Envisioning a Different Reality
This week, I listened to the father of 19-year-old Liri Albag, who was taken hostage by Hamas and has been held in Gaza for over 456 days on the radio. He shared with the presenter that every morning, he wakes up, turns to his wife, and says, "Today is the day Liri is coming home." He spoke with such conviction, hope, and peaceful composure—qualities that are almost unimaginable under the horrific circumstances he and his family have endured over the past year and a half.
How we perceive the world determines the world we inhabit. Jeff Foster, in Falling in Love with Where You Are, captures this beautifully:
"Life will eventually bring you to your knees. Either you’ll be on your knees cursing the universe and begging for a different life, or you’ll be brought to your knees by gratitude and awe, deeply embracing the life that you have, too overwhelmed by the beauty of it all to stand or even speak. Either way, they’re the same knees."
Life narrows us, corners us, presses us into spaces where interpretation feels almost impossible. Yet, as human beings, we hold a unique gift: the ability to choose how we see, to reframe reality even in the darkest of places. The psalmist intuits this power in Tehillim 118:5:
"From the narrow place, I called out to God; God answered me with expansiveness."(מִן-הַמֵּצַר קָרָאתִי יָּהּ; עָנָנִי בַמֶּרְחָב יָהּ)
The Divine response comes not as a miracle, but as a shift—a movement from constriction to expansiveness, from the narrow lens of despair to the wide-angled view of hope. Redemption begins when we awaken each morning and choose the lens through which we interpret our lives.
The Women Who Dared to See Differently
This week’s parsha introduces us to a cast of extraordinary women who mastered the art of seeing. These women—midwives, mothers, daughters, and sisters—lived in a world suffocated by cruelty, where life itself teetered on the brink of annihilation, and Jewish survival hung by a thread. Yet, they chose to kneel, as Foster describes, not in bitterness but in awe.
The Torah underscores their capacity to see by repeatedly using the verb to see. The midwives, Shifra and Puah, are commanded to look upon the Israelite infants on the birthstool (Exodus 1:16):
"When you see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live."(וּרְאִיתֶן, עַל-הָאָבְנָיִם)
Defying Pharaoh’s decree, they refuse to see these children as expendable. Instead, they see God (Exodus 1:17):
"The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live."(וַתִּירֶאןָ הַמְיַלְּדֹת, אֶת-הָאֱלֹהִים)
Yocheved, Moshe’s mother, sees that he is good (Exodus 2:2):
"And when she saw that he was a goodly child, she hid him for three months."(וַתֵּ֤רֶא אֹתוֹ֙ כִּי־ט֣וֹב ה֔וּא)
Bat Pharaoh sees a basket, then a crying child (Exodus 2:5-6):
"She saw the basket among the reeds… She opened it and saw the child."(וַתֵּ֤רֶא אֶת־הַתֵּבָה֙… וַתִּרְאֵ֣הוּ אֶת־הַיֶּ֔לֶד)
These women defied the norms of their time. They looked beyond Pharaoh’s decrees and the immediacy of suffering to imagine a different future. The rabbis teach us that it was in their merit (בזכות נשים צדקניות) that the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt.
What did these women do? They took mirrors into the fields where their husbands labored, rekindling life and desire. The mirrors reflect not just physical beauty but the deeper vision of a future beyond the present darkness. They saw light amidst shadows, possibility amidst despair. Like Miriam, who later finds water in the wilderness and music in bitterness, these women saw life in the midst of death.
Seeing that Transforms
This ability to see differently—radically, courageously—is not just a passive act but a transformative one. Through their vision, these women shifted the course of history. Perhaps this shift is why the Israelites, destined to endure 430 years of slavery, were redeemed after 210 years. As the sages say, “In the merit of righteous women, we were redeemed from Egypt.”
Their legacy shaped Moshe, the leader who would emerge to redeem their children. Raised in Pharaoh’s palace, Moshe might have been insulated from the plight of his people. But the text tells us otherwise (Exodus 2:11):
"He saw their suffering."(וַיַּרְא בְּסִבְלֹתָם)
Later, at the burning bush, God chooses Moshe because (Exodus 3:4):
"He turned aside to see."(וַיַּרְא… סַר לִרְאוֹת)
This act of seeing marks Moshe as a leader. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moshe is ‘radically amazed’ by the world around him, but its not just his capacity to ‘see’ but also his courage to respond to what he sees – as the text emphasises - he sees and he turns aside to watch. God chooses Moshe because he saw what other didn’t, and he responds but turning towards the sight.
Responding Responsibly
The women of Parshat Shemot teach us that vision is not enough; it must be accompanied by action. They refused to wait for miracles, instead becoming the active agents of redemption. And Moshe, their spiritual heir, follows in their footsteps.
Both the women and Moshe understood that to truly see is to bear responsibility—for others, for the future, for the sacred task of redeeming the world. They remind us that seeing is not just an act of the eyes but an act of the soul.
In a world often shrouded in despair, and in these days when the horizon of hope feels distant, may we learn from them to choose our lenses wisely. May we recognize sparks of redemption even in the deepest darkness and glimpses of light in the narrowest corners of our lives. May we find the courage to act, even when our efforts seem small or insignificant. May we rise each morning with the strength to kneel in awe, not in bitterness. And may we take a lesson from the unwavering faith of Liri's family, believing wholeheartedly that today is the day our hostages will come home.
Shabbat Shalom.
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