Pharaoh gives the order to kill all Jewish male babies born. The midwives ignore it. This was the beginning of the redemption. That the midwives feared God more than they feared Pharaoh.
Quick D’var Torah – Parashat Shemot
One of the major events in this week’s parashah—though it can easily pass us by—is the story of the midwives. Pharaoh issues an explicit decree: kill the newborn Hebrew boys. And the midwives refuse. The Torah tells us why: “They feared God.” They were more concerned with answering to Hashem than to Pharaoh.
This moment is far more than moral courage. It is the beginning of the redemption.
Why? Because the moment a dictator’s laws are ignored, his power is already cracking.
Egypt was not a democracy. Pharaoh was an absolute monarch. There was no legislature, no courts, no elections. Pharaoh said something—and that was the law. And yet, the midwives simply ignored him. Later, even Pharaoh’s own daughter ignores his decree and saves Moshe. Once a regime’s own people stop enforcing its laws, the regime is finished—it just doesn’t know it yet.
We see this idea echoed much later in history. During the era of Andrew Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court—under John Marshall—ruled against the forced removal of Native Americans. Jackson’s response was famously cynical: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” The result was the Trail of Tears. The law existed on paper, but power lay elsewhere.
That episode taught the Supreme Court a hard lesson: sometimes it avoids ruling not because the issue is unclear, but because it knows the ruling will be ignored. Sadly, the same dynamic exists in religious life—sometimes rabbis refrain from issuing rulings they know people will not follow.
But the Torah is teaching us something deeper:
Redemption begins when people choose obedience to God over obedience to tyranny.
The midwives did not overthrow Pharaoh. They didn’t stage a rebellion. They simply refused to comply. And that refusal set everything else in motion. Because of them, Moshe lives. Because Moshe lives, redemption becomes possible.
The greatest threat to a tyrant is not protest—it is irrelevance.
And the greatest act of faith is knowing whom you truly answer to.
Something to think about.
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