“….You shall cast every boy who is born into the nile, but every daughter you shall keep alive…” – Shemot 1:22

״….כל הבן הילוד היאורה תשליכוהו וכל הבת תחיון…״ – א, כב

At first glance, Pharaoh’s decree seems to have targeted only the Jewish baby boys and spared the girls. The conclusion of the directive, however, which states the obvious affirmative, “Every daughter you shall keep alive,” indicates that this too was part of Pharaoh’s evil plot.

Pharaoh planned to physically exterminate the Jewish boys, but he hoped to spiritually annihilate the Jewish girls. This is why he said, “every daughter you shall keep alive,” and not simply “every daughter shall live.” For his intentions were specifically that “you”—the Egyptians who were murdering the Jewish boys—should vitalize and imbue the Jewish girls with their Egyptian ways and lifestyle, thereby destroying them spiritually.

This idea is also alluded to in the decree to drown the Jewish children in the Nile. The Egyptians worshipped the Nile, as it seldom rained in Egypt and they relied on the waters of the Nile to irrigate their crops and to sustain them. Drowning children in the Nile is thus metaphoric of immersing Jewish children in the values, culture, and lifestyle of our secular surroundings, believing that such an education will grant them financial security in the future.

Instead of drowning our children in the Nile and giving them an Egyptian life, we must grant our sons and daughters an education that is fully devoted to providing them with their true livelihood, a future filled with the vitality of “the Torah of Life.”

—Likkutei Sichos, vol. 1, p. 111-112

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