This week’s Torah portion is Va’eira, which means and He appeared. It begins with a repetition of God’s name, yud, hei, vav, hei. God then makes five magnificent promises to Moses, that we will be taken out of Egypt and given our own land. Moses doubts that he will be able to influence Pharaoh but God sends him with Aaron to begin the cycle of the ten plagues. Seven plagues occur in this portion. There is a well-known phrase that appears six times in the Torah, “Send out my people that they may serve me.” Sometimes it is translated, “Let my people go, that they may bring offerings.” (Ex. 7:16, 26; 8:16; 9:1, 13; 10:3) It’s important to realize that we were not just being let go. We were being freed for something: for service.
The Etz Chayim commentary also stresses this. The power struggle between Pharaoh and God was about who we would serve. It is said in the text that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart, but in the first few interactions, the Torah reports that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. How did he do this? By not being willing to cede any of his power. We know that God met power with power: Pharaoh’s use of his power came back at him like a boomerang, to mix cultural references. Moses knew that he himself had no power, and he became God’s servant. This is what God intended for the Israelites: to become God’s servants rather than Pharaoh’s, but Pharaoh believed we should serve him. By beginning the portion with God’s name, which means Being, Existence, God introduces to Moses only, and through him to us, the idea of universal moral law. God tells Moses to say, “Send out the people that they may serve me”; but perhaps we should read this, “Send out the people that they may serve me,” and not you. God wants Pharaoh, Moses, the Egyptians, and the Israelites all to realize that God is not only a higher and more powerful power, but that God is natural law and moral law. God is gravity, in the physical realm, and also goodness and freedom in the moral realm.
Pharaoh does not seem to grasp the principle of moral cause and effect, which the Torah teaches us near the end of Leviticus, where it says, “the same shall be done to you.” (Levit. 26:16) The Israelites’ God was such a threat to Egypt because God’s presence meant the end of the Absolute Monarchy and also a threat to immoral authority. We know that there are no chiefs in Judaism, only the rank and file. There are no rulers in Judaism, only servants. Had Pharaoh ceded his power to God, he would have become just another servant, a king no more.
An interesting detail is that Pharaoh asks Moses to speak to God for him. Pharaoh can’t have an honest relationship with God because Pharaoh is playing chess with power, manipulating and twisting the truth. He doesn’t understand the power he is trying to wield. God doesn’t want us freed in order to win. God wants our service to change the world.
Moses asks Pharaoh to let us go that we may bring offerings, only that doesn’t happen. We are the offerings; it is ourselves that God desires, for what Abraham Joshua Heschl called, moral grandeur and spiritual audacity. When Heschl walked with Martin Luther King and stood by him, they, and so many others, stood for God’s higher authority. In ancient Egypt it was a very special time in history, when God made plans to introduce the understanding of natural law and moral truth: that human power has limits because it must serve that which is greater than itself. If it benefits only a few, it is false, If it benefits the whole, it comes from the Divine.
When we exploit people and try to keep them down, taking away rights and opportunities, we use power dishonestly, twisting the truth. When we promote each other’s welfare, freedom, and prosperity, taking their plight as our own, we do God's work. May we serve the greater good as did Dr. King and those who he inspired to go with him. May we keep in mind that we are here for service: for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity, to make this world a better place. Each of us has a role to play in the unfolding of goodness, in ourselves and in the world. May those who have served before us be our examples and may we work with God’s power in the universe, and not against it.
Showing posts with label Shemot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shemot. Show all posts
Friday, March 27, 2015
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Becoming Fully Human
This week’s Torah portion is the beginning of the Book of Exodus, called Shemot, which means, names. It tells of the first instance of Anti-Semitism, of our persecution and enslavement in Egypt, of the birth of Moses, God’s call to Moses to take the Israelites out of Egypt, and Moses’ first encounters with Pharaoh. This week we also heard about the terrorist attack in France, in which 12 people were killed, not as an act of violence to avenge a murder, but for an insult: the ridiculing of Islam and the prophet Mohammed. A sentence in this week’s Torah portion comes to mind: Why do you strike your fellow?
Moses asked this in a famous incident the Torah describes this way: “…Moses grew up and went out to his brethren and saw their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, of his brethren. He turned this way and that and saw that there was no man, so he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out the next day and behold, two Hebrew men were striving. He said to the wicked one, why do you strike your fellow? He replied who made you a man, a ruler, and a judge over us…” (Gen. 2:11-14) Moses, out of compassion for a fellow Israelite, kills an Egyptian taskmaster, who is beating a Hebrew man. The next day, Moses tries to break up a fight between two Israelite men. The question he asks, Why do you strike your fellow? is actually a cosmic question for us. Why do we kill each other? Why are we killing our fellows, our neighbors, the ones who are of ourselves and part of ourselves? The ones who are us?
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments on, “Who put you as a man, a ruler and a judge over us.” He says “These words reveal even at this early stage of our history, a trait that characterizes us to this day, one that lies at the root of all our flaws and our virtues as a nation. 600,000 men, or perhaps I should say, 6 million people, cannot muster the courage to defend their children against the minions of one non-Jewish tyrant; but not one of them will accept the authority of a fellow Jew…Of what intractable stuff must we have been then, before we entered the training course.” God, in the Torah, calls us stiff-necked five times. But is this just a Jewish trait, or is this the way we humans are?
Our personal egos are fragile and because of that, we puff them up and also make them rather rigid, disguising our soft, vulnerable inner core, making a shield to protect us from the world. This protection works against us, cutting us off from others. It disguises our negative qualities and lets us pretend to be better than we are.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk in a commentary on Shemot, said, “Man’s essential function is to uproot our negative character traits: hate jealously, vanity, lust, envy, and greed. These flaws must be rectified in order that we can rise to great spiritual heights with devekut, cleaving to God, may God be blessed.” (P. 117) We are presented with acts of terrorism which we think are something new: Radical Islam, but is it truly new? Isn’t it hate, jealousy, vanity, lust, envy, greed, and puffed up & rigid ego disguising our inadequacies? The list of flaws was written in the 19th Century, and words like them have been written thousands of years ago.
When we are stiff-necked we are fooling ourselves into believing that we are better than we really are, that we are living up to our professed values and ideals. An examination of our ability to project onto others reveals that we criticize in others what we can’t live within ourselves. Attacking the other then, is a judgment against ourselves. This portion begins by naming Jacob, the person who grew the most of anyone in the Torah, becoming Israel, the one who struggles with God, but also with himself, with his negative qualities. The problems of our society are within us. We can be truth tellers to ourselves, as well as in the greater human community. We can expose, as I like to say, the wolf in grandma’s new dress. We can acknowledge how thin is the veneer of civilization and how far we have to go to be the people we ourselves can look up to.
How far do we have to go to be able to respect ourselves? Moses’ question, why do your strike your fellow? can be answered by the statement: because we are ignorant of our oneness; because we still can’t be the people we want to be; because we still exhibit far too much hatred, jealousy, vanity, lust envy, greed and way too much ego; because we are not yet fully human. Moses asked his question in an attempt to draw out compassion from two people who had forgotten it. That is Moses’ name: drawing out. We can see ourselves in the two Israelites who Moses addressed, but also in Moses. The retort of the Israelite, “Who made you a man, a judge over us,” is another cosmic question. We are made human by the Divine; we are connected, and we are vulnerable and deeply afraid of showing it. But with compassion for others, acceptance of ourselves, and a little more truth, we can move away from needing such great defenses that we will even kill each other to feel better. We can become fully human, a man, a person who stands for truth, compassion, and justice.
Moses asked this in a famous incident the Torah describes this way: “…Moses grew up and went out to his brethren and saw their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, of his brethren. He turned this way and that and saw that there was no man, so he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out the next day and behold, two Hebrew men were striving. He said to the wicked one, why do you strike your fellow? He replied who made you a man, a ruler, and a judge over us…” (Gen. 2:11-14) Moses, out of compassion for a fellow Israelite, kills an Egyptian taskmaster, who is beating a Hebrew man. The next day, Moses tries to break up a fight between two Israelite men. The question he asks, Why do you strike your fellow? is actually a cosmic question for us. Why do we kill each other? Why are we killing our fellows, our neighbors, the ones who are of ourselves and part of ourselves? The ones who are us?
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments on, “Who put you as a man, a ruler and a judge over us.” He says “These words reveal even at this early stage of our history, a trait that characterizes us to this day, one that lies at the root of all our flaws and our virtues as a nation. 600,000 men, or perhaps I should say, 6 million people, cannot muster the courage to defend their children against the minions of one non-Jewish tyrant; but not one of them will accept the authority of a fellow Jew…Of what intractable stuff must we have been then, before we entered the training course.” God, in the Torah, calls us stiff-necked five times. But is this just a Jewish trait, or is this the way we humans are?
Our personal egos are fragile and because of that, we puff them up and also make them rather rigid, disguising our soft, vulnerable inner core, making a shield to protect us from the world. This protection works against us, cutting us off from others. It disguises our negative qualities and lets us pretend to be better than we are.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk in a commentary on Shemot, said, “Man’s essential function is to uproot our negative character traits: hate jealously, vanity, lust, envy, and greed. These flaws must be rectified in order that we can rise to great spiritual heights with devekut, cleaving to God, may God be blessed.” (P. 117) We are presented with acts of terrorism which we think are something new: Radical Islam, but is it truly new? Isn’t it hate, jealousy, vanity, lust, envy, greed, and puffed up & rigid ego disguising our inadequacies? The list of flaws was written in the 19th Century, and words like them have been written thousands of years ago.
When we are stiff-necked we are fooling ourselves into believing that we are better than we really are, that we are living up to our professed values and ideals. An examination of our ability to project onto others reveals that we criticize in others what we can’t live within ourselves. Attacking the other then, is a judgment against ourselves. This portion begins by naming Jacob, the person who grew the most of anyone in the Torah, becoming Israel, the one who struggles with God, but also with himself, with his negative qualities. The problems of our society are within us. We can be truth tellers to ourselves, as well as in the greater human community. We can expose, as I like to say, the wolf in grandma’s new dress. We can acknowledge how thin is the veneer of civilization and how far we have to go to be the people we ourselves can look up to.
How far do we have to go to be able to respect ourselves? Moses’ question, why do your strike your fellow? can be answered by the statement: because we are ignorant of our oneness; because we still can’t be the people we want to be; because we still exhibit far too much hatred, jealousy, vanity, lust envy, greed and way too much ego; because we are not yet fully human. Moses asked his question in an attempt to draw out compassion from two people who had forgotten it. That is Moses’ name: drawing out. We can see ourselves in the two Israelites who Moses addressed, but also in Moses. The retort of the Israelite, “Who made you a man, a judge over us,” is another cosmic question. We are made human by the Divine; we are connected, and we are vulnerable and deeply afraid of showing it. But with compassion for others, acceptance of ourselves, and a little more truth, we can move away from needing such great defenses that we will even kill each other to feel better. We can become fully human, a man, a person who stands for truth, compassion, and justice.
Friday, December 27, 2013
Living in Two Worlds
This week’s Torah portion begins the Book of Exodus, or Shemot, which means, names. It tells of the first instance of Anti-Semitism, of our persecution and enslavement in Egypt, of the birth of Moses, God’s call to Moses to take the Israelites out of Egypt, and Moses’ first encounter with Pharaoh. In this portion, Moses sees a burning bush. God speaks to him and gives him the task of being an intermediary between God, Pharaoh, and the Israelites; and of securing the people’s release from Pharaoh by being the voice of God.
Moses was our most important and holy prophet. The way a person becomes a prophet is through God’s contact. God spoke to Abraham & Sarah, then Isaac & Rebecca, then Jacob. After these Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the first contact with a prophet was typically by means of a vision. Each person is contacted in the way most fit for him. People from priestly families, the commentators have said, who were used to seeing grandeur, have grand visions. Much later, after Moses, God gives grand visions to Isaiah, who saw angels flying about singing praises, and to Ezekiel, who sees angelic four-faced creatures gleaming, moving about on wheels with eyes on the sides of the wheels: a sound and light show. Moses is contacted very differently.
The Torah says, “Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock far away into the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, at Horeb. And an angel of God appeared to him in a flame of fire in the midst of a bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when God saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And God said, Do not come any closer; take off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” (Ex. 3:1-5)
Moses is contacted without a vision. He is presented with a strange occurrence in real life, similarly, in fact, to the way God contacts each of us: through the occurrences in our lives. Moses is asked to notice something, and then to try to figure it out. Being brought up as a prince in the palace of Egypt, we would expect that Moses would have been given a grand vision, something opulent. But Moses is contacted not primarily through his senses, but through his intelligence. This tells us that Moses was very smart. He can be seen as the first modern man. He is fully literate: he reads and writes, which will be important skills for him later, when he must write the Torah. He has had the finest secular education of the time, and little does he know that he is being tapped not only to lead the people out of bondage in Egypt, but really to be a philosopher-king.
It is to Moses that God reveals the Divine name twice: yud, hei, vav, hei, the realization of which is to usher in a new understanding of morality, existence, and Divinity. Moses is a pre-scientific man, called upon to begin not only a new age of morality, but an age of morality fused with a scientific approach to the life of the spirit. It is through Moses that God will bring a new understanding of the way reality is structured, as outlined in the Torah.
In a sense, we live in a similar time, only we approach our task from the opposite direction. Moses came out of a spiritual time, when all the features of the natural world – the rocks, the sun, the wind, the sea, the trees – were thought to have their own gods and spirits. The people lived in a kind of spirit world. We live at the end of the age of reason, which has culminated in the information age. It is our task to return to the world of the soul and bring it into our scientific age, making a synthesis, as Moses was to bring the science of morality, the science of Oneness, and the science of cause and effect to the spirit word of his time. How can we do this?
As Moses noticed an oddity, we are called upon to notice the oddities that occur in our lives: the strange coincidences and the way our lives seem to work out and connect them back to the world of the spirit. As Moses taught the laws of cause and effect, we can test the principles in the Torah according to the laws of action and result, choosing the good, the kind, the peaceful, that which is patient, forgiving, and generous; and see the results, almost as if we are conducting a scientific experiment. We can also notice how our lesser choices produce the opposite: difficulty and lack of ease in moving through life. By bringing our scientific world view into the spiritual realm, and the spiritual realm into scientific realty, we learn, as Moses knew, how to navigate in both worlds simultaneously. This is where we are meant to live. We owe this knowledge to God, but also to Moses, whose noticing, questioning, and choosing is still our model today. We are meant to be both rational and spiritual creatures. As we have become more scientific and rational so may we also be more spiritual. May we live fully in both worlds, being equally at ease in each.
Moses was our most important and holy prophet. The way a person becomes a prophet is through God’s contact. God spoke to Abraham & Sarah, then Isaac & Rebecca, then Jacob. After these Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the first contact with a prophet was typically by means of a vision. Each person is contacted in the way most fit for him. People from priestly families, the commentators have said, who were used to seeing grandeur, have grand visions. Much later, after Moses, God gives grand visions to Isaiah, who saw angels flying about singing praises, and to Ezekiel, who sees angelic four-faced creatures gleaming, moving about on wheels with eyes on the sides of the wheels: a sound and light show. Moses is contacted very differently.
The Torah says, “Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock far away into the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, at Horeb. And an angel of God appeared to him in a flame of fire in the midst of a bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when God saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And God said, Do not come any closer; take off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” (Ex. 3:1-5)
Moses is contacted without a vision. He is presented with a strange occurrence in real life, similarly, in fact, to the way God contacts each of us: through the occurrences in our lives. Moses is asked to notice something, and then to try to figure it out. Being brought up as a prince in the palace of Egypt, we would expect that Moses would have been given a grand vision, something opulent. But Moses is contacted not primarily through his senses, but through his intelligence. This tells us that Moses was very smart. He can be seen as the first modern man. He is fully literate: he reads and writes, which will be important skills for him later, when he must write the Torah. He has had the finest secular education of the time, and little does he know that he is being tapped not only to lead the people out of bondage in Egypt, but really to be a philosopher-king.
It is to Moses that God reveals the Divine name twice: yud, hei, vav, hei, the realization of which is to usher in a new understanding of morality, existence, and Divinity. Moses is a pre-scientific man, called upon to begin not only a new age of morality, but an age of morality fused with a scientific approach to the life of the spirit. It is through Moses that God will bring a new understanding of the way reality is structured, as outlined in the Torah.
In a sense, we live in a similar time, only we approach our task from the opposite direction. Moses came out of a spiritual time, when all the features of the natural world – the rocks, the sun, the wind, the sea, the trees – were thought to have their own gods and spirits. The people lived in a kind of spirit world. We live at the end of the age of reason, which has culminated in the information age. It is our task to return to the world of the soul and bring it into our scientific age, making a synthesis, as Moses was to bring the science of morality, the science of Oneness, and the science of cause and effect to the spirit word of his time. How can we do this?
As Moses noticed an oddity, we are called upon to notice the oddities that occur in our lives: the strange coincidences and the way our lives seem to work out and connect them back to the world of the spirit. As Moses taught the laws of cause and effect, we can test the principles in the Torah according to the laws of action and result, choosing the good, the kind, the peaceful, that which is patient, forgiving, and generous; and see the results, almost as if we are conducting a scientific experiment. We can also notice how our lesser choices produce the opposite: difficulty and lack of ease in moving through life. By bringing our scientific world view into the spiritual realm, and the spiritual realm into scientific realty, we learn, as Moses knew, how to navigate in both worlds simultaneously. This is where we are meant to live. We owe this knowledge to God, but also to Moses, whose noticing, questioning, and choosing is still our model today. We are meant to be both rational and spiritual creatures. As we have become more scientific and rational so may we also be more spiritual. May we live fully in both worlds, being equally at ease in each.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Finding the Hidden Light
This week’s Torah portion is Va’eira, which means and He appeared. God speaks to Moses about the meaning of God’s name, which is a form of the verb To Be, meaning, Being, Existence, and: future, past, and present. God makes five promises to Moses, describing a marvelous redemption. God commands Moses to speak to Pharaoh and command Pharaoh regarding the Israelites’ release, saying that God will harden Pharaoh’s heart. Then the Portion describes the inter-action between Moses and Pharaoh through the first seven plagues. At the outset of this portion, God tells Moses that God will make Pharaoh’s heart strong, so that all the signs and wonders, what we call the ten plagues, will be manifested to show the Egyptians and the Israelites that there is one God, and not many.
God uses the word Aksheh for hardening of the heart. But then this word is not used again. The hardening of the heart is mentioned ten more times in this portion. Five times the word Chazak is used, the same word we say when we finish a book of the torah, Chazak. And five times the word caveyd is used. This word caveyd usually means heavy, which opens for us a psychological interpretation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. God first uses this word. The text says, Pharaoh made his heart heavy. Then it says that each time Pharaoh made his heart heavy, it became strong or strengthened. In our language, the opposite of heavy is light and the opposite of hard is soft.
We would all like to be lighthearted and softhearted rather than heavy hearted: not miserable but happy. This portion tells us that there is so much that we can do within ourselves to promote our happiness. I once read an article in the health section of the NY Times that cited research to the effect that each of us seems to have a set point of emotional equilibrium to which we usually return. Some of us are lighthearted and optimistic by nature. Some of us are worriers and more pessimistic. The events of our lives may nudge us into the other camp for a while, but then we tend to return to our habitual world view. The Torah seems to be telling us that Pharaoh inflicted his worrying and his unhappiness on himself and those around him.
We know this to be psychologically true. Usually people who are mean and difficult are unhappy. Pharaoh’s own inner darkness made others miserable and prevented him from seeing the light that was available to him. In Proverbs, King Solomon says, for the commandment is a lamp and the Torah is light. One meaning of this verse is that it is only through the guidance of the Torah that we can understand life. Pharaoh had Moses, Aaron, and the ten plagues to show him what was real and what was illusion.
We need Torah to be able to see reality clearly; life as it truly is, and not how it appears. The S’fat Emet wrote, “All the Patriarchs’ efforts were for the sake of the Children of Israel. The Patriarchs went into all the hidden places within nature, struggling until…they found the light of holiness…It is by sanctifying oneself in this worldly matters that you attain some bit of understanding.” This light, this power, this understanding is available to us. May we seek it with light and loving hearts, keeping our hearts open to each other, cultivating our happiness by finding the good in life, and may the joy of the Sabbath help us to find our own hidden light.
God uses the word Aksheh for hardening of the heart. But then this word is not used again. The hardening of the heart is mentioned ten more times in this portion. Five times the word Chazak is used, the same word we say when we finish a book of the torah, Chazak. And five times the word caveyd is used. This word caveyd usually means heavy, which opens for us a psychological interpretation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. God first uses this word. The text says, Pharaoh made his heart heavy. Then it says that each time Pharaoh made his heart heavy, it became strong or strengthened. In our language, the opposite of heavy is light and the opposite of hard is soft.
We would all like to be lighthearted and softhearted rather than heavy hearted: not miserable but happy. This portion tells us that there is so much that we can do within ourselves to promote our happiness. I once read an article in the health section of the NY Times that cited research to the effect that each of us seems to have a set point of emotional equilibrium to which we usually return. Some of us are lighthearted and optimistic by nature. Some of us are worriers and more pessimistic. The events of our lives may nudge us into the other camp for a while, but then we tend to return to our habitual world view. The Torah seems to be telling us that Pharaoh inflicted his worrying and his unhappiness on himself and those around him.
We know this to be psychologically true. Usually people who are mean and difficult are unhappy. Pharaoh’s own inner darkness made others miserable and prevented him from seeing the light that was available to him. In Proverbs, King Solomon says, for the commandment is a lamp and the Torah is light. One meaning of this verse is that it is only through the guidance of the Torah that we can understand life. Pharaoh had Moses, Aaron, and the ten plagues to show him what was real and what was illusion.
We need Torah to be able to see reality clearly; life as it truly is, and not how it appears. The S’fat Emet wrote, “All the Patriarchs’ efforts were for the sake of the Children of Israel. The Patriarchs went into all the hidden places within nature, struggling until…they found the light of holiness…It is by sanctifying oneself in this worldly matters that you attain some bit of understanding.” This light, this power, this understanding is available to us. May we seek it with light and loving hearts, keeping our hearts open to each other, cultivating our happiness by finding the good in life, and may the joy of the Sabbath help us to find our own hidden light.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Our Treaty With God
This week’s Torah portion, the first portion in the Book of Exodus, is Shemot, which means, Names. It is about the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt, Pharaoh’s decree to drown every male Israelite baby, the birth of Moses, his exile in Midian; his call by God at the burning bush and his eventual return to Egypt to carry out God’s plan for him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.
As Moses, his wife Zipporah, and their two sons are traveling to Egypt to confront Pharaoh, there is a puzzling section which reads: “When he was on the way at the inn, God encountered him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and touched it to his feet, and she said, ‘a bridegroom of blood are you to me.’ So He loosened his hold on him; then she said, A bridegroom of blood you are, because of the circumcision” (Ex. 4:24-26). It is puzzling because we don’t really know who God wanted to kill and what exactly happened: whether Moses became ill or had an accident. We do know that Moses was not eager to shoulder the task of returning to Egypt to secure the Israelites’ release.
He finds five excuses as he answers God, so as not to have to accept the challenge. First he is excessively and perhaps evasively humble; next he asks who he should say is sending him; then he maintains that the Israelites will not believe him; then he says he is not a good speaker; and finally he grudgingly gives in without much enthusiasm and possibly a little bit of attitude. No wonder God was displeased. Moses and Zipporah show radically different orientations toward doing the right thing. Whereas Moses is hesitant, Zipporah is decisive. The Talmud says that Zipporah was “distinguished by her deeds” (Moed Katan 16b). In fact, all of the six women in this portion are decisive. The midwives, Shifrah and Puah refuse to kill Israelite baby boys, in the first recorded act of civil disobedience. Yocheved, Moses’ mother, puts Moses in a basket among the reeds of the River. Pharaoh’s daughter saves Moses. Young Miriam courageously steps forward to help the Princess and her baby brother.
It is interesting that circumcision is the mechanism by which Moses’ life and mission are restored. The Talmud comments in another place, “Great is circumcision, for it counterbalances all the [other] precepts of the Torah, as it is written, For after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel” (Nedarim 32a). The midrash also says, …she recognized the great protective power of circumcision, … She said: ‘How great is the power of circumcision! My husband was deserving of death for having been tardy in the performance of the command of circumcision, and but for that he would not have been saved.’ (Shemot Rabba V:8)
If we think about what circumcision is really all about, perhaps this section can become a little clearer. Circumcision is not about the act itself; it’s only the sign of the bond between God and each parent who circumcises a child. Later it is the sign of the bond between the child and God as well. When God commanded Abraham to become circumcised, it was about mutual acceptance and mutual responsibility. In another telling passage, after the giving of the Ten Commandments later in Exodus, the Torah says “And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you concerning all these words”(Ex. 24: 8). Hence there is an ancient tradition of using blood to make a treaty; and circumcision is a treaty.
Zipporah evidently understood that she needed to reestablish the bond between God and Moses. She describes Moses as a bridegroom of blood: that the bond between God and Moses is as strong as their marriage bond. So what can we take away from this story? Perhaps it is telling us what not to do. Excessive humility or perhaps false humility is not helpful. Reluctance is a hindrance to right action. Laziness is a poor excuse to avoid making correct choices. If we are asked to help, we can’t turn away as if it’s not our problem. We are asked to be willing to serve, to do the right thing. Zipporah knew that after the circumcision she would have to share her husband with God and God’s mission. She would also be sharing him with all the Israelites. And perhaps this is another teaching: that every relationship is a triad. God is present in every human interaction, showing us what is right. God wanted Moses to say “Hineni”: here I am, ready to serve. As in a marriage, God wanted Moses’ mind and heart. This covenant includes us too and demands no less. God wants our minds and willing, open hearts. God needs our contributions and our labor in working for and helping each other. We are dignified by these tasks and finally, honored by God, in giving to us this sacred bond with Divinity.
As Moses, his wife Zipporah, and their two sons are traveling to Egypt to confront Pharaoh, there is a puzzling section which reads: “When he was on the way at the inn, God encountered him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and touched it to his feet, and she said, ‘a bridegroom of blood are you to me.’ So He loosened his hold on him; then she said, A bridegroom of blood you are, because of the circumcision” (Ex. 4:24-26). It is puzzling because we don’t really know who God wanted to kill and what exactly happened: whether Moses became ill or had an accident. We do know that Moses was not eager to shoulder the task of returning to Egypt to secure the Israelites’ release.
He finds five excuses as he answers God, so as not to have to accept the challenge. First he is excessively and perhaps evasively humble; next he asks who he should say is sending him; then he maintains that the Israelites will not believe him; then he says he is not a good speaker; and finally he grudgingly gives in without much enthusiasm and possibly a little bit of attitude. No wonder God was displeased. Moses and Zipporah show radically different orientations toward doing the right thing. Whereas Moses is hesitant, Zipporah is decisive. The Talmud says that Zipporah was “distinguished by her deeds” (Moed Katan 16b). In fact, all of the six women in this portion are decisive. The midwives, Shifrah and Puah refuse to kill Israelite baby boys, in the first recorded act of civil disobedience. Yocheved, Moses’ mother, puts Moses in a basket among the reeds of the River. Pharaoh’s daughter saves Moses. Young Miriam courageously steps forward to help the Princess and her baby brother.
It is interesting that circumcision is the mechanism by which Moses’ life and mission are restored. The Talmud comments in another place, “Great is circumcision, for it counterbalances all the [other] precepts of the Torah, as it is written, For after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel” (Nedarim 32a). The midrash also says, …she recognized the great protective power of circumcision, … She said: ‘How great is the power of circumcision! My husband was deserving of death for having been tardy in the performance of the command of circumcision, and but for that he would not have been saved.’ (Shemot Rabba V:8)
If we think about what circumcision is really all about, perhaps this section can become a little clearer. Circumcision is not about the act itself; it’s only the sign of the bond between God and each parent who circumcises a child. Later it is the sign of the bond between the child and God as well. When God commanded Abraham to become circumcised, it was about mutual acceptance and mutual responsibility. In another telling passage, after the giving of the Ten Commandments later in Exodus, the Torah says “And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you concerning all these words”(Ex. 24: 8). Hence there is an ancient tradition of using blood to make a treaty; and circumcision is a treaty.
Zipporah evidently understood that she needed to reestablish the bond between God and Moses. She describes Moses as a bridegroom of blood: that the bond between God and Moses is as strong as their marriage bond. So what can we take away from this story? Perhaps it is telling us what not to do. Excessive humility or perhaps false humility is not helpful. Reluctance is a hindrance to right action. Laziness is a poor excuse to avoid making correct choices. If we are asked to help, we can’t turn away as if it’s not our problem. We are asked to be willing to serve, to do the right thing. Zipporah knew that after the circumcision she would have to share her husband with God and God’s mission. She would also be sharing him with all the Israelites. And perhaps this is another teaching: that every relationship is a triad. God is present in every human interaction, showing us what is right. God wanted Moses to say “Hineni”: here I am, ready to serve. As in a marriage, God wanted Moses’ mind and heart. This covenant includes us too and demands no less. God wants our minds and willing, open hearts. God needs our contributions and our labor in working for and helping each other. We are dignified by these tasks and finally, honored by God, in giving to us this sacred bond with Divinity.
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