New names are always popping up in the Torah: a family tree here, meeting a relative there, a random passerby somewhere. Whenever a new name pops up I try to ask myself: who is this person? And, more importantly, why are they mentioned? Where are they expounded upon in Jewish literature, if anywhere?
This week, it was Gershom and Eliezer – the sons of Moses – that pop up and, just as quickly, get washed out of the Torah’s narrative. Gershom was mentioned once before, during his birth (Exodus 22:22), but when they (along with their mother, Moses’ wife, Tzippora), are reunited with their father it is hardly a noteworthy even in the Torah. Indeed it is even odder, given the emphasis on family and relationships in Bereishit, that the personal life of Moses is not present in the Torah. Fortunately, Professors Adrian Ziderman and Nathan Aviezer of Bar-Ilan University both had similar curiosities into the lack of emphasis on the family of Moses.
Professor Ziderman brings midrashic evidence to help us understand their absence:
Yitro said to him [Moses]: Where are you taking [Tzippora, my daughter, and my grandchildren]? He replied: To Egypt. Hi said to Him: Those that are already in Egypt seek to leave and you are taking them there!? Moses replied: In the future, they are due to leave and stand at Mount Sinai to hear from the mouth of God, “I am the Lord thy God.” Will my sons not hear this with the others!? Immediately, Yitro said to Moshe, Go in peace. (Midrash Rabbah on Shemot 4:18)
…So Moses took his wife and sons…and returned to the land of Egypt (Shemot 4:20).
When God charged Moses to be the leader of our redemption from Egypt, he packed up for the job with his wife and sons. They were going to stick together as a family. And, until we get to this week’s parsha, we can only assume that Moses and his family are still together. But our parsha begins:
Yitro, the minister of Midian, the father-in-law of Moses, heard everything that God did to Moses and to Israel, His people – that Hashem had taken Israel out of Egypt. Yitro, the father-in-law of Moses, took Tzipporah, the wife of Moses, after she had been sent away; and her two sons…. He said to Moses, I, your father-in-law Yitro, have come to you, with your wife and her two sons with her (Shemot 18:1-6).
At what point did Moses part ways with his family? When did they return to Midian? Did Moses send them away, did they leave, did God command them to leave? We have a second Midrash, eerily similar to the first, that answers our question:
When God said to him in Midian, Go, return to Egypt, then Moses took his wife and sons…and Aharon went and they met at Mount Sinai. [Aharon] said, Who are these? Moses replied: This is my wife whom I married in Midian and these are my sons. He said to him: And where are you taking them? He replied: To Egypt! He said: We feel sorrow for the earlier ones and you want to add to their number? Moses said to Tzippora: Go to your father’s house. She took her two sons and returned (Mechilta).
Similar to Yitro, Aharon advises Moses to avoid taking his wife and sons to Egypt. Why does Moses heed the advice of his brother and not that of his father-in-law? Professor Ziderman points to the different intent behind the two men’s appeal. While Yitro was speaking logically about the practical matters of going to Egypt to leave it –wouldn’t it be easier to just stay out? – Aharon spoke out of compassion, wanting to spare more people the pain and suffering that the Jews were experiencing in Egypt. For this reason, Moses listened to Aharon but not Yitro. And – Rabbi Aviezer points out – the interactions of Moses, Aharon, and Yitro is not related in the Torah because they are family. The Torah conveys the business part of their relationships, the part that shows leaders connecting, butting heads, joining or refuting ideas. This is in sharp contrast to Bereishit, where there was a stronger emphasis on familial ties. But Bereishit is gone and the rest of the Torah is focused on the Jewish Nation, not the individual.
So now we have an answer to where Moses’ family was, why they were sent away from Egypt, and why they were not present at Mt. Sinai. What might be the most important thing to note, however, is the undeniably huge impact that Gershom and Eliezer’s absence at Sinai had on our development as a nation. Gershom and Eliezer, who are not again mentioned in the Torah, do not assume leadership roles, they do not become Kohanim (priests). They are not able, it seems, to lead the people because of the fact that they missed Mt. Sinai; they missed the chance to hear God speaking to them, to feel God’s presence in the clouds of glory, to see his fire, to be overtaken by spiritual bliss. I think this may also be the reason that Yitro in the Torah, and the Mechilta, call Gershom and Eliezer “her sons,” Tzippora’s sons, and not Moses’. It was as if they were not Moses’ sons, as if they were even from another nation, because they were not present at the founding of our nation. How could they be an integral part of the Jewish nation when they missed its defining moment? The Torah answers: they cannot! And hence they are relegated to merely a mention in the Torah.
Let us not miss out call to hear God speak to us, in our lives, and act with the knowledge that God is there beside us.
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