Vaera
In the portion of Vaera things have gone from bad to worse for the Israelite slaves, but God reassures Moses that the redemption will begin. We read about Moses’ staff turning into a serpent and the first seven plagues.
Vaera – Mark Solomon
Mark Solomon is Rabbi at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London.
When the parashah of Vaera opens, Moses and the Israelites are at their lowest point. Moses had reappeared in Egypt after many years, convinced the Israelites that God was about to redeem them, and confronted Pharaoh, as God commanded, full of confidence that his miraculous sign - turning his rod into a serpent - would clinch the matter and bring an immediate liberation. It didn't happen that way. Far from caving in, Pharaoh defied God and made the slavery even worse, demanding that the Israelites produce their full tally of bricks without being given any straw. Not surprisingly, the Israelites turn reproachfully on Moses for having brought this extra hardship on them. Moses turns to God in despair.
At this point our parashah begins, with God reaffirming the message to Moses in four promises: "I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm ... I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God." (Exodus 6:6-7)
According to Rabbi Yochanan, in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Pesahim 10:1), these four promises of redemption inspired the Sages to introduce the four cups of wine at Pesach Seder, so that, in effect, we drink a toast to each of these ascending promises and become more joyous with each one.
Two of the greatest Hasidic rebbes of the nineteenth century found a special significance in the wording of the first of these promises. Simcha Bunim of Pshyskha (d. 1827) notes that the word for "burdens", sivlot, is related to the word savlanut, "patience, endurance". He remarks: "Even though their labour was backbreaking, they had become so used to such afflictions that they bore their yoke patiently and saw their situation as natural." When God realised they had accepted their lot as slaves, and just wanted Moses to leave them alone, it was clear that, if left any longer, they might become unredeemable. That is why Moses is to tell them, "I will bring you out from your 'patience' with the Egyptians."
Simcha Bunim's disciple and successor, Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (d. 1859) shifts the emphasis a little from God's action to the need for the people themselves to throw off their patient acceptance of slavery. The first step to freedom, he says, is to rebel against the very idea of enslavement. Before doing anything else, God would help them to reject their inner state of servitude - to lose patience (savlanut) with the burdens (sivlot). (Itturey Torah p. 50)
This leads us to the famous question: why don't we drink a fifth cup of wine at the Seder, since there is a fifth promise in the parashah, "I will bring you into the land..."? One commentator points out that, while the Exodus was a complete and decisive liberation from Egyptian slavery, the entry to the land of Israel brought with it a new servitude, fresh responsibility for the conquest, building up and governance of the land. Looking at the history of many peoples, Jews included, one could say that the revolution, throwing off the yoke of a tyrannical regime, is easy compared to the task of setting up a just, free and fair society in its wake. That is why, at the Seder, we fill a fifth cup but don't drink from it, for while slavery might be ended, freedom is seldom fully realised.
To introduce the promises in Exodus 6, God reveals to Moses a "new" name, the name spelt with the four letters YOD, HE, VAV and HE, by which God had not been known to the Patriarchs. The fact that, in many passages in Genesis, God is known by this name, was one of the clues that led modern biblical scholars to propose the documentary hypothesis that discerns different textual and religious traditions interwoven in the Torah. Another perspective on the newness of the four-lettered name focuses on its meaning and usage. According to the 11th century commentator Rashi, the four-lettered name signifies God's faithfulness in fulfilling promises. The Patriarchs had received the promises, but only their descendants would now witness the fulfilment. For Rambam (Maimonides, the 12th century scholar and commentator) the name derives from the verb "to be" and designates God not only as absolute being, that does not depend on any other for its existence, but also as absolute freedom - the freedom that guarantees God's faithfulness to the divine word and ultimate power over history. Thus, when God is revealed to the whole people at Mt. Sinai, it is as the God of freedom: "I am the Eternal One your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of enslavement." (Exodus 20:2)
God's absolute freedom is the foundation and guarantee of human freedom, of our ever-renewed capacity to reject our inner enslavement to habit and tyranny, and to strive not just for our own liberation but for that of others as well. To put up with injustice and oppression is to submit to slavery and remain ignorant of God's name. If we are all equally created in God's image, as our Sages insist, then freedom is the birthright of every human being, and as long as people anywhere are trafficked into slavery and prostitution, as long as asylum seekers are locked up and treated like dirt, as long as foreign workers are denied basic rights, none of us is truly free.
Rosh Chodesh Shevat: My Favourite Jewish Text
Michael Marmur is the Dean of the Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem
"Rabbi Berechiah said: the tablets of the Law were six handbreadths; two were, if we could only speak thus, in the hands of Him who called the world into being; two handbreadths were in the hands of Moses, and two handbreadths separated hand from hand." (Exodus Rabbah 28.1)
I have always loved this teaching, which is found in Exodus Rabbah 28.1 (a collection of midrashim, traditional rabbinic narratives). It comes as part of a discussion of Moses in the Heavens. Rather than passively receiving the Torah, there are traditions according to which Moses appears almost like a cat burglar, inveigling his way into Heaven against the vociferous prospects of the angels, who don't understand why the Boss seems to be intent on giving the Torah to Moses, a rank outsider.
The various traditions in this section of the Midrash all play with the paradox of the Torah being taken and given, stolen away and publicly bestowed. The section I have chosen presents a daring concrete image of the moment of Revelation. Here are the three sections - that which is held by God, that which is held by Moses, and the demilitarized zone separating the two of them.
This image is particularly dynamic. It says to me that Torah is only given in tension, only when there are conflicting pulls. If you take hold of Torah and nothing is pulling back, you're liable to end up clutching a piece of stone. If, on the other hand, you let go and leave the Torah in God's domain, the Torah flies back to the Heavens, and is lost. Instead of these options, here we have Revelation as push-me-pull-you. When I teach this source I have people grab on to two ends of the page and pull as hard as they think they can without causing the whole thing to break down.
The idea of the two lengths separating God from Moses is also extraordinary. It implies that the need for separation is as great as the thirst for union. In another midrash (Tanchuma, Ekev 11), Moses overreaches, and the tablets break. This is later misinterpreted as him throwing the tablets out of his frustration with the idolatrous practices of the people. Instead, this secret version of events suggest that it is the struggle of Moses with God which gives rise to the breakage.
Between them these dense teachings are saying to me: we can't touch God in an unmediated way, but we do get to hold on to what God, as it were, is holding. I have to hold on to my third in the faith and hope that the two other thirds are functioning. The empty third represents my freedom to search beyond myself and yet not to get tangled up in God. It is the secular world in which we live. I know there are religious visions calling us to bring God into every aspect of our lives, and I am all in favour. But I also know that something will always separate us. I guess this means I'm no mystic. But this empty third only makes sense to me because God and I are at either end of it, so I'm no atheist either.
These three sections of the tablets are strikingly similar to the tripartite distinction made by Franz Rosenzweig: God, Man and the World. For him, these three elements are irreducible. It is the relationship between the three which makes life meaningful.
To hold on to Torah means hanging on tenaciously; it means knowing when to push and when to pull. I thank God for allowing us the possibility of grabbing the stone, and for grabbing on as well, as it were. And I thank God for the gap separating us.