Parshas Shemos

Just a quick idea from the Emes L'Yaakov:

Most of this week’s פרשה details the birth, development, and appointment of משה רבינו as the leader of בני ישראל. Yet there aren't many details in the פסוקים. Perhaps this is what motivates רש"י to make the comments he does on a פסוק towards the beginning of the פרשה.

פרק ב' פסוק ז' says "...וקראתי לך אשה מינקת מן העבריות..." - “…and summon for you a wet nurse from the Hebrew women…”. Miriam volunteers to find a Hebrew to nurse Moshe. רש"י quotes the מדרש that states that the fact that מרים specified she would get a wet nurse from the "עבריות" teaches us that בת פרעה took משה around to many מצרי women to for them to nurse משה, but משה didn’t nurse from them "לפי שהיתה עתיד לדבר עם השכינה" – “because he was destined to speak with ה' in the future.” Apparently, as an infant, משה knew he would be speaking to ה' and didn’t want to contaminate his mouth with Egyptian milk.

The שפתי חכמים asks, how do we know that משה refused to be nursed by מצריות specifically because he was going to speak with ה'? Maybe it was because he recognized his mother – he was already 3 months old and had been nursed by יוכבד!? He answers that it says "ותצפנהו" - Yocheved hid משה for three months. Presumably, משה was hidden in the dark and therefore probably did not recognize his mother. And so the מדרש’s explanation – that משה’s refusal to nurse from מצרי women was because of his role in the future – is a reasonable one, according to the שפתי חכמים.

Interestingly, this idea is cited as the מקור for a particular הלכה. The רמ"א in Yoreh De'ah (פא:ז) says that חלב מצרית כחלב ישראלית - the milk is the same, whether it comes from an Egyptian woman are a Jewish woman. He continues, though, that nevertheless, a Jewish child should not be nursed by a מצרית if a ישראלית is available (because the milk from an עובדת כוכבים will dull a child’s heart and make the child bad-natured).

The Vilan Gaon says that the רשב"א cites משה רבינו as the source. Since משה refused to be nursed by a מצרית, we try to avoid it as well. But as the אמת ליעקב points out, this is a strange source for the הלכה! Moshe's refusal was because of his destiny – his future – when he would converse with ה'. Is that really applicable to all of the children of כלל ישראל?! Do we really think that every child will talk to הקב"ה?

The אמת ליעקב answers with a beautiful idea about חנוך. No, we don’t think every child will speak to ה', but we do think that every child has the potential to speak to ה'. Therefore, the way we approach educating our children should be by thinking that this child could end up speaking with ה'.

I don’t know how literally we are to take this, but the message is an appropriate one. As parents and teachers, we should approach our children and students with that perspective – that they are capable of great things in the future. That’s how seriously we need to think about how we educate them. And perhaps more important than us realizing this, our children need to be told this – that they too are capable of tremendous things and can reach great heights.