Midwives, and how they relate to Hebrews

You can also see this in the Jewish Star

Parsha: Midwives of the Hebrews
by Rabbi Avi Billet
Issue of January 8 2010/ 22 Tevet 5770

The first major attempt to stem the tide of Israelite growth consisted of Paroh ordering midwives to kill male babies at birth. Commentators identify the two midwives with whom he shares his nefarious plot as the “heads of the Department of Midwifery.”

“The king of Egypt said to the [Hebrew] midwives [of the Hebrews], whose names were Shifra and Puah.” (1:15) Whether they are Hebrew midwives — themselves Israelites, or midwives of the Hebrews — themselves Egyptians, depends on how one defines the term “M’yaldot ha’Ivriyot.”

In “The Living Torah,” Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan summarizes the two possibilities: “Some say that these midwives were Israelites (Rashbam), and Talmudic tradition associates them with Yocheved [Moshe’s mother] and Miriam or Elisheva (Sotah 11b). Others say that the midwives were Egyptian (Malbim; Josephus)…”

Abravanel and Kli Yakar also define them as Egyptians, and Kli Yakar supports his assessment with the depiction of their actions in 1:17: “The midwives feared G-d, and did not do as the Egyptian king had ordered them. They allowed the infant boys to live.” He asks, rhetorically, were they Israelites, would the Torah have to tell us they feared G-d?

More to the point, and using logic, Rabbi J.H. Hertz writes in his commentary, “It is hardly probable that the king would have expected Hebrew women to slay the children of their own people.”

As many authorities define these midwives as the “chief midwives,” it is hard to understand, in a practical sense, how Miriam, Moshe’s older sister, or Elisheva, Aharon’s wife, could have been one of the chief midwives. According to the Pesikta Rabati 43, Miriam was 6 years old at the time her parents reunited, which would make her anywhere between age 3 and age 6 or 7 when she spoke to Paroh. Aharon was 3 years older than Moshe; so saying that his wife, Yocheved’s daughter-in-law, is working alongside her is also very difficult to accept as the reality [though, I guess, as Yocheved married her nephew Amram, and was presumably significantly older than him, who is to say that Elisheva might not have similarly robbed the cradle?].

According to those who identify Shifrah and Puah as Yocheved and Miriam, there are debates as to why they took on these second names, what the names mean, and which one was actually Shifrah and which one was Puah. Suffice to say, the entire re-identification of these two women leaves much unanswered.

Perhaps the approach of Kli Yakar, Abravanel and Malbim is the most logical. It is very likely that women who became and become midwives do so because of their desire to participate in creation on a regular basis. A person who is so in tune to the miracle of childbirth cannot help becoming G-d-fearing.

Is it the least bit surprising that midwives, who have devoted their lives and careers to bringing life into the world, would do anything but preserve it? Do they need to be Hebrew midwives in order to do that? Or might they just have a monopoly on servicing the Jewish community, because word gets around about how good they are?

Using a contemporary example, from the depths of the horrors of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem has made extreme efforts to find and showcase the “righteous gentiles” who put their lives at risk to save Jewish people during the Second World War. Not every person living in a culture of depravity is automatically as bad as the majority.

If Shifrah and Puah were Egyptians who feared G-d, we need not “cover” for their righteous actions by claiming them to be two of our own. They were women who loved babies, cared deeply about their clients and their profession, and would not give in to the awful demands of a totalitarian ruler — who was not monitoring their activities anyway.

Rabbi Kaplan concludes with a third opinion: “One source states that the midwives were proselytes (Midrash Tadshe 21).” While the premise still finds a need to claim Shifrah and Puah as “two of our own,” so to speak, this Midrash unpacks a greater message than the one which identifies the midwives as the mother and sister of the human deliverer.

The prophet Zechariah (8:23) prophesies of a day when “Ten men of all the languages of the earth will grab hold of the cloak of a Jew and say ‘We will go with you, for we have heard G-d is with you.’”

The prophet Micha (4:2) prophesied along similar lines “When many nations will say, ‘Let us go up to the House of Hashem and the house of the G-d of Jacob. Let Him show us his ways, so we may follow His path. From Zion will Torah go forth, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem.’”

If we conduct ourselves correctly, based on the teachings of the Torah and our ancestors, others will come to recognize the beauty of our G-d and our religion on their own and may even join our ranks of their own volition.