Thread by @rabbisacks

Here is a thread from my Covenant & Conversation essay on #Shemot called "The Light at the Heart of Darkness". You can read it in full here: bit.ly/2BGXd7L & download the accompanying Family Edition here: bit.ly/2QSkEoZ. #ShabbatShalom

Tyranny cannot destroy humanity. Moral courage can sometimes be found in the heart of darkness.

That the Torah itself tells the story the way it does has enormous implications. It means that when it comes to people, we must never generalise, never stereotype. The Egyptians were not all evil: even from Pharaoh himself a heroine was born.

Nothing could signal more powerfully that the Torah is not an ethnocentric text; that we must recognise virtue wherever we find it, even among our enemies;

and that the basic core of human values – humanity, compassion, courage – is truly universal. Holiness may not be; goodness is.

Outside Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, is an avenue dedicated to righteous gentiles. Pharaoh’s daughter is a supreme symbol of what they did and what they were.

I, for one, am profoundly moved by that encounter on the banks of the Nile between an Egyptian princess and a young Israelite child, Moses’ sister Miriam.

The contrast between them – in terms of age, culture, status and power – could not be greater. Yet their deep humanity bridges all the differences, all the distance. Two heroines. May they inspire us.