A Thought on Parshas Shmos

"...v'yit'men'aehu ba'chol..." "...and he hid him in the sand.." (2:12) When Moshe intervened to stop an Egyptian guard from beating a Jewish slave, he killed the Egyptian. The Torah relates how he hid the corpse in the sand. Despite Moshe's right to protect the helpless slave, as well as Moshe's authority as a member of Pharaoh's royal family, he seemed set on covering his tracks. The Torah enunciates how he buried the man in sand. Rabbeinu Avigdor begins with a midrashic view of the verse. The sand was chosen by Moshe as a symbol for his Jewish brothers: he said to them, "You have been compared to the sand." One aspect of sand is that when it shifts in the wind or slides with gravity, it makes no sound. At most, the sound of shifting sand is a whisper or a low humming. "This is a time for the Jewish nation to exercise its "sand likeness" by remaining silent." The time has not yet arrived for us to draw attention or make a dramatic move. Moreover, Moshe was drawing on the great merit of the Patriarch Yaakov. HaShem had promised Yaakov (Berishis 13:16) that his descendants would be like the sand. For this reason, Moshe chose sand to bury the Egyptian. This represented a symbol of the forthcoming ascendance of the Jewish nation in rising above their enemies, in fulfillment of that Divine promise of becoming like the sand in their exile. Now Rabbeinu Avigdor ties the midrashic with the halachic, as is his unique style. It is because the sand served that helping function long ago in Egypt that a mohel should choose sand specifically for burial of the foreskin following a bris mila. Most other authorities do not bring this custom yet Rabbeinu Avigdor writes that "this is now the practice of all sages", and this is his psak halacha. Moshe turned to the sand because it is a symbol of Jewish cohesiveness and of Jewish discretion. He used it as a lesson for his nation, and as a means of recalling HaShem's pledge to save His people and let them flourish. In our times, we can utilize sand for another "burial procedure", to demonstrate the timelessness and enduring unity in HaShem's world, where all things serve a purpose, and all things are remembered. Good Shabbos. D Fox