Shemos: Friday, January 16, 1998 "Pharaoh commanded his entire people, saying, "Every boy that will be born - into the River shall you throw him!..." (Shemos, 1:22) Originally, Pharoah orders the midwives of the Jews to perform abortions on all male fetuses right before they were born so that the murders would be done quietly, compared to killing the babies after they were born. Now suddenly, Pharaoh commands his entire people to kill EVERY boy born, both Jewish and Egyptian!!! What could have possibly brought Pharaoh to order such a thing! Why did he order only newborns to be killed? And why was it done by drowning? He chose drowning because the Egyptians thought that no one who afflicted Bnei Yisroel (that's us) with water would be punished, since G-d had promised that He would bring no more Floods on the earth (Sotah 11). And newborn infants? According to tradition, Pharaoh dreamt that all the inhabitants of Egypt were on one side of the scales and a single lamb was on the other, and the lamb tipped the scales. Pharaoh's necromancers (i.e., those guys who hung around the Emperor in "Return of the Jedi." They didn't say anything; instead they stood there in dark robes looking really ugly) interpreted this to mean that a boy would be born in Egypt who was destined (Luke...it is your DESTINY!!!...sorry, that slipped) to take Bnei Yisroel out of Egypt. Since these guys told him that this boy's death would be through water (you know Moshe hit the rock in a fit of anger, out came water, and then Moshe couldn't go into Eretz Yisroel) Pharaoh decreed that all newborn males must be thrown into the water. Now, these Dark-Side Dudes (DSDs) didn't go to college, and since they didn't have their degrees in Dark Magic in the Business World, they couldn't tell whether the boy would be Egyptian or Jewish!! So Pharaoh said, "Heck, let's just chuck every newborn boy into the river!!" Little do people know, but this is where the feminist movement REALLY started. In fact Pharaoh was an avid feminist! Of course nowadays, the really heavy duty feminists would cry, "That's sexist!!! Why is it that only boys get to drown?? Are we not good enough??? We want to drown too!!!!"...Anyways, back to the dvar Torah...It's pretty interesting that thousands of Egyptian boys were killed because these DSDs couldn't tell whether the boy was going to be Jewish or Egyptian. Boy, I bet they felt pretty dumb after they found out that Moshe was Jewish! So this is why the pasuk says "Pharoah commanded his entire people;" this included the Egyptians along with the Jews. That's how fearful Pharoah was of losing his best slaves! And that's why he chose to drown them in the river. He certainly held some belief in G-d; he just thought he could fool him. Print Dvar Torah