The first chapter of the book of Shemos (Exodus) describes the beginnings of the enslavement of the Jewish people by the Egyptians, as directed and energetically abetted by their monarch Pharoah. One verse sums up the result, with seeming redundancy: “And they made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and bricks, and in all manner of services in the field; all of their service wherein they made them serve was with rigor” (1:14).
The Midrash Tanhuma picks up on the excess language of the verse and offers a few explanations. One of them states: “What does the second half of this verse (“all of their service wherein they made them serve was with rigor”) mean? That the Egyptians imposed men’s work upon women and women’s work upon men. Thus, a man would be told: “Get up and bake,” and a woman would be told: “Fill this cask, split this log. Go to the field and harvest some vegetables.”
As a husband who does much of the family cooking and laundry, who is happily married to a woman who was formerly a professor of biology (for many years, the hard sciences were mostly a male profession), and lives in society that features female policewomen & soldiers and male nurses & librarians, I find this midrash quite amusing. Yet the message of the midrash is well worth noting. I believe it is pointing out the incredible power of societal expectations and the acute distress someone would feel if they were forced to violate the norms of their era.
Perhaps I should keep this midrash in mind when I’m tempted to shrug off my teenage daughter’s commentary on what’s cool and what’s dreadfully embarrassing in her high school milieu.
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