The Pharaohs of Yesterday and Today: Parashat Shemot

Parashat Shemot introduces us, abruptly, to one of the darkest chapters in our history. “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8). Our sages ask: was he truly a new king, or the same Pharaoh with a heart newly committed to evil?

The Midrash (Shemot Rabbah 1:8) suggests that he was not new to the throne, but new in his decrees. He changed the story, rewrote history, and constructed a conspiratorial narrative, declaring: “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and mightier than we.”

Pharaoh was not only a dictator; he was something perhaps even more dangerous—a leader who ruled through fear, lies, and dehumanization. He persuaded his people that the Hebrews were an internal threat, that they needed to be controlled, enslaved, and ultimately eliminated. This is how the earliest form of political antisemitism entered recorded history.

And here Shemot stops being just an ancient story. Because our world today, sadly, is still full of pharaohs—dictators who promote conspiracy theories, who accuse minorities—and especially Jews—of controlling the economy, the media, or global politics. Leaders who, in order to maintain their power, need imaginary enemies.

There is no need to name them one by one: we see them in authoritarian regimes and even disguised in modern democracies, in far-away countries and within our own society, in extremist rhetoric, in movements that recycle ancient hatreds in modern language. The names change. The flags change. The pattern does not.

Our sages understood this dynamic well. The Talmud teaches: “Kol haposel, bemumo posel”—those who disqualify others often do so because of their own flaws (Kiddushin 70a). Pharaoh projects his insecurity and moral weakness onto a vulnerable people.

I have no doubt—and I believe none of us does—that a world without dictators would be a better world. But here we encounter one of the most difficult and uncomfortable questions:

• What right does one country have to intervene militarily in the face of a dictatorship in another country?

• Is international justice ultimately determined by the law of the strongest?

• Are interventions driven by a genuine pursuit of justice, or by narrow economic, strategic, and geopolitical interests?

• What gives moral legitimacy to the use of force?

The Torah does not give us simple answers. Perhaps because there are none.

On the one hand, God hears the cry of the oppressed and responds: “I have seen the

suffering of My people… I have heard their cry” (Exodus 3:7). Indifference is not an option.

Silence in the face of suffering is itself a form of complicity.

At the same time, Judaism deeply mistrusts the use of unchecked power. The Talmud

teaches: “One who comes to purify himself is helped; one who comes to defile himself is

given the opportunity” (Shabbat 104a). The very same action can be moral or immoral,

depending on intention and consequences.

I have often asked myself—and I know I am not alone—why the Allies did not bomb the

railway lines leading to Auschwitz and the death camps of Eastern Europe. Why was there

not the political and moral courage to disrupt, even partially, the machinery of death? The

intelligence reports existed. The aerial photographs existed. And yet, the decision was

made not to act.

History forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: sometimes the free world does not

intervene not because it lacks the ability, but because it is unwilling to pay the price. And

that price is almost always paid by others. In this sense, Pharaoh lives not only in dictators,

but also in the indifference of those who choose to look away.

It is not my role here to take a political position. But I do feel a responsibility to engage in

ethical and spiritual reflection.

From this perspective, I ask myself—and I ask you:

• What is better: to intervene, or not to intervene, when a moral red line has been crossed?

• What is that red line?

• What grants legitimacy to intervention—intent, international consensus, last resort?

• Where do we stop? We know how interventions begin, but never how they will unfold.

• What is most just?

• And what truly promotes peace?

  
  

Judaism does not glorify war, but neither does it sanctify passivity. Kohelet (Ecclesiastes)

teaches that there is “a time for war and a time for peace,” but it never claims that war

itself is a value. Peace—shalom—is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of

justice.

Parashat Shemot teaches us something essential: redemption begins when someone

refuses to accept the normalization of evil. The Hebrew midwives defy Pharaoh. Moses

intervenes when he sees an Egyptian beating a slave. They do not change the system

overnight, but they cross a moral boundary.

Perhaps this is one of the lessons of our parasha

Perhaps we leave today with more questions than answers, more challenges than

comfort.

We will not always know the correct course of action on a global scale. But we do know

this: not everything is relative, not everything is neutral, and not everything is “not our

business.” There are moments when the question is not whether we have the right to

intervene, but whether we have the right not to.

May Parashat Shemot grant us the wisdom to be wary of the pharaohs of our time—both

distant and near—the courage not to be indifferent, and the humility to seek paths that,

even in an imperfect world, bring us closer to justice and peace