Today in 4th Grade: Preparing for Passover

One of my favorite things is talking Torah with my young students.

Picture this:
I’m preparing my 4th graders a bit for Passover and I’m telling the first of four parts of our Exodus story. We’ve covered Joseph dying and the new Pharaoh. We’ve covered enslavement and Pharaoh’s edict about drowning baby boys. 

I’ve set up this moment:
Yocheved and Miriam need to protect the new baby in their family from the edict. Yocheved has a plan, a good plan, but she needs help. She asks Miriam to help her make a basket. (The students and I talk about making the basket.) Yocheved and Miriam think about what the baby might need to keep him safe.

I ask the students:
If you were the older sibling, Miriam, or the parent, Yocheved, what would you do to help keep the baby safe?

Here’s what they said:
(*I’ve changed all of the names of my students.)

Cleo: I'd make sure he has a blanket.

Simon: I'd want the basket to be, like, REALLY waterproof.

Alex: I'd put food and water in the basket.

Mira: A stuffed luvvie. He’d need a stuffed luvvie.
Alex: Lots of them.
Ari: Or one really big one.
Simon: A book?

Cleo: I'd put in a note so he knows who his family is when he grows up.

Jacob: But eventually that baby is going to . . . GO . . . and what then?

Ari: Like running? He's too little to run.

Jacob: No like . . . GO.

Students: OOOOOOOH. (much nodding)

Me: Yeah, the baby will have a diaper that needs changing, right? And that baby is too little for food and water, too.

Mira: How will it eat then?

Me: How do little babies eat?

Ari: It'll need someone with milk in these. (says this boy-identified student pointing at his chest)

Mira: Oh! He'll need someone to rescue him.

Which got us thinking about Miriam. Maybe she went for a walk along the Nile. Maybe she watched the people, trying to figure out who seemed brave and kind and intuitive (we learned a new word) and caring. How could Miriam know if the someone was a caring person and not, as one student said, evil? Maybe she says please and thank you to her servants, they said, even though she doesn't have to. Maybe she's just super nice to them. Maybe she makes sure they have water. Maybe she just cares about people. Okay. Maybe. And sure enough, Miriam sees a young woman come down to the Nile, day after day, looking into the water hopefully and then going back inside. 

“Mom,” Miriam says. “I know where we can put the basket. JUST upstream from the palace.”

“The palace?” gasps Yocheved. “But, the palace is the center of all of our problems!”

“I know,” says Miriam, nodding. “But, Mom, Pharaoh's daughter is nothing like her dad. And I heard one of her maidservants calling her Batya, Mom. Daughter of God. Of GOD, Mom. She'll rescue my brother.”

Ari: A prayer.

Me: What?

Ari: A prayer. They need to say a prayer when they put him in that basket. It’s scary because maybe she’s a good person, but they can’t really know, and if she’s not, he’s dead. 

If ever there were a time to pray, right? Fourth graders. The best.

Mira: But Batya can't just . . . you know . . . nurse him!

Me: No, she can't. But she's pretty smart, let’s see what happens. This part is all in the Torah. 

Miriam stood in the reeds at a distance to see what would happen to her brother. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile. She spied the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it. When she opened it, she saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it and said, “This must be a Hebrew child.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?” And Pharaoh’s daughter answered, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. (Ex. 2:4-9 JPS 2006 Translation as on Sefaria)

Me: If you were Pharaoh’s daughter, and you knew this was a teeny baby who needs to nurse, what else would you know?

I thought it was a pretty good riddle. My students love riddles. I love watching them think, their heads turning this way and that. Their eyes squinting, or looking up at the ceiling. Their faces close to their screens.

Alex: That somewhere the baby has to have a mom.

Me: Yep. And that mom would probably love to nurse him herself, right? And of course, we know it was more than that. An enslaved Israelite girl approaches the daughter of the most powerful person in the land and just . . . talks to her. And Pharaoh’s daughter, whose name isn’t in the text, but she’s Batya . . . Batya responds to her. Directly. Because to her, Miriam is a whole person. And Batya also talks to Yocheved directly, not to order her around, Pharaoh’s daughter to slave woman, but to tell Yocheved that she’s going to pay her money for caring for her own child. 

Jacob: Wait. So, her father made Yocheved a slave, and then she just made her kind of not a slave, because she’s paying her money.

We didn’t have much time left, but we thought about that for a minute, and to be honest, I’m still thinking about it. I’m thinking about all of the ways Yocheved and Miriam and Batya changed the whole narrative. I’m thinking about how cool it is to be handed this story by my ancestors with the hope that I’ll make something of it. I’m thinking about all of the ways my students might make this story theirs. 

I asked the students if they’ve ever looked into someone’s eyes, maybe a friend, maybe a sibling, maybe a parent, maybe even a stranger and known something, and known without saying anything that the other person knew it, too.

Nods.  

Then I told them this:
“It’s not in the text, but I think there was a moment by that river when Miriam and Batya looked at each other like that and Miriam knew she was right - Batya was nothing like Pharaoh. I think Batya knew that Miriam knew. And I think Moses had two really smart, really protective, really brave, and really loving moms.”