Two Minute Torah Podcast

Shmot 5769 by Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal

When I've had a particularly bad day, I look forward to the fact that I can go to sleep, and start over the next morning. After all, in the first blessing before the Shema in the Shaharit service, the siddur reminds us that God does, in fact, recreate the world anew every day: "Hamehadesh b'tuvo b'khol yom tamid."

However, our Torah portion this week, Shemot, is less sanguine about what happens when we recreate things from scratch. To introduce the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt, the Torah begins (Ex. 1:8), "Vayakom melekh hadash al mitzrayim asher lo yada' et Yosef." "A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph." The peshat – the plain meaning of the verse – seems to be that this was literally a new ruler, who either did not know, or chose not to know, of Joseph's great contributions to Egyptian history, saving the entire known world from a terrible famine.

But an equally authoritative Talmudic tradition questions this idea, asking why the text would not state explicitly that the previous pharaoh died, and a new one arose. Instead, this rabbinic claim is that this was not a new king, but that the previous pharaoh simply issued new decrees that ignored Joseph's accomplishments. By re-writing history, and pretending that Joseph had never existed, we see that this is truly a "new regime."

It is this denial of history that we should find so offensive. A truly new king might not be faulted for his ignorance, but the case of an existing king who denies history is truly insidious. As Jews, we are particularly sensitive to affirm history, and draw lessons from it.

It's also a reminder that the world is not truly recreated anew each day. Indeed, what came before still exists. Even the sun, which disappeared over the horizon the previous evening, is still the same sun that re-appears the following morning. What changes is our own attitude towards what came before. Our challenge is not to deny what came before us, but instead to affirm the past – whether good or bad -- while using it to create an even better future.