Shemot - Exodus 1:1 - 6:1

Avivah Zornberg cites both the conventional interpretation of the Israelites' fecundity in Egypt (they "swarmed and multiplied") - "a miraculous . . . sense of the outrageous victory of life over death" - as well as an an alternative reading by the 16th-century Italian rabbi, Obadiah Seforno, who saw the "swarming" of the now nameless Israelites as a sign that in Egypt the Israelites have "lost their distinctness, their names, their sense of purpose." ("Vayishretzu" - they swarmed - is the word used in Genesis 1:20 to describe "creeping things"). Zornberg discusses the problematic implications of this interpretation (blaming the victim) but concludes her discussion as follows: "Concentrating on responsibility for one's own predicaments creates an emotional world in which inner growth becomes imaginable . . . Seforno invites us to reflect on the ways in which slavery, persecution, alienation - even when they are functions of a divine 'edict' - are generated by human beings, in the freedom of their own narratives. And - in the same vein - on the meanings of redemption, exodus, freedom. In doing this, he stands in a tradition of commentators who read the Exodus narrative psychologically, spiritually, from the point of the victim who seeks redemption, in the intimate as well as the political sense." (The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, pp. 18-21)