GOOD MORNING! This week’s Torah portion announces the inauguration of the newly formed people known as the Jewish nation. Oddly enough, the first one to identify this loose collection of affiliated clan families as a nation was none other than Pharaoh:

“And he said to his people, ‘Behold, the nation of the children of Israel is more numerous and far mightier than we. Come on, let us deal wisely with them’” (Exodus 1:9-10).

Given the rather sad state of the world today, coupled with the fact that this week’s Torah portion contains the very first incident of antisemitism, it would be wholly appropriate to discuss this topic in depth. But I have written on this subject and how it relates to this Torah portion previously, and I prefer to not repeat columns. If you do not remember it (trust me, I completely understand – I rarely remember my own harangues) or have not yet read it, you can find it here.

Instead, I’d like to embark on a brief discussion of the laws of unintended consequences. The State of Israel has, in my opinion, been unfairly subjected to incredible scrutiny and criticism for the civilian deaths (whose unsubstantiated numbers are reported by Hamas) resulting from the war on Hamas in Gaza. Somehow people forget that war is horrific, and along with war comes the collateral damage of civilian deaths (e.g. the allies dropped some two million tons of bombs on the German population, killing about 500,000 civilians – does that mean that the allies should not have bombed Germany?).

The law of unintended consequences is perhaps best described as a frequently observed phenomenon in which an action leads to results that are not part of the actor’s original purpose. These results generally fall into three categories: 1) unplanned benefits 2) unplanned misfortune 3) a perverse effect in which an intended solution made the problem worse.

In Greek mythology this is exemplified by Prometheus (interestingly enough, his name means “foresight”) – the “titan” who stole fire back from his father Zeus and returned it to mankind to advance civilization. Zeus was not pleased, to say the least. As the price of fire, and as punishment for humankind in general, Zeus created a woman named Pandora and sent her down to Epimetheus (“hindsight”), who, though warned by his brother Prometheus not to, married her.

Pandora then took the great lid off the jar she carried and evils, debilitating work, and diseases flew out to plague humanity (this is, of course, the origin of the expression “Pandora’s box”). In this mythology, humans began to use fire to advance their primitive society, which led to the creation of both tools and weapons – which consequently brought warfare and intense suffering to many. Hence Prometheus’ gift to mankind of fire also brought much misery (not unlike the advent of technology has brought us the soul-crushing stupidities of social media and TikTok).

There are also many laws that have been enacted to benefit society that have proven to have severe negative consequences (number 3 from above – perverse effects). Perhaps the most oft repeated is what has become known as the “cobra effect.”

The story goes that many years ago, in colonial India, there was a cobra infestation in the city of Delhi. So, the British created a bounty for cobra skins. They thought by offering a reward for dead cobras, the public would quickly solve the snake overpopulation problem. But instead of capturing feral cobras and killing them, people started raising cobras for their skins to collect the bounties.

The British eventually got wise to the cobra-farming industry and canceled the bounty. But with no bounties to collect, the cobra farmers set their snakes free in the city – making the infestation even worse than before.
Here are a couple of other examples:

• According to researchers at the University of Alabama, the law of “Three Strikes,” which requires judges to impose severe consequences for habitual criminal offenders, actually caused the murder rate to go up! A robber with “two strikes” will get roughly the same punishment for his third crime – irrespective of whether the victim lives or dies. Thus, the robber was incentivized to kill the victim, ensuring there was no one to testify against him in court.
• In the 1970’s the Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council successfully pressed the US government to stop foreign aid to any country using the insecticide DDT, arguing that the insecticide caused cancer and harmed wildlife. The government relented, and many third world countries stopped using DDT. The issue is that in developing countries one of the main killers of people is malaria, and DDT was particularly effective at eradicating mosquitoes carrying malaria. Consequently, banning DDT may have caused tens of millions to unnecessarily die from malaria. (Even today, it is estimated that one million people a year die from malaria.)

Obviously, we must do whatever we can to prevent negative outcomes from our actions. This means looking at as many potential consequences of our actions as possible. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) goes to great lengths to prevent civilian casualties. They send in ground troops and fight in house-to-house combat, when they could easily carpet bomb the whole area without putting any of their soldiers at risk. In addition, when they do have to bomb civilian areas (e.g. on October 31st there was a high value military target – a Hamas armed forces military leader) they employ structural engineers to calculate the bomb’s potential impact on the surrounding areas to decide how to minimize building collapses.

Steve Jobs was famous for saying, “there are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything.” But that doesn’t release us from making the effort to minimize the negative effects of our actions, even when they are unintended.

In this week’s Torah portion, we find a fascinating incident in which Moses tries to account for the unintended consequences of his action. Moses sees an Egyptian taskmaster mercilessly whipping a Jewish slave to within an inch of his life. The Torah states:

“He turned this way and that way and saw that there was no man, so he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:12).

The great medieval commentator known as Rashi (ad loc) seems to understand the words “that there was no man” in a similar way to the Midrash (Shemot Rabbah 1:29). The Midrash says that Moses uttered the ineffable name of God against the Egyptian, which caused him to die. According to the rabbis, before doing so Moses looked deeply into the Egyptian’s future and saw that there was no hope that a righteous individual would emerge from that Egyptian or his descendants, until the end of all succeeding generations.

In other words, Moses wanted to be certain that, although the Egyptian deserved to die, there would be no unintended consequences of his actions that God would have to adjust for within the realm of Divine Providence. This is a fairly deep concept, one that we will explore in more detail in a future column.

But there is one more area that I would like to highlight within the concept of unintended consequences, and it is one that we learn directly from Moses. He may have even felt righteous indignation and outrage at seeing the Egyptian taskmaster tormenting the Jewish slave. But Moses made an important distinction between what he had the ability to do and what was the right thing to do. Of course, he could have easily killed the Egyptian taskmaster who was tormenting the Jewish slave, but he first ensured that it was the proper thing to do.

We learn a very important lesson here, namely that just because one has the power to do something doesn’t mean that he should do it. Simply stated; just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Unfortunately, this is a concept that is frequently lost on modern society. Most people happily indulge in any and every way they can for themselves and for their children – with little consideration for whether it is the proper thing to do or what long-term effect it will have on them or their children. Perhaps even worse, many indulge in lavish living even when they cannot really afford it, in a superficial attempt to feel better about themselves.

In general, it is very hard to restrain ourselves from doing something that we’d really like to do. In fact, it is much easier to expend great effort in a positive way (e.g. spending a whole day helping in a soup kitchen), than to exhibit self-control and stop ourselves from doing something that satisfies our base desires (e.g. engaging in gossip). While it may take considerable effort to do the right thing, it takes real strength to exhibit self-restraint.

This is what our rabbis taught in the collected statements on morality found in the ancient work known as Pirkei Avot – Ethics of our Fathers: “What is the definition of a strong man? He who subdues his base desires” (4:1).

Shemot, Exodus 1:1 - 6:1

This week's portion tells a story often repeated throughout history: The Jews become prominent and numerous. There arises a new king in Egypt “who did not know Joseph” (meaning he chose not to know Joseph or recognize any debt of gratitude). He proclaims slavery for the Jewish people “lest they may increase so much, that if there is war, they will join our enemies and fight against us, driving (us) from the land.” (Antisemitism can thrive on any excuse; it need not be logical or real; check out Rabbi Akiva Zweig’s Oxford presentation at https://go.talmudicu.edu/e/983191/why-the-jews/jk5v3/692301860/h/fSLT8Ui784-pczmq5V1rSNlLU0WzCFlY0Yu8QzoYyjY. It’s spectacular!)

Moses is born and immediately hidden because of the decree to kill all male Jewish babies. Moses is saved by Pharaoh’s daughter, grows up in the royal household, and goes out to see the plight of his fellow Jews. He kills an Egyptian who was beating a Jew, escapes to Midian when the deed becomes known, becomes a shepherd, and then is commanded by God at the Burning Bush to “bring My people out of Egypt.” Moses returns to Egypt and confronts Pharaoh who refuses to give permission for the Israelites to leave. God says, “Now you will begin to see what I will do to Pharaoh!”