Amazing Women Then and Now

What do I need to do to be a “regular” woman who brings the geulah closer?

In the merit of the righteous women of that generation, our ancestors were redeemed from Egypt… Those “righteous women”. I often wonder about them. Who were they? What were they like? What did they do? I think we need to know. The approaching geulah feels almost within reach, and, as the Navi told us, it may follow a similar pattern as the original Yetzias Mitzrayim. So, if the world is counting on us to get to the finish line – are we doing a good job? What is our job?

I’m pretty sure we can all say we’ve met, or at least heard of some amazing women. They are the ones that start organizations, foster homeless children, cook for everyone, daven tons, help the world and may otherwise be hard to relate to. Is it the amazing women that will bring Moshiach? It doesn’t seem that that was the case in Mitzrayim. It was “the women”, even the regular ones. Ok, what do I need to do to be a “regular” woman who brings the geulah closer? Let’s find out!

“Hashem returns lonely ones to their home and redeems prisoners who were in chains”. This pasuk in Tehillim is referring to our leaving of Mitzrayim. Midrash Raba explains this as, “In the merit of the women, the mothers who were kosher; beautiful and kosher.”

This is encouraging. We like to look beautiful and make kosher food. Are we good? We are definitely on our way. Let’s start with beauty. The Gemara in Kesubos tells us, “A wife is only for beauty”.

What this does not mean is that all we are good for is a pretty face. What it does mean is that Hashem gave us a unique capacity for and connection to beauty. Hopefully we resonate with this instinctively, but we may also know the feeling of being “not beautiful”. Possibly, for example, after the 10-17 gourmet meals we will prepare and eat this Pesach, following the month we spent cleaning our houses. No matter. We have been given beauty as an identity and asked to see it in its power and its responsibilities.

We first meet the word beauty in Parshas Bereishis in relation to Yefes. “Yaft Elokim l’Yefes”, Hashem gave Beauty to Yefes. Rav Hirsch explains that the root letters of yefes are פ,ת,ה which mean to influence or persuade. This is the true nature of beauty; it can move us. It catches our attention, opens us up to possibilities and expands our abilities. When we feel good and are in pleasant environments, more of our potential is available.

Sound familiar? Think of how you feel when you come home from work and become aware of the fact that you have to make dinner. You open the door to your home and are greeted by the smell of the garbage bags that are still in the kitchen as you avoid looking at this morning’s spilled yogurt and tip-toe over a mound of magna-tiles. The joyous feeling of being able to prepare a nourishing meal for your family may not be accessible at that moment.

Alternatively, let’s say you stopped off on your way home to pick up your favorite latte and maybe even an acai bowl. Your cleaning lady was here today and she opened the windows before she left, letting in spring air and sunshine. Your Instacart order is unpacked in the kitchen with everything you need. You may actually feel ready or even motivated to express your creativity with food. Not that our happiness depends on cleaning ladies (although that helps), but the experience of order and harmony and the feeling of being taken care of can connect us to the dormant desire of cooking supper more readily.

The women in Mitzrayim knew something about this. What the Midrash is telling us is that they understood the secret of beauty. The willingness to find a way to elevate the environment, using whatever is available in that environment and trusting that what is available is what can work. Let’s explain.

The first beautiful woman was Chava. She was so beautiful that she was compared to the Shechinah, and Chazal say she was the most beautiful woman who ever lived. Adam called his wife Chava because she was אם כל חי, the mother of all life. Her beauty was expressed in Chayim. She is Chava, life, and is the progenitor of all that lives. The gemara learns a halacha from here that women should not be asked to do things that are painful for them in the keeping of their homes because women are associated with chaiym/pleasure as opposed to pain. The capacity to access beauty and pleasure and bequeath it to our families needs to be recognized and protected, since we are the Mother of Chayim. If we have it then the world can get it from us. We notice that the word the gemara uses for pleasure, as the opposite of pain is “Chayim”. The message is clear. Pleasure can be found in my Chayim. It is not an external asset or achievement. It is not Instacart or a cleaning lady. It is our feminine ability to find something that we have in our life and use it to enhance, soften, ignite and inspire.

The Gemara in Brachos teaches that three things widen the consciousness of a person: beautiful vessels, a beautiful home, and a beautiful wife. This is our domain; we just need to believe in our beauty and in our binah and use it to transform.

Who taught this secret to the women in Mitzrayim?

It was the midwives, Shifrah and Puah, both of whose names mean beauty.

‎“שפרה על שם שמשפרת הולד” Shifra beautified the newborn babies, “פועה על שם שפועה ומדברת והוגה לולד”, Puah spoke to the babies and their mothers with words that calmed, uplifted and healed. They found beauty in the ugliness and the suffering of Mitzrayim. They brought food and they visited during the post-partum period. They spoke of Geulah and of Hashem’s promise to His people. They brought proof, “Look at Shifra/Yocheved! “חזרה – לשופריה” See how her youth was restored, and she is pregnant! Miracles are happening!” They took from what was available, what was in their life, and created an experience of a widening consciousness. The pasuk says ותחיינה את הילדים – they kept the babies alive. They were daughters of Chava, bringing life through beauty. They explained to Pharoah why they didn’t kill the babies as per his request, כי לא כנשים המצריות העבריות כי חיות הנה – the Jewish women are not like the Egyptian ones, they are alive. They are not able to reach the women in time. They are too quick. Not like Egyptian women. They are full of chayim! They will learn how to find their beauty even in this holocaust. And they did.

The Gemara lets us peek into the inner lives of these women and see them express their secret of beauty in practice. Against the backdrop of fear and torment, was also an inner struggle within the family. The men, broken as they were by the avodas perach, had moved into despair. Their leader, Amram, had decreed that they separate from their wives to halt the exploding birth rate.

‎“לשוא אנו עמלין – We are having children for naught!” What was the point of it all? They were not coming home at night after their day of backbreaking labor, no energy and no will.

How was this for their wives? Managing the home with 12 or 18 (24? 30?) children all by themselves? Probably pretty hard. Were they scared? Angry? Disappointed, resentful? Could be…but we aren’t told of their first reactions. We are told of the actions they ultimately took in response to this struggle. Their process was so profound that redemption is attributed to it. Beauty. Beautiful food, says the Gemara.

They went down to the sheepfolds where their husbands collapsed at the end of their day, a smelly, muddy degraded place. They took 2 buckets, one with warm water and one with small fish. The fish were a surprise from Hashem, encouraging their efforts. They had gone down to the river to draw water. Their intention was to heat it up and bring it to their husbands, to soothe and support, but Hashem prepared the little fish to flow into their buckets. Little fish, symbols of hidden power, of fertility. Packed with life-giving nutrition, says Rabbi Wein, the staple food given to soldiers and astronauts. “היו מחיות את רוחן של ישראל” They used chayim, our word for the pleasures that are available in our life, in this case – warm water.

As we relive their experience on the seder night, we want to try and connect to this capacity of the nashim tzidkaniyos. Yes, they were amazing women, but not because they had access to special talents or money or cleaning ladies or optimal life circumstances. They learned how to access their chayim, even under the worst chayim in our history. “This will always be your challenge and your source of power,” says Hashem to us in Gan Eden. He turned to Chava and said “הרבה ארבה עצבונך – I am going to increase your distress.”

Externally, you will experience all the pain and discomfort of bearing children, on the physical and emotional levels. There will be etzev, barriers that get in the way of delivering that baby and raising it to be the way you want.

Etzev is the theme in the pesukim that inform us of Hashem’s trajectory of repair for us and the common denominator is … we can’t get what we always want. I want that baby to come out, but he is staying put. I want to fit into my size 4 dress by Pesach, but instead I’m a size 12. I want my kid to be cute and popular, but instead they are socially awkward and insist on wearing those ugly sneakers. I want to grow vegetables, but instead I am only getting thorns. Hashem says all humans will experience these etzev feelings of frustration, but the women will feel it a lot more, הרבה ארבה. Family life will be marked by etzev.

Great! So it’s not our fault that we get in bad moods and kvetch and micromanage?? Not so fast. It’s not our fault that we feel this etzev (yay!), but choosing to not be defined by it and finding the beautiful Chava within the etzev is our calling and the one that repairs the world and brings Geulah. It’s our ever-present ticket to our greatness, like the sefer Ohel Rachel says, “she is constantly choosing”. The choice is always there, to see the lack or see the growth opportunity, see the kid who looks like a mess and leaves a trail of disorder behind him or see the sensitivity in his eyes that is distracting him from his environment. The good news is that we have what we need to do this. It’s in our chayim. We do, though, need to believe in Hashem that He gave this to us. This might not be obvious right away, we might need to be creative to figure it out, but what we need to support the frustrations of our life is in our life.

Let’s take Miriam as an example.

“ותקח מרים אחות אהרן את התוף בידה ותצאנה כל הנשים אחריה בתופים ובמחולות.”

Miriam took out her musical instruments and organized the women into a joyous dance of Emunah and hakaras hatov. All the meforshim want to know, where did she get those musical instruments in the desert? The Kli Yakar helps us. “Because women are inclined to tzaar”/pain, Miriam, in her proactive beauty, prepared for them instruments of chizuk, music, pleasure, connection. She was כשרה, prepared, aligned with Hashem’s will, ready to take from what was available to find Hashem’s love in her life and spread it around her.

I was Miriam last year when I remembered to have my grandson’s 3D depiction of the Four Sons at the seder table and have my husband ask him questions about it because I knew he would be too shy to say the Mah Nishtana. “Sari” was Miriam when she took her daughter who had not yet been blessed with children to Florida for a few days to receive doses of love and pampering before she would spend Yom Tov with her siblings and many nieces and nephews. “Rina” was Miriam when she told her husband, who is currently unemployed and could not buy anyone new clothes this Yom Tov, that she’s so psyched for Chol Hamoed this year because they will be able to spend every day together as a family (even though she really wanted new clothes). Yes, the women of Mitzrayim were amazing, but be”H so are we .