Shemot

This week, we begin the book of Exodus. The Israelites are in Egypt, where they have been brutally enslaved. Moshe has emerged as a would-be savior, killing an Egyptian taskmaster, and failing to break up a fight between two Israelites (a sure sign of a real Jewish leader). Because of his having killed the Egyptian, he is forced to flee the country, and takes refuge in the Land of Midian, where he marries, and herds sheep for his father-in-law. While doing so, he is visited by an angel of God, who gets his attention, so that God can then tell Moshe to return to Egypt and finish the job he started - free the Jewish people, take them out of Egypt, give them the Torah, and bring them to the promised land.

The angel appeared to Moshe "in a flame of fire, in the bush. And Moshe saw, and behold, the bush was burning with fire but was not consumed. And Moshe said, I will go, and see this great vision, why is the bush not burning up?" At that point, once he begins to approach the bush, God speaks to him, informing him of the plan to free the Israelites and bring them back Io the Land of Israel.
Nowhere in the Torah is the symbolism, if there is any, of the burning bush elucidated. On a simple level, it would seem that the bush contains no information, and is just a call of some sort to Moshe to pay attention and come over to see what's happening so that God can talk to him, with no intrinsic message or meaning of its own. However, the Italian commentator, Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (1475-1550), feels that there is a message, a statement from God, which is communicated by the bush's burning but not being consumed. The bush, in his thinking, represents Egypt, and the fire is the punishment, the ten plagues, which God will bring upon the Egyptians in order to free His people. So far so good - Moshe is being shown that the wrath of God, the fire, will come down on the Egyptians, the bush, for the sake of the Israelites. Great. What, however, we might ask the Sforno, is the message of the most salient and fascinating feature of this vision: the fact that the bush is not consumed? After all, a little fire in the desert may be rare, but is not such a big deal, it is not miraculous. It is the bush's not being burnt up which seems to be the main event here, the real message. What is the bush's survival saying to Moshe, and to us, in the Sforno's understanding?
The Sforno explains that this is the message that God was communicating by not allowing the bush to be consumed: "Even though I saw the oppression of My people in Egypt, as indicated by the presence of the [burning] angel in the bush [Egypt], and even though I will raise My hand against their suffering, as the fire in the bush indicates, in any event, the Egyptians, who are oppressing them, will not be destroyed by all the plagues I will bring upon them, as is taught by the fact that 'the bush was not consumed', for it is certainly not My intent with these plagues which I shall visit upon them to wipe them out, and settle Israel in their place, but, rather, to save Israel from their hand and settle them elsewhere."
Is it not remarkable that the real weight, the thrust, of the prophetic vision - the fact that the burning bush is not consumed - is all about God's concern for the Egyptians? God's concern, and assurance, that His response to their inhuman treatment of the Israelites be measured, fair and reasonable? And that the Israelites - that God Himself - take no unfair advantage of them, but simply demand and receive the freedom which is theirs by right, and not take any vengeance or retribution from the Egyptians? Remarkable.

Shabbat Shalom,
Shimon

PS - Back in 2002, I seem to have written a much longer piece, which, among other things, includes a different approach to the question of the message and function of the burning bush. If you are interested and have the patience - http://byfi.org/news/?q=node/47

In this week's portion, Shemot, the Jewish people are enslaved and oppressed in Egypt, and Moshe begins the process of freeing them. At a critical stage in the narrative, at the burning bush in the desert, where God first reveals Himself to Moshe, He explains His plan: "Go and gather the elders of Israel and tell them: 'the Lord, the God of their fathers has appeared to me; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has spoken, saying...I will take you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite...to a land flowing with milk and honey'... And you and the elders will go to the king of Egypt and you will say to him: 'the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has appeared to us, now let us please go a distance of three days in the desert and offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.' And I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go, not unless it is with a strong hand." God seems to be proposing a somewhat duplicitous plan: tell Pharaoh we only want a three-day vacation, he'll say no, and then I will be morally within my divine right to really give it to him ('a strong hand'), free you altogether, and bring you to the land of Canaan. The obvious question is this: what if Pharaoh had been reasonable? What if he had agreed to this fairly minimal request for a three-day religious holiday for the Jews? The answer seems inescapable: the Exodus never would have happened. The Israelites, and God, would have been forced to accept their status in Egypt - slaves, but with the right to freedom of religion, and some free time to practice that religion - as a reasonable one, a fair one. If Pharaoh had had the decency, and foresight, to permit a degree of religious pluralism, and a certain amount of freedom and autonomy to the Jews, they would not have had the religious and historical need, or, perhaps, right, to leave Egypt.  READ MORE »

This week, we begin a new book of the Bible: Shemot - Exodus. Nachmanides (1194-1270), also known as the Ramban, in his commentary on the Torah, prefaces this book, as he does the other four, with a short, insightful introduction. In it, he tells us that the Book of Exodus focuses on the exile in Egypt - what he calls the 'first exile' - and the redemption from it. He discusses the definition of that redemption; those elements which would end the exile in Egypt and turn the Israelites into a free people. The Ramban seems to be trying to arrive at a precise definition of these two terms - exile and redemption - which figure so prominently in Jewish history and religious and intellectual tradition. What exactly constitutes exile, and when can a nation be said to have been redeemed from it? This is what Nachmanides says: "The exile did not end until the day that they returned to their place and to the exalted level of their forebears. And when they left Egypt, even though they had left the house of slavery, they were still considered to be in exile, for they were in a land which was not theirs, lost in the wilderness. And when they arrived at Mt. Sinai, and built the Tabernacle, and the Holy One Blessed be He's presence was once again among them, at that point they returned to the exalted level of their forebears...and then they were considered redeemed. And that is why this Book [Exodus] ends with the completion of the Tabernacle and with the presence of God filling it always."  READ MORE »

This week, we begin the Book of Exodus, with the story of the growth, enslavement, and redemption of the Jewish people in Egypt. Moshe, of course, figures prominently. The Torah tells us about the genocidal Egyptian decree to throw every male Israelite baby into the Nile, and how his parents, in an attempt to save the baby Moshe, hid him, and then, when he grew too big to hide, placed him in a small basket on the river and watched to see what would become of him. Found and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, Moshe grows up in the house of Pharaoh. Apparently aware of his Jewish origins, Moshe, once he gets older, "went out to his brethren, and saw their afflictions. And he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers. And he turned this way and that, and he saw that there was no one there, and he struck down the Egyptian and buried him [his dead body] in the sand." The speed in which Moshe is radicalized is, of course, interesting. One is struck by the immediacy and violence of Moshe's response, mitigated only by his looking around, apparently to make sure that he could get away with this radical, rebellious act. Seeing that "there was no one there" and that he could, therefore, act with impunity, and, perhaps, remain at liberty to do more of the same in the future, he strikes a blow against Egyptian oppression. A few verses later, Moshe is chosen by God to go to Pharaoh and free his people. This act of violent disobedience would seem to be one of the components in Moshe's personality which makes him the man for the job.  READ MORE »

Recently, a lot of ink has been spilled and pixels generated over the American-Jewish demographic question. A survey, commissioned by a leading American Jewish organization, at tremendous cost, initially seemed to indicate that the number of American Jews has dropped, and will continue to drop, at what is, for many, an alarming rate. In fact, these statistics are so alarming and threatening that the full survey has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and will apparently not be released. A recent op-ed piece in the NY Times, which Dianne forwarded to the list, discussed this obsession with numbers, and strongly criticized it. It is important to remember that this is no idle academic discussion (my apologies to the busy academics out there). There is a lot of money involved here; if our numbers are shrinking, and if that is a bad thing, and if the cause, as is generally believed, is inter-marriage, then we know in what direction to throw our communal money, and we know what kind of educational and communal policies to adopt. If numbers are not an issue, or if intermarriage is not a demographic problem, but, rather, an opportunity (we could double our numbers pretty quickly if we just decide to adjust our definitions of whom we want to count as Jews, as many are advocating), then perhaps we should be spending our Jewish money elsewhere, and in different ways. I think that this week's Parsha offers us some interesting material pertaining to demographics. The Book of Exodus begins with what looks like a demographic survey. We are first told that the original 12 sons of Yaakov, while in Canaan, multiplied to a tribe of 70. Then, in Egypt, during the years after the death of Yosef and his brothers, "the children of Israel were fruitful and multiplied, they swarmed, became many, grew mighty in number, exceedingly, yes, exceedingly, and the land filled up with them." Surely a description of demographic health to warm the heart of any Jewish census-taker!  READ MORE »

This week we begin the second book of the Bible, the book of Exodus - Shemot. The first portion, which goes by the same name, tells the story of the Egyptians' enslavement of the Jewish people, who have now grown in size and are viewed as a nation, rather than a family or clan. The Egyptian oppression of the Israelites goes from bad to worse, culminating in a failed attempt by Pharaoh to order the Hebrew midwives to kill the male newborns, followed by the horrible decree instructing his own people to throw all male babies into the Nile. In an attempt to save their child from this decree, the parents of the baby who will be known as Moshe hide him, and then, when he grows too big to hide, place him in a basket on the Nile, where he is picked up and adopted by none other than the daughter of Pharaoh. Moshe grows up in the palace. It is unclear to the reader what the extent of his knowledge of his Jewish origins was. However, we are soon told that Moshe grew, and "went out to his brethren, and saw their sufferings". He sees an Egyptian taskmaster striking a Jewish slave. Moshe's reaction is swift and violent; he looks around to ascertain that no one is watching, smites the Egyptian, killing him, and buries the body in the sand. The next day, Moshe goes out of the palace again. This time he encounters two Hebrew men, fighting. He reproaches the aggressor: "Why are you hitting your fellow?" This little exchange ends on an even more problematic note than yesterday's - "who made you an official and judge over us? Do you want to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?" the aggressor says to Moshe, ending Moshe's attempt at peacemaking.  READ MORE »