A man from the House of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him. 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. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son. She named him Moses, explaining, “I drew him out of the water.”
The rabbi paused, and held the agitated silence in place, as if forcefully saving the life of a bird that only wanted to fly away.
Max spoke up: “Probably because Hebrews were trying to keep their kids from getting killed, and only someone in that situation would ever put her baby in a basket and send it down the river.”
“Perhaps,” the rabbi said, showing no condescending pleasure in Max’s confidence, only admiration for his thought. “Perhaps.”
And again he forced silence.
Sam spoke up: “So, I say this fully seriously: maybe she saw that he was circumcised? Right? She says, ‘Look.’”
“That could be,” the rabbi said, nodding.
And he dug a silence.
“I don’t know anything,” Benjy said, “but maybe he was crying in Jewish?”
“How would one cry in Jewish?” the rabbi asked.
“I don’t know anything,” Benjy said again.
“Nobody knows anything,” the rabbi said. “So let’s try to learn together. How would one cry in Jewish?”
“I guess babies don’t really speak.”
“Do tears?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s strange,” Julia said.
“What is?”
“Wouldn’t she have heard him crying? That’s how it works. You hear them crying, and you go to them.”
“Yes, yes.”
“She said, ‘Look! A crying Hebrew baby.’ Look. She saw that he was crying, but didn’t hear.”
“So tell me what that implies,” he said – no patronizing, no self-righteousness.
“She knew he was a Hebrew because only Jews cry silently.” …
“Was she right?” the rabbi asked.
“Yes,” Julia said. “He was a Hebrew.”
“But was she right that Jews cry silently?”
“Not in my experience,” Julia said, with a chuckle that drew a depressurizing chuckle from the others.
Without moving, the rabbi stepped into the grave of silence. He looked at Julia, almost unbearably directly, as if they were the only two living people left, as if the only thing that distinguished those buried from those standing was ninety degrees.
He looked into her and said, “But in your experience, do Jews cry silently?”
She nodded.
“And now I’d like to ask you a question, Benjy.”
“OK.”
“Let’s say we have two choices, as Jews: to cry silently, as your mother has said, or to cry in Jewish, as you said. What would it sound like to cry in Jewish?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nobody knows, so you can’t be wrong.”
“I don’t even have a guess.”
“Maybe like laughing?” Max suggested.
“Like laughing?”
“I don’t know. That’s what we do.”
Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am (2016), pp. 351-354
וראתהו מהול ובעבור יפיו חמלה עליו.
Pharaoh’s daughter noticed that Moses was circumcised. She took pity on him because of his beauty.
AND SHE OPENED IT AND SHE SAW HIM — THE CHILD. We read this literally, to mean: "She saw Him - the Holy Presence - with the child."
והנכון שנפרש בו שבכה כנער בחריצות ובזריזות ולכך חמלה עליו. ובמדרש יש ילד הוא ומנהגו כנער בא גבריאל והכה למשה כדי שיבכה ושתתמלא עליו רחמים:
The correct interpretation is that Moses cried in the manner of an older child, something not as irritating as a baby’s howls, and that this was what prompted Pharaoh’s daughter to have pity on him. According to the midrash, the angel Gabriel struck him, and he broke out weeping, which attracted the attention of Pharaoh's daughter and aroused feelings of pity within her.
ראתה עמו אור גדול, ויי עשה כן כדי שתגדל מעלת הילד בעיניה. גם לטעם שדרשו ז"ל (זהר ח"ב י"ב:) בכתוב והנה נער בוכה שרמז על ישראל שהיו בוכים בגלות, לזה ויגל יי את עיניה להראותה האור הסומך למשה.
She saw that the baby was surrounded by a halo; God arranged for this in order to impress her that this baby was someone special. The Zohar suggests that Moses' cries were on behalf of the Jewish people's suffering in exile; God opened her eyes to be able to see this reflected in the great light surrounding Moses.
How should we mourn Isaac Bloch? With tears – what kind of tears? With silence – what silence? Or with what kind of song? Our answer will not save him, but it might save us.”
With all three, of course. Jacob could see the rabbi’s moves from five thousand years away. With all three, because of the tragedy, because of our reverence, because of our gratitude. Because of everything that was necessary to bring us to this moment, because of the lies that lie ahead, because of the moments of joy so extreme they have no relation to happiness. With tears, with silence, with song, because he survived so we could sin, because our religion is as gorgeous, and opaque, and brittle, as the stained glass of Kol Nidre, because Ecclesiastes was wrong: there isn’t time for every purpose.
What do you want? Anything. Tell me. I want you to have the thing that you want.
Jacob cried.
He wailed.
Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am (2016), pp. 351-354