Shrewd Dealings

Distance creates strength

Here’s the situation. A new ruler arises and he has a problem on his hands. There is a growing population that threatens his rule, at least as he perceives it, so he can’t solve it in the obvious way. He needs to come up with methods of subjugation that will quell this force. So he says the following in Exodus 1:10

הָ֥בָה נִֽתְחַכְּמָ֖ה ל֑וֹ פֶּן־יִרְבֶּ֗ה וְהָיָ֞ה כִּֽי־תִקְרֶ֤אנָה מִלְחָמָה֙ וְנוֹסַ֤ף גַּם־הוּא֙ עַל־שֹׂ֣נְאֵ֔ינוּ וְנִלְחַם־בָּ֖נוּ וְעָלָ֥ה מִן־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.

What exactly does shrewdly mean here? According to R’ Yaakov ben Asher, the great legal and Torah commentator known as the Ba’al ha’Turim

Neither Pharaoh nor his servants wanted to do violence to the Israelites, as it would have been a major act of betrayal to commit genocide against an innocent nation that had settled in Egypt at the request of the previous king. He was afraid that even if he were to give an order to destroy these people his subjects would not obey that order. Moreover, the descendants of Ephrayim and Menashe possessed considerable influence in the highest governmental circles, and the very number of the Israelites would have made open warfare against them a highly dangerous undertaking. The Israelites would surely resist any attack upon them by violent means. Therefore, he imposed a form of taxation upon that nation, a common practice in those days. When this did not have the desired effect, he resorted to instructing the midwives who assisted the Jewish women at birth, to kill the male babies before the mothers had held them in their arms. This was done clandestinely, so that even the mothers were unaware that they had given birth to a male baby.

As the Ba’al Ha’Turim notes, rulers in this position can’t simply wipe out a part of their populace. They need to use means that make people think they’re legitimate or ones that fly under the radar. And as he continues, this shrewd methodology is short-lived. Before Moses became MOSES:

they at least had to use subterfuge when applying discriminatory legislation. Now they felt entitled to repress the Jews with all their might openly.

This is the way of despots. At first they attempt to use sleight of hand but once that’s finished, they are out in the open, fully flouting accepted norms to attack vulnerable people.

Along with many of you I watched in horror the videos of the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37 year old mother by an ICE agent. Many in positions of power are attempting to argue that Renee was attacking the ICE agent with her car. I’m not here to litigate that because we all have eyes. Even if one can wordsmith their way to arguing that she was attempting to drive her car into the agent, here’s the DOJ’s own rules on law enforcement agents using deadly force:

I want to focus on what it feels like to continue to watch people in power wield the system like a cudgel against the vulnerable with impunity. It’s really defeating when events like this continue to be perpetrated under the guise of public safety. The challenge we face right now is how to withstand such acts. So many of us, I include myself in this, feel so deflated that the desire to simply give up is alluring. But that can’t be an option. We need to allow ourselves to feel the sadness, anger, and emotional fatigue, but we can’t give up.

I thought of this when I read the Sfat Emet’s teaching on this action of dealing shrewdly. The part that immediately precedes the following commentary deals with the notion that our time in Egypt was meant to be a time of raising up the sparks, converting an awful situation into goodness. There were treasures there, both metaphorically and materially to be found. Now, the rest of his comment:

Therefore they wanted to afflict the children of Israel with hard labor so that they would not have the strength to extract ‘their prey’ [these treasures] from their mouths. This is what is written: ‘lest they multiply’—for when good increases over evil, the good sparks are clarified from the mixture. ‘And when war befalls us’—meaning [war] with the side of holiness. ‘And join [nosaf] also’—this refers to that small light hidden that is found even among them [the Egyptians]. ‘And go up from the land’—that point [of light] through the ascent of the Children of Israel.

The intention of the Egyptians was to beleaguer the Israelites to such a degree that they wouldn’t be able to muster the strength to fight and come out of it. They were so concerned that the goodness of the Israelites would overcome them that they needed to fully deplete them. But as the text above alludes, they first had to use ‘shrewd’ methods to diminish them and then when things became accepted, they unleashed their full cruelty.

It’s hard to read this and not draw parallels to our current moment. As we’ve talked about before, often the cruelty is the point, not for cruelty’s sake but to emotionally drain your target. What a moment of depletion our country finds itself in. And yet, we have to dig deep.

As the Sfat Emet notes on the verse (1:12) after this that says:

the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out,

they remained upright because:

שנאתם בנ”י מתרחקין מהם וכפי הריחוק כן ניתוסף להם כח…החירות בידינו-the very hate that drove the Egyptians put them at a distance from the Israelites and that distance gave the Israelites strength and that strength was the realization that their freedom was in their hands.

People who operate with these types of shrewd dealings end up so consumed by their hatred and vitriol that they push themselves away. In that space, the vulnerable can find their strength in realizing they still have the capacity for changing the situation. No matter how downtrodden we feel, there has to be hope because we still have agency.

At this moment in time, I don’t think we need the solutions. The pain is too raw and the visuals are too harsh. Now we should simply allow ourselves to feel the moment. But at the tail end of that, we can remind ourselves that we have to stay in and fight. That will come soon. May the memory of Renee Good serve as a reminder to us to never give up.

Shabbat Shalom