Exodus 1:11: Then the Egyptians appointed taskmasters over [the Jews] to [force them to work] and weaken them with hard work. And the Jews built for Pharaoh the fortified cities of Pitom and Ramses.
In this first phase of Pharaoh’s “final solution,” the people of Israel were not yet technically enslaved. In fact, in Exodus Chapter 1:11-12, the word “slavery” or “captivity” is not mentioned in the text. However, the Hebrew text emphasizes the word “taxes” (missim): the Israelites worked for Pharaoh, building Pitom and Ramses. This form of forced labor was a legal and legitimate procedure: it was a way of paying taxes. As a sovereign ruler, Pharaoh had the full right to demand from his subjects any service: join the army to defend his territories or work on the construction projects that he considered necessary. As we saw in Pharaoh’s speech, Jews were considered suspicious foreigners, and the Egyptians did not trust them. Therefore, they had to contribute with manpower rather than, for example, serve in the Egyptian army. In this first phase, the work of the Jews consisted of building the cities of Pitom and Ramses, which according to the most accepted interpretation were fortifications for military use-garrison cities. These fortifications were not built with common mud bricks but carved stones. We might suppose that the Jews worked in the quarries extracting the rocks, carving them, transporting the heavy stones, and building fortified structures.
But we must remember that although this tax on the Jews was a completely legal act, the true final purpose behind this forced labor was evil. When Pharaoh delivered his infamous speech (Exodus 1:9-10) demonizing the Israelites and warning his people about the potential threat the Jews posed to Egypt due to its growing population and wealth, he proposed a strategic plan to damage and weaken the Jews (הבה נתחכמה לו), financially and demographically, forcing them to work in the construction of Pitom and Ramses, making them to abandon their own jobs, and forcing them to sleep in the fields far from home. In this sophisticated and non-violent way, the power and birth rate of the Jews would be significantly reduced. However, as the Tora explicitly says in the next verse, the Jews somehow managed to prevent Pharaoh’s plan from producing the expected results.
Exodus 1:12. But the more they [the Jews] oppressed them, the more they multiplied and grew. And the Egyptians felt threatened by the children of Israel.
Pharaoh’s plan failed. The people of Israel did not weaken but grew stronger and continued to reproduce. At this point, Pharaoh decides to initiate Phase two of his plan: enslavement.
Exodus 1:13: And then the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with chattel slavery (beparekh).
Here, for the first time, our text mentions “slavery”, vaya’abidu, redefined with a crucial word: “parekh”, which means “property slavery”. That is, the unconditional and indefinite submission of the slave to the master. To better understand this phase, let’s remember that in the first phase, “forced labor”, the Jews had to fulfill an assigned mission: build Pharaoh’s projects. In this situation, the Jews did not have to work directly for Pharaoh necessarily. Sure, they had to pay for building materials, but perhaps they were allowed to hire workers to do these constructions for them. And what is more important, once the construction project was finished, they could return to their lives and routines. However, in the second stage, “parekh”, the Israelites
were not assigned a specific job. We saw that the Egyptians were intimidated by the Jews. Therefore, it would not have been difficult for Pharaoh to convince his people that Jews were “the enemies of the people” of Egypt. Next, I guess, Jews were captured and taken as prisoners of war—probably in chains—and forced to work 24 hours a day for the Egyptians. Now they were completely at the mercy of their masters, who controlled their lives.
PHARAOH’S VOLUNTEER EXECUTIONERS
Visualizing this scenario is very difficult from the comfort of our modern and prosperous lives. I was only able to see more realistically this type of captivity by thinking about the Shoah. The first time I read a comparison between Egyptian slavery and the Holocaust was in Elie Wiesel’s book, “Job: Ou Dieu dans la tempête” (French). Following Wiesel’s line of thought, I imagine that in this second phase, the houses, properties, and assets of the Jews were confiscated by the government and turned over to Pharaoh. And then, Jewish men, women, and children must have been forcibly seized and taken from their homes, humiliated, and taken to “ghettos,” similar to European Jews in the 1940s. But then, instead of being transported by trains to concentration camps, they were given to Egyptian civilians to be used as free labor. This little-known idea that the Jews were handed over to common Egyptians was mentioned explicitly by Rabbi Wisser, the Malbim (Russia, 1809 – 1879). He explains the word “Egypt”, Mitzrayim, mentioned in verse 1:13 as a genitive. Then, “the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel”. Similar to what Daniel Goldhagen describes in his book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” ordinary Egyptian civilians were complicit in Pharaoh’s evilness. The Malbim writes: “The Jews were taken as slaves, but they no longer worked for the monarch [the government], but for the population in general. The Israelites were now the slaves of [Pharaoh’s] slaves and were required to do any job any Egyptian asked of them.”
Exodus 1:14: “And [the Egyptians] made life miserable [for the children of Israel, forcing them to do] the hardest jobs, [such as extracting] mud and [making] bricks…
This verse describes the sadistic and brutal way the Egyptians treated their Jewish slaves. The biblical text mentions here the word vayimareru, “and they made their lives bitter.” From this Hebrew word comes the word “maror” the bitter herbs that we eat on the night of the Pesach Seder to remember the ‘taste’ of Egyptian slavery. But what was the source of this animosity? A master usually takes good care of his slave. For the sake of comparison, think about the African slaves brought to America in the 18th and 19th centuries. These slaves were traded at a high price. Their masters indeed exploited them in the cotton or tobacco plantations, but they also took care of them physically and medically. Perhaps the slave masters did not do it out of compassion; they did it for convenience. Because slaves were assets, and therefore masters treated their slaves with the same care that they treated their animals. This did not happen with Jews!
WORK UNTIL YOU DIE!
The Jews in Egypt and during the Shoah were not treated with the care a master treats his assets. Our text describes “bitterness”: that is, “resentment” and “hatred.” There was something personal in this mistreatment. One possible explanation is this: for several decades, from the time of Yosef until the new dynasty that ruled Egypt, the Jews lived a privileged life. They lived in a safe and fertile area, Goshen, where they enjoyed wealth and prosperity. It is possible that many wealthy Hebrews had Egyptian servants working for them! Now Pharaoh succeeded in demonizing Jews, he accused them of having taken Egypt’s wealth by exploiting common Egyptians (‘רב ועצום ‘ממנו), and accused them of lack of loyalty to the Egyptian nation. Now, Pharaoh gifted ordinary Egyptians with Jewish slaves, who were their wealthy former masters! This was a moment of payback for the common Egyptian. The resentment was now transformed into the most terrible revenge: the Jews represented in Egypt what the “rich, the capitalists, and nobles” represented for the Russian communists at the beginning of the 20th century. The Jews were now literally at the mercy of the unmerciful Egyptian masters who enjoyed torturing them physically and psychologically.
THE MOST UNHEALTHY JOBS
Egyptian slavery was not the classic type of slavery where slaves were sold and bought in the slave market. Jews were seen as hostile foreigners, invaders, usurpers, and potential traitors who, according to Pharaoh, were willing to join the enemy in case of war. Therefore, the Egyptians must have felt that their mission was not just to take revenge on the Jews and make them suffer for a while. The Jews ultimately had to be eliminated. How did they do that? Our text briefly mentions that the Egyptians assigned the Jews the most unhealthy and risky jobs, those that no one else in Egypt was willing to do. The example mentioned in the Tora is “chomer ulbenim”, mud and bricks, which was probably the most exhausting and dangerous job in Egypt. Mud bricks were produced by mixing the mud with silt that had to be extracted from the bottom of the Nile, mixed with dung, and stirred with hands and feet for four or five days until it reached the point of fermentation. Straw was then mixed with this mud to make bricks stronger, more solid, and more durable. All this work was done in the swamps of the Nile, a river that was infested with crocodiles, hippos, mosquitoes, etc., and under the scorching desert sun that burned the skin. Maimonides explains that the Sages introduced the Mitsva of Haroset that we eat at the Pesach Seder (see below) to remind us of these terrible and unforgettable images. The brown paste recalls the color and texture of mud—vinegar, bitterness, or tears. And the tebalin, edible herbs or spices, cut into thin and long pieces—which were part of the original recipe for the Haroset of our Sages—as a visual reminder of the straw mixed with the mud. A trauma we will never forget.
THE EGYPTIAN SHOAH
The ultimate goal of Egyptian slavery was the same as that of the European Shoah. As in Europe, the life of a Jew in Egypt was worthless. Not even the value of work. Jewish slaves in Egypt were like the Jewish prisoners in concentration camps. They had to work endlessly until they died. In the Shoah, and I suppose the same thing happened in Egypt, there was no infirmary to care for sick or injured workers. If a Jewish prisoner fell ill, he was executed or left to die and quickly replaced by the next prisoner. There was an endless supply of Jewish workers, both in Egypt and Germany. Jews were not treated as valuable labor slaves but as despicable enemies of the people who had to be exploited before being killed. Prisoners were “used” as free labor until they died of starvation, disease, or exhaustion. In both Egypt and Germany, Jews were deliberately subjected to the most unhealthy and dangerous jobs, such as extracting mud from the Nile or coal from the mines of Mauthausen. Because for both the Germans and the Egyptians, the goal was not the product of the Jew’s labor but “the final solution.” This kind of work for the purpose of killing has a special name in Hebrew: “abodat parekh”, and incredibly it also has a unique name in German: Vernichtung durch Arbeit, which means “extermination through labor”, an expression that describes the Nazi practice to kill Jewish prisoners who had not been executed in the gas chambers by forced labor in the concentration camps.
In both the Egyptian and European Shoah, Jewish people faced a level of dehumanization and cruelty that goes beyond our understanding and imagination today. They were not merely subjected to forced labor and unhealthy working conditions but were intentionally and systematically targeted for extermination.
