Posted by Guest Contributor IshbitzForever
After the birth of Moses, in an attempt to save his life, his mother hides him in a basket and places in the Nile river. The daughter of the Pharaoh goes down to the water to bathe, she sees the basket floating on the water, she retrieves it and the passage tells us:
"She saw him, the child, and behold the young one was crying"
The Zohar wondering about apparent redundancy in the sentence clarifies that the "child" refers to Moses, while "the young one crying" refers to the Nation Of Israel who were crying from the pain of the exile.
Let's understand the message of the verse in this light.
The daughter of Pharaoh has been indoctrinated her entire life with the belief that the Jewish people are a threat to her nation's stability, and by extension her family and herself.
Throughout history it has always been the nature of those that feel threatened to dehumanize those they feel threatened by, this clears the conscious and allows whatever actions necessary to neutralize the threat no matter how barbaric. The drive for self preservation focuses and limits the entire existence of their perceived enemy to this one dimension - "the threat". Objectifying the enemy in this way depletes him of any humanity, limiting them to nothing more than a number on an arm, deserving no understanding, mercy, or compassion.
It is only when "she saw him, the child" - she takes the baby in her arms and sees, not the enemy, not the threat, but a child, a fellow human that her heart is opened, breaking thru the wall of fear, and allowing her heart to see things in a new light. For the first time she questions the threat and hears the cries of the Jewish people that until now made no impression on her, for until now they were the cries of the un-human. Standing there gazing at Moses she lets go of the fear and allows herself to connect with the "other" and see them as fellow members of humanity.
Although our eyes sees, its the heart that will dictate and how we perceive the image, what value we attribute to it, what our emotional reaction is, so in a way our hearts our character will be the last word on what we see. So one might say the heart is greater but if we do not encounter new things with our eyes, our hearts will have no new inputs to add to what we know and what room is there for growth will will travel thru life with childish perceptions.
The eye and heart most move in tandem, experiencing, learning, growing.
