Addressing an age-old question in the early twentieth century, Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk pens, with his signature prescience, an insight that resonates loudly in our times.
Even our earliest commentators grappled to understand the partial listing of Moshe's family that unexpectedly finds its way into this week's parsha. The narrative is just getting under way; Hashem, our prayers, Moshe and Aharon, and even Pharaoh are all positioned for the story of the plagues to take off, all to be disrupted with Moshe and Aharon's family tree. Equally perplexing is that the family tree includes Uncle Reuven, Uncle Shimon, and their children, omitting all the other uncles and their families.
Looking to explain this listing, Rav Meir Simcha, drawing upon midrashim, portrays the families of Reuven, Shimon, and Levi as the Jewish leadership in Mitzrayim. They were not enslaved and they were not subject to the same extent of "identity theft" as their enslaved brethren. As a result, the list is not merely the lineage of Moshe and Aharon but, more accurately, it is a list of the elites, of our royalty in exile, from which Moshe and Aharon were recruited.
He further explains that it had to be this way, but not for the reasons you would expect. Last time we met Reuven, Shimon, and Levi, they were at their father's bedside with all their brothers. Yet they were singled out for rebuke and censure. Yaakov had to instruct them and leave them with valuable life lessons, but it is hard to imagine how their insides felt to hear these last words from their father as he lavished praise and promise on all others assembled. As a result of being distanced by their father they lost their resilience to maintain their unique names, language and clothing. They were on the verge, at risk if you will, of despairing of any legacy and of any future. Would they have been enslaved, they would have been lost to our people. They would have told their "Egyptian looking" children that they did not leave, rather they were pushed.
Now Rashi's (6:14) quote from the Pesikta takes on life. He writes: why were Reuven, Shimon, and their children exclusively listed? Because, Rashi explains, it was time to totally reinstate Reuven and Shimon (and maybe Levi) who had, of our last hearing of them, been censured by Yaakov on his death bed.
Does recording their names fully reinstate them and welcome their children? Perhaps it runs even deeper. Shimon's and Levi's violence both in disposition and delivery were censured. Similarly, Reuven learns in that last encounter with Yaakov that his impetuosity cost him the rights and role of the eldest son. Yet we dare not forget that Shimon and Levi unleashed their violence in their uncompromising protection of their sister. In an not dissimilar fashion, Reuven rushed to preserve his mother's dignity and to save her from what could have been a terribly devastating moment, would she have discovered Bilha's bed where she expected her own to be placed.
Perhaps in the environs of Mitzrayim, when we are hanging on to our legacy by the Jewish sound of our names and our language, we desperately needed the passionate, uncompromising, and protective voices of Reuven, Shimon and Levi. Thus Rashi is not suggesting that simply mentioning Reuven, Shimon, and their families resolves the hurt inflicted by the stinging rebuke. Rather, Rashi is telling us that by recording the leadership of Reuven, Shimon, and Levi that nurtured Moshe and Aharon who led the redemption from Mitzrayim, the Torah has taught all generations that 1) the imperfections of one moment are the strengths of leadership in another, and 2) by forging a community that is patient with others and with themselves, and is more appreciative of the nuances of the soul, we are many steps closer to redemption.