubits (approximately 75 feet) of the pigeon house, or more than 50 cubits from the nest. "What would be the law," asked Rabbi Yirmiyah, "if the pigeon is standing so that one of its legs is within the 50 cubit limit, and the other leg outside?" Rabbi Yirmiyah was ejected from the study hall.

But Rabbi Yirmiyah has a point. Conventional wisdom would argue that a thing is either near or far -- it can't be both. But somewhere there is a boundary, a line that separates the near from the far, the within from the without. If you can straddle that line, if you can stand with one foot inside and the other foot outside, you can be both.

And often, in the trajectory of our lives, we must be both. And in the history of a people, there must be leaders and visionaries who are both.

The Torah tells us that when Jacob and his family came to Egypt, they numbered "seventy souls". But the detailed list given by the Torah (in Genesis 46:8-27), includes only 69 names. Our sages explain that when Jacob's family departed the Holy Land, there were only 69 Jews; but upon their arrival in Egypt, they numbered 70. Who is the mysterious 70th soul? It is Jocheved, the mother of Moses, born "between the boundary walls" as the first Jewish family entered our first galut (exile).

If you are outside of a problem, you can't solve it. If you are part of the problem, you can't solve it either. You need to be both.

The woman who gave birth to and raised Moses could not have been of the generation that was born in Egypt, the generation for whom galut was the reality. She could not have been of the generation born in the Holy Land, for whom galut was never real. She had to be both.