France, Islam, Pharaoh and the Jews
Exodus 1:8: "And there arose a king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph." What does this mean? On the face of it, it's plain. "A new king; decades later; didn't ever meet Joseph." But that interpretation does not adequately probe the language of the Torah. The Torah doesn't say that the new king never met Joseph, which would have been the Hebrew word "hikeer;" it says he didn't know about Joseph, "yadah." What? There's a new pharaoh and he's never heard of the national hero who saved Egypt from 7 years of famine? Was there no national, oral or written history, even within the court of Egypt? Not likely if you read the Bible and know that there were various histories of the kings of Israel. Certainly the same would have existed in the more powerful Egypt! There certainly must have been a court history! So what, then, does this mean? The new king, it appears, refused to recognize Joseph. Why? The very next verse gives us the reason, "He said to his people, 'Behold, the people of the Children of Israel are much too numerous for us.'" How could he say, "The descendants of the hero, Joseph, who saved our nation and our people, have become too numerous for us?" He could not speak the truth. It's ungrateful. It's malicious. So the text instructs us that a king arose who refused to recognize who Joseph was and what he had done for Egypt because he needed to persecute Joseph's descendants for political, social and economic ends. The new pharaoh "spun" history his own way. 
A tragedy occurred this week in France. In a country that has allowed the rise of religious hatred against Jews, from which Jews have left in large numbers in recent years, we witness hatred lashing out against the perceived political and religious enemies of Islam. Some see this savagery as the behavior of criminal, unbalanced young men going on a murderous rampage in their country of origin. They point to mass murders in the United States and say this may be no different. Unbalanced people do insane, criminal things. Others believe this is simply the most recent murderous campaign of Muslim extremists, no different from Hamas or the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL). 
But as in this week's Torah portion, I wonder at the history that preceded this anguish. Why has France allowed Jews to emigrate without attacking the cause of the emigration outright? Why has France not continuously denounced the hatred leveled at it's loyal Jewish population, and decried more vigorously the right wing hatred of Jews? Pharaoh had a political and economic goal, so he could not credit Joseph with his contribution to Egypt. Perhaps the Torah should have said, "After generations, there arose a king over Egypt who refused to admit to Joseph's role in Egyptian history." And what now with France? Will France admit to the role that such religious hatred played in 20th century history, and the calamitous result of allowing the hatred to fester without adequate confrontation and rooting out the evil in their midst? Or will the people take this in stride, after a period of national mourning, and resume their previous ways? We, in the United States, have absorbed such tragedies with guns and done little to counter them other than further arm ourselves and increase governmental domestic surveillance. 
What course will France chart? Will they forget the effects of religious/ethnic hatred, so ruinous just 70 years ago, and despite these warnings, proceed as they have in the recent past? Or will this be a wake-up call that the country that allows malignant hatred in its bowels will suffer the consequences eventually?