This sermon was delivered at our service on January 9th, 2026. You can listen to this drash on Contact Chai podcast or watch it on YouTube.
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Thirty-six times in the Torah, we read the words, “For you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” It’s considered unusual for the Torah to repeat something once, but thirty-six times? And it always comes along with, prefaces, a moral commandment that has to do with protecting the vulnerable. For example:
“You will not pervert justice owed to the stranger or orphan — you were strangers in the land of Egypt!”
“When an immigrant resides with you, you will love them as one of your own, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt!”
“You will not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy — you were strangers in the land of Egypt!”
“You shall love the ger: stranger/immigrant, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.”
The Torah has 613 commandments and most of them don’t include this line. What’s the connection? I’ve always understood it as the Torah reminding us that because we know what vulnerability feels like, we should know better than to exploit or harm anyone else, especially the most vulnerable, and who is more vulnerable than the new immigrant, the outsider, the stranger in a strange land?
But this week, I had another insight about these words. “You were once strangers in the land of Egypt” is part of a big claim, a foundational piece of Jewish faith, that our tradition makes relentlessly.
The purpose of Torah is to teach us how not to become Egypt. To never accept Egypt as the way things have to be. To always remain a stranger to Egypt.
Now, we’re not talking about modern Egypt on the map, obviously. We’re talking about the archetypal, biblical Egypt, he Egypt about which the political philosopher Michael Walzer says, “Wherever you live, it’s probably Egypt.”
Egypt, mitrayim in Hebrew, or “the narrow place,” represents exploitation, domination, oppression, and so on. The Torah says, no fewer than 36 times, that as a Jew, we are to be strangers to those things. It’s not just that we were strangers in the Land of Egypt as immigrants. We must continue to be strangers when our land becomes Egypt. We are not to accommodate ourselves to injustice, or turn a blind eye and a cold shoulder when we hear or see things that feel like Pharaoh in Egypt. Rather, we must hone the muscles that help us remain strangers to those notions so that we can resist them and maintain our moral center. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Have moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.”
This week’s parasha opens up with a reminder that all the sons of Jacob who went down to Egypt to find safety and sustenance were treated well there because Joseph, the smart brother, was their advocate in the palace with Pharoah.
And then, this week, we open the book of Exodus, Chapter 1, verse 8: “And then a new king arose, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people,
“Look at the Israelite people: they are more numerous and stronger than we are! Let us deal shrewdly, so they don’t expand, otherwise, in the event of war, they might join our enemies and rise up from the ground.”
Listen to Pharaoh’s language: them, and us. They are more numerous than we are. They are demographic threat to us. They won’t be loyal to us. They will rise up from the ground, like bugs, like vermin. They are infecting our society from within. And so begins the verbal public relations campaign that leads to the physical brutalization of the Israelites. It doesn’t start off with violence — it starts off with words. With creating a sense of suspicion and fear, creating a bad “other” out of people who were, up til that point, coexisting peacefully, sharing land and resources.
But that’s what tyrants do. And all it takes is one insecure leader with an instinct for marketing to incite fear and suspicion, drive people who once trusted each other apart from one another, making them easier to control and dominate by telling people that their power must be maintained at all costs if there is to be order and safety. And if we need to hurt people in order to maintain that order and safety, those people weren’t really people like you and me, anyway. They were dangerous. Take our word for it.
The Rabbinic commentator Rashi puts forward a question. If the purpose of Torah is to teach Jews God’s commandments, why not begin the Torah with the very first commandment given to the Jewish people (rather than at the creation of the world, the story of all the early families and dramas, even the descent into Egypt and what we’re reading right now?). Why do we need any of this if the first commandment given to the Jewish people as a people, is to declare the first month on the Jewish calendar as the month in which the Jewish people will walk free out of Egypt? Nissan — the month in which we have celebrated Passover every year since for 3,500 years. Why start the story so early and give us so much context and background if the purpose of the Torah is to give us Jews mitzvot?
And the answer is — that’s not the purpose of the Torah. Well, it’s not the entire purpose of the Torah. The purpose of the Torah is to help us know when we are descending into Egypt so that we can resist it with every tool in our social, cultural, and legal toolbox. The purpose of Torah is to inspire Jews create an anti-Egypt in the societies we build and live in.
And so the worst thing that could happen to us as Jews is that we would hear the words that Stephen Miller said this week talking to Jake Tapper, and shrug.
If you missed it, what he said was,
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
When we Jews hear those words, we shudder. Because thousands of years of reading a Torah whose purpose is to help us maintain a moral tradition that acts as a counter-narrative to Egypt has honed our spidey sense that a person talking about absolute control and domination is dangerous. Even if we are part of the “us’ they say they’re doing it for. We hear those words today and hear their echoes in Nazi Germany, in the military juntas of Argentina, in the Spanish Inquisition, in the Crusades, in the Roman Empire, in the Babylonian Empire — all the way back to Pharaoh’s Egypt.
But I want to tell you something. I am tired of pointing out the parallels between the evil empire of ancient Egypt and the policies we’re seeing enacted in America, or in Israel, today. It doesn’t feel original. You don’t need me to tell you that what we’re seeing in our country today is neither normal nor acceptable, not morally, not legally, not Jewishly. While I feel I have to state the obvious as a rabbi, to go on the record to say as much, it’s not all I want to talk about. What I really want to talk about is how, in the midst of Egypt, we stay human. How we stay fun and creative. How we stay vital, and inspired, and create joy, wherever we are, even if it’s Egypt.
So I want to spend just a few minutes celebrating a few of the people the Torah introduces us to before Moses ever confronts Pharaoh. In the midst of the horrors of Egypt, there were people who resisted Egypt long before liberation is even imaginable, people who show us that resistance doesn’t only look like confrontation and oratory, but can look like every day choices we make from our homes, jobs, and lives. Our story is not just the story of one great liberator. It is a catalogue of resistance strategies, both spiritual and tactical. Are you up for hearing about some lesser known, inspiring characters? Meet the midwives, Shifra and Puah. They work in health care. They are given a direct order from the state: when you deliver Hebrew babies, kill the boys.
This is a kind of sick population control, asking health care professionals to violate their conscience and follow a policy of harm. Any OB Gyn working in half the states in America or any pediatrician serving trans patients can relate to this.
The Torah tells us that Shifa and Puah feared God. And what it means is, they feared God more than they feared Pharoah’s wrath. They refuse the order to kill Hebrew babies and then they then lie straight to Pharaoh’s face about it. They tell him that Hebrew women are too vigorous, too quick — by the time we arrive, the babies are already born. Just like you said, Big Guy, they’re like animals. It is one of the Torah’s clearest endorsements of non-violent civil disobedience. They do not overthrow the regime. They do not resign in protest. They keep doing their jobs and they sabotage the system from within.
God sees this, and rewards them for their moral courage. And this matters to us. Because many of us are not in positions where Moses-like dramatic confrontation is possible, or even responsible. Some of us work inside institutions. Some of us are responsible for the livelihoods of others. Some of us file reports, write grants, deliver care, teach students, enforce policies. Or don’t. Sometimes resistance looks like quietly refusing to fully cooperate, bending the rules in the direction of human dignity and care. Sometimes it looks like smiling politely while not being entirely truthful, because you fear God, more than you fear Pharaoh. And the Torah says that there is a holy form of resistance that happens quietly, subversively, from within systems that do harm. That is Shifra and Puah.
But then we also meet Bat Pharaoh, Pharoah’s daughter. She’s a different story, because she doesn’t just work in the system — she is the system. The Torah describes her going down to the river — a place already soaked in the blood of Hebrew children, and she sees a baby floating in a basket. She knows exactly what this child is. It’s possible she was going down to the river specifically to look for exactly what she found: A Hebrew child. And she brings him into her home, and she introduces him to the family, and she raises him and treats him like family, inviting everyone in the palace to also recognize the humanity of this Hebrew child. Pharaoh might not like it but he loves her, so he gets used to it. And it’s only one person. And meanwhile, Bat Pharaoh meets and gets to know Moses’ sister Miriam, and mother Yocheved, who help raise him. Bat Pharaoh practices solidarity, transcends the categories of us and them and affirms our shared humanity.
But not only that. So often today, people walk away from relationships with others they feel are morally compromised in their support of systems, regimes, and ideologies which do harm. “I just can’t with them!” But Bat Pharaoh’s model is exactly the opposite: don’t end those relationships! Leverage them. Be at the dinner table, seder table, ask how they’re doing and actually listen. And when the moment comes to offer the perspective of the under-represented, of the hated and maligned, do it in a way that they can hear. And you know what that is, because you know them. Tell stories that complicate propaganda, refuse to let whole peoples be reduced to threats or abstractions, in a way that your family can hear.
This can feel dangerous. We won’t always get it right. It risks the very access and belonging and trust that makes someone take our call. But Bat Pharaoh teaches us: if we have relationships with those inside the system, or supporting the system doing harm, it is not necessarily righteous to walk away. Perhaps, as Mordechai tells Queen Esther, you were put in the palace for just such a moment.
Ok, one more. Yitro. He’s a Midianite priest and has a whole parasha named after him in a few weeks, but I feel like his act of courage in this week’s parasha is less well known. His daughters come in from drawing water at the well early, he says why are you back so early? They say, because these shepherds were harassing us, but then this dreamy Egyptian man rescued us from them and then he drew our water.” And then could have been the end of the story. But then Yitro says, “Where is he, and why didn’t you invite him over? Let’s have him over for dinner!”
I feel like there’s this spirit of timidness that has infected so much of our culture, a hesitancy around imposing on someone if they look busy, or just presuming that they’d never be interested in getting to know little old you, and anyway your house is in no shape to have company. How often do we have nice interactions with strangers but then never see or hear from them again? Yitro’s like, “Get that guy’s digits? CALL HIM! Invite him over!” The entire rest of the story hinges on that dinner. You know what happens at that dinner? Moses falls in love with this priest’s daughter, Tzippora. He puts down new roots in this new place. He becomes a shepherd, and develops the inner quiet to be ready to finally hear the call from God when it comes. So Yitro’s lesson is, have more dinners with strangers and see what magic comes of it. You just might build the relationships that change history.
I want to end where we began. The purpose of Torah, and the role of the Jew in the world, is to stand as a counter-testament to Egypt and everything that looks, talks and walks like Egypt.
All of the great empires that once dominated the globe are gone. We are still here. Not because we were ever the strongest, or because we conquered the most territory. But because we refused to acquiesce to their methods of inhumanity and immorality. Because we remained strangers to it. Ki gerim hayitem b’eretz Mitzrayim.
They glorified domination, so we tell the story of enslavement. When they demanded endless production, we insist on a weekly Sabbath. When they worshipped power, so we limited it. We taught our children stories of resistance, of care, of transcending categories of religion, race, and ethnicity, because we believe in our core, that every human being is created in God’s image.
Judaism survived because we never mistook might for right. And that is our work now.
None of us can defeat Pharaoh single-handedly and we shouldn’t try. And sure, it would be great if we had a Moses, or a Martin Luther King Jr, or a Ghandi, to be our champion, challenging the charismatic forces of evil menacing our country right now with their own charisma and brilliance… But before there was Moses there was Joseph. There was Shifra and Puah, there was Pharoah’s daughter, and Moses’s parents Amram and Yocheved with their resourcefulness and their ark, and Moses’ sister Miriam with her tambourine and her playful spirit, and Yitro with his big heart and hospitality, all of them playing their small but necessary role in the ecosystem of resistance. I can’t wait for there to be someone we all look to to lead the way out of the darkness. In the meantime, it me and you.
Shabbat shalom.