This week we meet Shifra and Puah – the Hebrew midwives who stand in defiance of Pharoah. Pharoah demands that they kill every male child born. They realize that were they to refuse Pharoah to his face not only would they themselves lose their lives, but he would find someone else to do his murderous bidding. Thus, they pretend to follow order, all the while saving the babies lives. When Pharoah calls them back to ask why they have disobeyed him they plead powerless, saying that the Hebrew women are lively and deliver the children before their arrival. Pharoah - apparently - believes them. It seems that these plucky midwives have simply talked their way out of trouble.

 Perhaps its no coincidence then that Puah's name, according to Rashi, comes from her keen ability to speak – most specifically, to speak to and pacify crying babies. She is a baby whisperer – one able to speak to those who themselves are in-fant – unable to speak. Puah, with her inherent ability to communicate with and calm children, stands as an archetypal force of what creates a tranquil home. It is no wonder then that in reward for their defiance, the text tells us that God rewards the midwives with houses. These gift houses, as enigmatic as they may be, make perfect symbolic sense - for midwives work is that of birthing through and sustaining households full of new lives.

Midrash Hagadol tells an illustrative story of Pharoah sending guards to capture the delinquent midwives. It says that God saves the women by turning them into the beams of a home. The guards search the house to no avail, for Shifra and Puah have become embedded in the house itself. They are the beams, the fortifying forces that uphold the entire structure.

 The midwives thus embody the home and all that it symbolizes – family, communication, and internality. For our homes are the internal speres from which we impact the outer world. Indeed, in this episode, these internally-oriented women are called upon by Pharoah himself to become players in the external arena of power and politics. They rise to the task and become social activists on the national scene. They are the abolitionists that enable the redemption of an entire people and the righting of a massive social wrong.

 As Rabbi Jonathan Sachs points out so eloquently their story is “the first recorded instance of civil disobedience...(setting a precedent) that would eventually become the basis for the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Shifra and Puah, by refusing to obey an immoral order, redefined the moral imagination of the world.” Histories proud line of social activists and conscientious objectors can trace their source back to these righteous midwives stand against the powers that be.

 In the poem below, Puah herself calls for a redefinition of what it means to be a freedom fighter. She reframes agitating for social justice in more internal terms. She is an activist who does not so much take to the streets, as she takes to the kitchen sink, maintaining that all great battles for justice have their locus in the living room.

 Puah

 Like freedom fighters
 who pray with their feet
 I protest for inner-peace

Though paraplegic in comparison
 to prodigious heels
 of powerful men

My prayerful wheels
 spin tales of inner-freedom
 and intone hymns of mindful treatment
 of children and kin

 I commit to calm the din of crying infants
 with the easy clicking of my teeth
 I speak for those who do not yet know how to speak

My freedom fighting is not political
 that task is for a hardier class
 of Jewish girl

For me - the Egyptian fiend
 is personal
 for the Pharoahs I dethrone
 rule the halls of each of our homes

In the inner-alcoves of a private despair
 that petrifies the children
 and paralyzes the parents
 that imprisons our finest hours
 of family commitment and contentment

 I prefer to pedal wares
 of wars-well-avoided
 where everyone wins
 through carefully worded
 apologies and the timely
 airing of grievances
 between friends

for cowering beneath the pyramids
 of needs – my fiends
 are the menacing insecurities of adolescents
 and the lethal bickerings of parents
 - the noisome whines of needy toddlers
 and the all-too-common-household-hollers
 that oppress our most precious commodities
 of family

My enemies crouch quietly beneath
 the crumbs on the living room carpet
 a beast between the sheets
 of a cold-shouldered bedroom
 where partners sleep
 unconscious
 and deeply out of tune
 with the exquisite call
 of their common dreams

My task is to counter the
 armor-clad offensive
 against love and friendship
 - to incite a protest against
 the enslavement of a trillion
 inner prophets of tranquility
 whose gentle-tongued souls
 are daily buried beneath
 straw burdens of poor communication
 and tossed out with the trashed
 afternoons of a mother's
 epic impatience

I come to play the Moses of relational redemption
 in the face of a sink-full of grimy resentments

 And so I call forth all fellow
 freedom fighters for inner-transformation
 midwives with wise hands
 toting torahs, toting infants, toting pens
 all prayer-footed-protesters
 come & herald in
 emotional freedom from the pharonic foe
 and let us birth our children
 into peaceable homes

For when our houses enshrine tranquility
 then outer-world will follow inner-lead
 and rock-hard hearts
 will soften grips
 and all that's enslaved
 will lithely slip
 into the soft of freedom found
 and take our shoes your off
 to walk around
 for our houses are the
 hallowed ground
 from which God speaks

 So call me Puah,
 who quiets the cries
 of children, slaves
 and the Pharoah
 inside