Babies Wedged In Border Walls

(Children playing on seesaws along border wall, police standing by)
AP Image from Daily Sabah

Children play on seesaws at the border wall. Words, like a seesaws, from ancient Midrash to modern day, take us back and forth, up and down, so that what was then is now, and what is now was also then:

“The more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the citizens were sickened by the foreigners” (Exodus 1:12).

The text describes this foreign people who lived in the land as “swarming hoards,” a fertile and fruitful people that increased greatly, even under harsh oppression, so that the land was filled with them. We, the readers of the text, have to ask, who are these people today? Who are the hard working people from distant lands who have increased and spread out? Who are the citizens that were sickened by them?

Perhaps, they are the people being rounded up at workplaces by the hundreds, their lives wedged into the bricks of our American walls and store cities. Perhaps, they are the strangers among us whose blood police have spilled into the dirt with impunity. Perhaps, they are the gay members at a church who reveal fruits of the spirit in their relationships and their lives, only to be expelled from the pews with a slanderous word.

He, the powerful ruler, was described as slanderous and hard hearted. Did he have an orange hue? Did he grimace and scowl? The scripture says he, this ancient ruler, built profitable store cities. His buildings were made through harsh and exploitative labor. His walls were made with brick and clay. His police would strangle and suffocate the working people in the walls, between the bricks.

The Midrash, like a stone in the water, sends ripples to the shoreline of this very moment in time:

Said Rabbi Akiva: Pharaoh’s police would strangle the Israelites in the walls of the buildings, between the bricks. And they would cry out from within the walls and God would hear their moaning, as it is said, “And God heard their moaning and God remembered...” (2:24)                                                  [Perke d’Rabbi Eliezer, 48]. 

This great wall suffocates and strangles God’s people. It seems America is like a child who loves to hear the same story over and over—because this same story is happening today. 

God says to those crying out from within the walls that they will know Him by His name: “I shall be with you.” God told the great redeemer of God’s people God’s name: “I will be what I will be” or “I am who I am.” The prophet knew this meant God would be with them now and with them in the future—and, unbearably, this meant it was going to get worse. So, he told the people only the first part, “I AM sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14).

It got worse.

The ruler advocated for the children to be separated from their parents. He ordered the “border guards”—midwives who stand on the border of the womb and the world—to separate the babies from their parents when they arrived! But, the midwife-border guards in the sacred text feared God and did not do what their ruler commanded.

Says the Midrash Yalkut Shimeoni Shemoth: God brought the matter before all the guardian angels of the nations, and He explained the case to the guardian angels of the nations. He explained the matter of enslavement and buildings, of drowning babies in rivers. And the guardian angel of the enslavers stepped forward. This angel proclaimed God’s justice and God’s truth, but begged: “If you please, save the foreigners, but don’t destroy [this] nation.” Which nation?! Our nation? Do we send our angels to beg God not to destroy this great nation and our profitable store cities?

It got even worse. The midrash continues almost unbearably, describing a baby wedged in brick…

Said Rabbi Joshua Ben Levi: When the Angel, Michael saw that the angels of the nations were supporting the Egyptian case, he made a sign to the angel Gabriel, who flew to Egypt in one swoop, and extracted from a building one brick with its clay and with one baby that they had wedged into the building. He said, “Master of the universe, this is the story of how they enslaved your children.”

It says: 

Immediately, Egypt drowned in the Red Sea; [that is…] the clay that Gabriel brought caused Egypt to drown.                                                [Yalkut Shimeoni Shemoth 247]

What is the way through this horror story which mirrors our own? Where is the hope and redemption of our tale? We are in the middle of it, and we cannot say the end. But, the text has a hopeful ending…

The book of Exodus tells a story of one foreign baby wedged in a box lined with clay, placed on the river among the reeds. The English translations say it was a basket. It was not a basket. It was a box (tebah: a box/ark). A box lined with clay. There was a baby wedged in this brick. In his brick-box-ark lined with pitch and clay, his mother—the mother of a three month old—placed her beloved infant in a box in the river among the reeds, praying for redemption.

I suppose time will tell the rest.

Today, my three month old rocks in a swing and I know that the children will play. They will play with the stories we tell, and they will play on seesaws along our monstrous walls. The child in me also plays; I play with words. I read these stories and their midrash with a childlike wonder: How did they know to tell our story so many centuries ago? And how did we know to hear their story as our own? Like a seesaw from the past to the present to the past. These stories are the stories of our times.