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Shabbat Shemot; Exodus 1:1 to 6:1

“And the Children of Israel were Fertile”

‫וּבְ נֵ ֣י ִי ְשׂ ָר ֗ ֵאל פּ ָ֧רוּ‬

A Commentary by Rav Edmond H. Weiss, Ph.D.

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Shemot begins with a vav, the symbol for “and.” (This vav should not be confused with
the vav in such Biblical terms as Va-Yomer, where the vav signifies a change of tense and
is recurrently mistranslated in English Bibles as “and.”) Although most translations
ignore this “and,” scholars point out that it is a way of connecting this new book to
Genesis, or B’raishit.

But what is the connection? Could not the Torah have begun with Exodus (as even
RASHI asks)? We must notice that, after the first seven verses, Jacob’s entire clan, and
all their contemporaries have died.
1 Now these are the names of the sons of Israel, who came into Egypt with Jacob; every man
came with his household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;
4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were
seventy souls; and Joseph was in Egypt already.

In fact, the most chilling words at the beginning of the portion (verse 8)—the rise of a
king who “knew not Joseph”—is also little more than a device for connecting Exodus to
the earlier text. The context of the narrative, the basis for the inevitable confrontation
between Pharaoh and Moses, happens long after, and is unaffected by, any of the
people and events in Genesis.

Egypt in the 14th Century BCE, the time when the garrison cities of Pithom and Raamses
were constructed, was not a unified country. Vast areas were not under the control of
the central Pharaoh, and the people Pharaoh refers to as “the people of the children of
Israel (am b’nai yisroel, the first description of Israel as an am) are not actually identified
as slaves, but simply as a large and growing group of resident aliens.

The story of the Jewish people begins, therefore, with a familiar anti-Semitic slander: the
charge of divided loyalty, the same charge that, even today, prevents Americans with
Israeli relatives from receiving certain government clearances. i
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. 9 And he said unto his people:
‘Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; 10 come, let us
deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalls us any
war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us…

Note, though, that Pharaoh’s fear is not really of the Israelites’ politics or religion or
attachment to some prior homeland. The people he fears have never lived anywhere but
Egypt and have no memories or culture from some prior country in which they lived
more freely. Pharaoh’s only grievance is their growing numbers, their fertility.

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Verse 7 of Shemot tells us that the children of Israel were paroo, fertile or fruitful. The
word shares its roots with paree, the fruit of the Kiddush. It’s the same word the Torah
uses for plants and animals, an assertion of added reproductive energy and success.
RASHI gives an insight into the epidemiology of the passage by explaining that Israelite
women did not miscarry, and the children did not die in infancy. RASHI also offers—in
an observation characteristic of his imagination—that there were many sextuplets.

Similarly, Pharaoh’s plan for offsetting the risk of divided loyalty is not imprisonment,
or re-education but, rather, working the Israelite men so hard they won’t have the
energy to impregnate their fertile wives.
11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they
built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they afflicted them, the
more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And they were afraid because of the
children of Israel.

It’s hard to escape the sense that the fertility, under these conditions, is unnatural or
even miraculous. It is in righteous frustration—inability to understand how men
exhausted with work and stinging with lashes can still father children—that Pharaoh
finally puts in place his pogrom of killing Israeli male children. Moreover, when the
morally upright midwives report that they are unable to catch the babies in time, there
is a further sense that the fruitfulness of the Israelites has magic behind it.

Fertility as a Mitzvah and an Aspect of Nature

Fertility is a recurrent motif throughout the Torah. Indeed, the very first of the 613
mitzvoth, directed to Adam and Eve is to be fruitful and multiply.
Genesis 1:28 And God gave them his blessing and said to them, Be fruitful (piroo) and have
increase, and make the earth full and be masters of it.

The traditional interpretation is that a man should continue to foster children until he
has at least one son; or, alternately, at least one son and daughter. As defined in the
Chabad lesson on the meaning of “be fruitful…”:

The minimum requirement of this mitzvah is to have a son and a daughter.


But if possible one should try to have as many children as possible. In the words of Isaiah: "He
did not create [the world] for a waste, He formed it to be inhabited." From this verse, we learn
that gentiles too have a mitzvah to have children.

• If one has a son and a daughter and one of them passes away before he does (G-d forbid),
he has not fulfilled this mitzvah. If, however, one's child had a child before passing away, the
grandparent has still fulfilled the mitzvah, as long as he still has a male and female

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descendant who are the offspring of his male and female child—even if the grandson is from
his daughter and the granddaughter from his son.
• One fulfills this mitzvah no matter any disabilities the child(ren) may, G-d forbid, have.
• This mitzvah is only mandatory for men. For women, it is a mitzvah, but one that is not
obligatory. This is derived from various verses. When a woman has a child, she is considered
to be sharing her husband's mitzvah equally with him, because he was only able to fulfill the
mitzvah because of her "partnership."
• If a man had children as a gentile, and he then converted to Judaism with his children, he is
considered to have fulfilled this mitzvah. Some say he has fulfilled the mitzvah even if his
children do not convert with him.

Even though this mitzvah is not one of the seven Noachide commandments,
nevertheless the nations descended from Noach (as well as the animals rescued) are
also instructed with the same language:

• Genesis 8:17 Take out with you every living thing which is with you, birds and cattle and
everything which goes on the earth, so that they may have offspring and be fertile and be
increased on the earth.
• Genesis 9:1 And God gave his blessing to Noah and his sons, and said, Be fertile, and have
increase, and make the earth full.
• Genesis 9:7 And now, be fertile and have increase; have offspring on the earth and become
great in number.

All these passages, and several others, might be considered an ecological or naturalistic
conception of fertility. Reproduction just happens … All living things reproduce; it’s the
single most frequently observed phenomenon in nature, from single cells to behemoths.
Generally, the passages with this natural orientation are connected with the E-God
(written by either the E author or later by the P author). In other words, all that humans
need to be fruitful is the natural law embedded in the universe by its creator. Consider:

Ezekiel 19:10 Your mother was in comparison like a vine, planted by the waters: she
was fertile and full of branches because of the great waters.

But there is another model of fertility in the Torah, one in which fertility is hard to come
by without divine intervention. These stories are so often associated with the J-God that
Harold Bloom speculated that the J texts might have been written by a woman. (Book of
J, Grove Press, 1988)

Infertility in the Bible

The Torah (and other Jewish texts) also contains many episodes in which barren women
need help to become pregnant, or women with stressful pregnancies need help with
carrying the babies. In fact, the first of our Matriarchs, Sarah, was known to be barren,

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which is clear in the Hagar episode. Only later, when she is nearly 100 years old, does a
mysterious divine visitor enable her to conceive Isaac.

Genesis 21:1-7 Then the LORD took note of Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as
He had promised. So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the
appointed time of which God had spoken to him.

Similarly, Rachel has difficulty conceiving until God intervenes:

Genesis 30:22 Then God gave thought to Rachel, and hearing her prayer he made her fertile.

Several times prayers, sacrifices and priestly interventions help the barren conceive.
And even today, Chassidim believe that fertility can be enabled by segulahs, spiritually
propitious acts such as:

• Being scrupulous about the laws of Family Purity


• Supporting Jewish education.
• Making meals (or farbrengens) for guests.
• Studying and teaching Chassidut (the mystical dimension of Torah). This is because studying
Chassidut is intended to bring a person to love and fear of G-d, which are referred to in
Kabbalistic terminology as the "son" and "daughter."
• Asking forgiveness from anyone that may have been hurt as a result of the marriage of the now
childless couple—e.g., a jilted suitor, an unmarried older sister.
• Checking the husband's tefillin and the mezuzahs in the home.
• For the wife, making sure to give tzedakah (charity) before lighting the Shabbat and holiday
candles.
• Living in Israel.

Thus, the notion remains among many that God’s commitment to fertility even includes
direct intervention in what seems physically impossible as, say, an answer to a
petitionary prayer.

This explains the great hubbub about the fertility rate of Israelite Jewish women.

Fertility in Israel

For many years, a key component in the debate about the politics of the disputed Israeli
territories has been the projection that higher fertility rates for Israeli Arabs might
eventually result in a Jewish State with a Muslim majority, a kind of apartheid. But as of
2016, the fertility rate of Jewish women in Israel equaled that of Arab women. David
Goldman of the Jewish Policy Center reports:

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Israel’s fertility rate of three children per Jewish woman is higher than that of any other country
in the developed world, and the only fertility rate substantially above replacement. Only the
United States among the world’s industrial nations has a fertility rate around the replacement
level of 2.1 … Non-Haredi Jewish women have an average of 2.6…

Just as remarkable is that fertility in most of the Muslim world has fallen below Israel’s, while
the fertility of Israeli Arabs and Arabs in Judea and Samaria has converged on the Jewish fertility
rate in Israel. At present fertility rates, there is no risk that a non-Jewish majority will emerge
between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

In fact, Israel, with a population of 8.5 million, is bursting at the seams.

Also interesting is the speculation as to why Arab fertility decreased. The most frequent
speculation is that Arab women have become more independent and sophisticated,
traits that are usually associated with smaller families. For example, the Jewish Policy
Center also provides this breakdown of family size of American Jewish families.

Obviously, the less observant the Jewish family, the smaller the number of offspring, in
part an inverse relationship frequently observed between education and religiousness.

Religious Sect Average No. of Children per Woman


Ultra-Orthodox 6.72
Modern Orthodox 3.39
Conservative 1.74
Reform 1.36
Secular 1.29

Even so, non-Haredi women in Israel are having nearly twice as many children as their
American counterparts, suggesting a different set of cultural preferences.

Is Fertility Always Valued?

So, Pharaoh’s observation that the Israelites are especially fertile is not an example of
praise or a reason to suspect that this people has a powerful deity that arranges
multiple births (as RASHI suggests). Rather, there is something in the claim that is
meant to make the Israelites seem abnormal, even animalistic.

There is a tendency among people who plan and limit their families to feel some
sympathy, or even condescension, toward those who don’t. We know that much of the
poverty and suffering in the world comes from situations in which women are obliged
to have more children than they want or to have them closer together than they want.
Enlightened people cannot understand why, in an era of family planning, women

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would inflict that on themselves or their children. Why, instead of just having children,
do so many women choose to “breed”? Even Pope Francis recently observed that, just
because Catholics may not use artificial birth control, there is no reason for them to
“breed like rabbits.” (He recommended a limit of three children per family.)

Today’s demagogues often alarm their followers by pointing out that not only is a
certain group growing dangerously large, but that they “breed like animals.” And that
they expect “us,” who plan better, to pay the expenses of their irresponsible child-
bearing practices.

The Pharaoh who knew not Joseph is still with us. Listen carefully when he speaks.

i
Avi Schick New York Post 2/11/16
Consider Gershon Pincus, a 62-year-old dentist and lifelong New Yorker who sought a way to serve as he
approached retirement. He found a position at a naval dental clinic in upstate Saratoga Springs, and started work
in July 2014. All was going well until this past September, when Pincus was informed that he wasn’t eligible for a
security clearance. The rejection was accompanied by a Statement of Reasons that concluded “foreign contacts
and interests may be a security concern due to divided loyalties.”…Incredibly, the totality of the concern about
Pincus was his contact with his 89-year-old mother and his middle-aged brother and sister, who had moved to
Israel as adults.

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