Rebbetzin Chava Kuperman
We cannot conclude our series of portraits of women in Judaism without saying something about Batya, the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh.
According to tradition, she is one of two women who entered Paradise alive (if you remember, the other is Serach).
Batya is Miriam’s counterpart. And after Miriam’s death, it is she who marries Kalev. If Miriam is considered Moshe’s spiritual mother (since Moshe was born only after Miriam insisted that her father return to her mother), then Batya, by drawing the basket with the baby out of the Nile, became, in a certain sense, Moshe’s mother in the physical sense.
As the Midrash says, Batya means “Daughter of the Almighty.”
Why does she receive this name? Because, according to the same Midrash, the Almighty addresses her and declares: “Moshe was not your son, but you adopted him. You were not My daughter, but I adopted you.”
Kalev and Batya are considered to possess similar qualities. Kalev was able to withstand the pressure of the spies and speak out against the majority opinion. Batya, too, was able to resist the influence of the setting in which she grew up and refuse to yield to the environment that had raised her. She managed to renounce idolatry and oppose the cult headed by her father—in her position, this was very, very difficult.
According to tradition, Batya is called Kalev’s Jewish Wife, emphasizing the sincerity, depth, and courage of the step she took—she is a convert who became one of the greatest Jewish women.
At the time of Moshe’s birth, Batya and Moshe’s future wife, Tzipporah, shared a common spiritual root. Both were daughters of great men: one was the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, the other the daughter of Yitro, Pharaoh’s trusted adviser.
When the soothsayers foretold to Pharaoh that a child would be born among the Jews who would overthrow him, and Pharaoh decided to destroy the Jewish people, no one (!) had any objections. Except two people. Those two were Yitro and Batya, Pharaoh’s daughter.
Batya soon saves Moshe by drawing the basket with the baby out of the Nile. Tzipporah helps Moshe in Midian, where he flees from Egypt to escape Pharaoh.
According to tradition, Moshe had many names. His father gave him a name, his mother gave him a name, Miriam gave him one, Aharon gave him one, his wet nurse gave him one, his nanny gave him one, and the Jewish people gave him a name… Of all these names, only one entered the Torah—Moshe—the name Batya gave him. And the Almighty called him only by that name.
But why was it Batya who found Moshe? According to one opinion, she went to bathe to relieve, and perhaps cure, some skin disease (in such cases, bathing in a river was considered very beneficial). According to another opinion, she had converted, and all that remained was for her to immerse in the waters of a mikveh. At that moment, the Almighty “slipped” the basket into her path, arranging for her to find it. “You decided to do a good deed—to renounce idols and become Jewish? Here is an even greater mitzvah for you!”
The Gemara says that on that day, as on every other day when Batya left the palace, she went to the river accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting (her companions at court). All of them began admonishing their mistress in unison: she absolutely must not do such a thing; how could she take a Hebrew child out of the river, and surely she, of all people, had no right to disobey her father’s command?! “Even if the entire country and all the people violate Pharaoh’s decrees (which is actually hard to imagine!!!), Pharaoh’s daughter must obey them without fail!!!”
Then the angel Gabriel came and killed all those young women except one, leaving her alive at Batya’s side solely because it was not fitting for Pharaoh’s daughter to be away from home alone.
All the firstborn of Egypt, animals and people (women as well as men), died on the night of the plague of the firstborn. The only one who did not die was Batya. During the Exodus, she left with the Jewish people.
The Almighty said to Pharaoh: “Among My people, you spared the parents’ lives but destroyed their children, throwing the newborns into the water. I will repay you in kind, treating you the same way, only in reverse. I will cast you into the water and destroy you, but I will bring your daughter into Paradise alive.”
In Chronicles (4:18), it is said explicitly of Batya:
“And his (Kalev’s) Jewish wife bore him Jered, the father of Gedor, and Heber, the father of Soco, Jekuthiel, the father of Zanoah... And these are the sons of Batya, the daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered married”.
Mered is Kalev’s second name; it means “one who resists, one who rebels.” And Yered, Chever, and Yekutiel, listed above, are the very names of Moshe used by his father, mother, nurse, and so on. It follows that the words “gave birth” carry a spiritual meaning.
to be continued