Mid-wives-drash

Last week, I celebrated Passover at the home of friends. At this seder, the hosts invite their guests to comment on various parts of the seder.  Last year, as we read the Exodus story, I noticed this part for the first time:

And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shifrah, and the name of the other Puah.  And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.  But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.  And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?  And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.

And I decided that the following year, I should comment on that part.  So I did.  And after some requests, I thought I'd share what I said here:

I’ve wanted to become a midwife since before I can remember, and I’ve also celebrated Passover since before I can remember. But it was only last year that I really noticed this small section in Exodus about midwives. As we just read, Pharaoh leaves it up to the Hebrew midwives, named Shifrah and Puah, to make sure all Hebrew boys are killed as soon as their moms get off that birthing stool. The midwives not only disobey Pharoah by refusing his command to kill the Hebrew boys, but they also outright talk back to him (and lie) when he asks why they disobeyed, saying basically, “Hebrew women are just too good at giving birth, we don’t even get there in time.”

To me, this anecdote is incredibly rich.  As with all things I love about birth, it speaks to the power of women and that incredibly powerful, inexplicable force pushing women to bring forth life from their bodies.   However, it also speaks to the powerful role that these particular women, these midwives, played in the eventual rebirth of the Jewish community, our passage from a life of slavery out into a life of freedom. 

Shifrah and Puah are some righteous babes.   I find the meaning of their names fascinating: Shifrah stems from the Hebrew verb to swaddle or clean, as in a baby, and Puah comes from the Hebrew verb to cry out, as a laboring mother does during birth, as does her newborn baby during the first moments of life.  There’s some more depth to their names, however.   Some rabbis have postured that Shifrah and Puah were actually Moses’s mother and sister, Yocheved and Miriam, making the roles of these women even more central to the eventual redemption of the Jews in Egypt.

In English, midwife means “with woman”, but it seems that Shifrah and Puah, or Yocheved and Miriam, were also, and perhaps more profoundly, with their community and with God. They could not separate their work with women from their service to God and to their community.   Their duty was not only to usher women through the passage of childbirth safely, but also to usher an entire population through a period of time when survival was uncertain.  Shifrah swaddled the babies, giving them security when it suddenly felt like there was nothing to hold on to, and Puah cried out when the mothers cried out, signaling that their suffering was, in fact, surmountable.  As Yocheved and Miriam ushered their community through the parting of the Red Sea, it is said that Yocheved cared for the elders, almost swaddled them, while Miriam danced and sang and cried out with joy.  While these midwives enabled women to give birth and nurture their babies, male or female, they also used their hands and hearts for something more: undying support, encouragement, and selfless love as the Jewish people gave birth to their freedom.

I owe many thanks to Ruchi, a far more knowledgeable Jew-ess and doula friend of mine, who by some Passover miracle, found the time to respond to my questions just hours before the seder she was hosting.  

Chag Sameach, Happy Easter, and most of all, happy birthing.