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Why did the Jews cry about hard labor when Pharaoh was slaughtering 360 children daily? The shiur argues that Pharaoh's use of Jewish blood was framed as a legal obligation under dina d'malchusa dina—citizens owed the state their lives. The breakthrough was when Jews became personal slaves of Pharaoh (not the state), triggering God's remembrance of the bris. Without that bris, even this horror might have been technically permissible under divine law.
Rabbi Zweig delivers a profound and unsettling analysis of the verse "Vayehi bayamim haheim vayomas melech Mitzrayim. Vayeontchu bnei Yisroel min ha'avodah, vayiz'aku"—the Jewish people cried out from their labor when Pharaoh began slaughtering children for blood baths. The glaring textual problem: Rashi (רש"י) tells us Pharaoh was murdering 360 Jewish children daily, yet the pasuk records the Jews complaining about labor—not about mass murder. This seems absurdly callous and incomprehensible. The shiur proposes that "min ha'avodah" does not mean "we're working too hard," but rather refers to the legal obligation (avodah) the Jews owed to the Egyptian state. Pharaoh's slaughter was not framed as random murder but as a legitimate state action under dina d'malchusa dina—the halachic principle that citizens must obey the law of the land. Rabbi Zweig draws a parallel to Nazi Germany, where every deportation to extermination camps was signed by a German judge, creating a veneer of legality. Similarly, Pharaoh likely established Jews as a separate class of citizenship (naturalized but not native Egyptians), making discriminatory laws against them technically legal—similar to how the Shulchan Aruch (Choshen Mishpat) rules that even discriminatory taxation can fall under dina d'malchusa dina if based on legitimate class distinctions.
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Why does the Midrash connect Pharaoh's expulsion of the Jews to the mitzvah of shiluach hakan? The shiur develops a chiddush that Pharaoh's sin wasn't only drowning the children, but the insensitivity of expelling the parents afterward. The deeper analysis reveals that Pharaoh may have valued the Jews greatly and wanted to control them—making his expulsion an act of tremendous cruelty, not liberation.
Why does Moshe respond to the splitting of the sea with shirah rather than praise or thanksgiving? Rashi's use of "al libo" reveals that shirah is an emotional expression—a response of love to love. When Hashem shows personal care, the only adequate response is "I love You too," not mere gratitude or praise, and this principle applies to all relationships.
Shemos 2:23-25
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