בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְותָיו וְצִוָּנוּ לַעֲסוק בְּדִבְרֵי תורָה:
Blessing for Torah Study
Barukh Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melekh Ha'Olam Asher Kideshanu Bemitzvotav Vetzivanu La'asok Bedivrei Torah
Blessed are you Adonai, our God, Sovereign of Eternity, who has made us holy through Your mitzvot (sacred callings) and called upon us to immerse ourselves in the words of Torah.
Nahum Sarna
The receptacle is called a tevah, a term that, in this sense, appears elsewhere in the Bible only as the ark in which Noah and his family were saved from the waters of the Flood. Its use here underscores both the vulnerability of its occupant and its being under divine protection. Evocation of the Flood narrative also suggests, once again, that the birth of Moses signals a new era in history.
Nahum Sarna
The term suggests a boxlike craft made to float on the water but without rudder or sail or any other navigational aid. It does not use the services of a crew. The use of tevah is intended to emphasize that the fate of the occupants is to be determined solely by the will of God and not to be attributed by the skill of man.
Rabbi Shefa Gold
Our blessing, the possibility of liberation, is born at the time of greatest travail. Moses is born within us at a moment of despair when we have been beaten down, constricted, forced into the narrowest possible definition of self. That seed of truth and vitality is hidden away and then placed in a teva, an “ark.”
As with Noah’s ark, the hope for a new world, a new kind of consciousness, is set afloat.
Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld
On all other nights, my mother would teach us hope as a discipline, a choice, an obligation. I remember coming to her upset about a situation that felt desperate to me at the time. “Imagine,” she said, “just think how the Israelites felt standing at the Sea with the Egyptian army closing in behind them! If they had hope, so can you!” At the seder, my mother would... remind us that not all hope has to be quite so hard-earned. Sometimes it is just a gift—unbidden, unwilled, unexpected. Like the way your breath catches at the glimpse of a young crocus pushing up through the snow, or the way the heart softens at the sight of a stream melting in early spring.
ואיתא בכתבי האר"י ז"ל שעל זה נענש נח על שלא היה מוכיח הרשעים שבדורו והוצרך לגלגל במשה ומשה היה מתקן שהיה מוכיח תמיד כל ישראל.
Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev (1740–1809)
According to the writings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, Noah was punished for not rebuking the evildoers in his generation; therefore he needed to be reincarnated into Moses, and Moses repaired [the problem] by constantly rebuking the Israelites for their shortcomings.
Questions for discussion: What is the significance of invoking the term teva/ark here for Moses wicker basket? What parallels are there between this story of Moses and the story of Noah? What implications do these notions of teva/ark have for us today?