Va'era

I recently saw Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", and was just blown away. Actually, in my case, he was preaching to the converted, as I have long believed that global warming is real (hey, I'm old enough to remember what a real winter is supposed to feel like, and believe me, this is not it). Al's presentation was powerful, compelling, and, essentially irrefutable - though I know there are some dunderheads out there who are, unbelievably, pretending to refute it. I can only hope that we come to our collective senses, throw off the shackles of fossil fuel dependency, and save our planet - I have real live grandchildren, and I do not want them living on the moon, or underwater. Which brings us to this week's parsha, Va'era. It is in this portion that the ten plagues begin, starting with the plague of blood. One can imagine the impact that this first catastrophe had on the Egyptians. The Nile, source of life, the center around which the Egyptian economy and Egyptian society is based, is transformed from life-giving water into blood. The Egyptians, who, in their racist, xenophobic, and self-serving hatred of the foreigners among them had been carrying Jewish babies to the river and drowning them, must now face the consequences of those actions: a Nile which runs blood - symbolically the blood of the very children they had murdered.  READ MORE »

The Nile River figures prominently in the Exodus story. Last week, we read how Moshe was placed in a small ark and put on the river in an attempt to save him from the Egyptians; it was from there that he was taken by Pharaoh's daughter and brought into the royal household. This week, as we begin the story of the ten plagues, the action opens on the banks of the Nile:

"And God said to Moshe...go to Pharaoh in the morning, behold, he goes out to the water, and stand before him on the banks of the river, and take in your hand the staff which changes into a snake."

It is at this meeting with Pharaoh, on the shores of the Nile, that Moshe threatens him with the first of the plagues - the river itself, the life-blood of Egypt, will be turned, literally, into blood.

Although I would have thought that standing by the river lends the appropriate dramatic touch to Moshe's threat about this first plague, and that is the reason why God instructs him to meet Pharaoh there, the Rabbis seem to look for more of a message in the fact that the Torah specifically notes that Moshe met Pharaoh at the Nile the first thing in the morning.

One of the things they say is that Pharaoh always went to the river in the morning; he claimed that he was a god, and snuck away to the river every day in order to go to the bathroom, something gods are not supposed to do. (This idea may be prompted by the Torah's initial use of the word "water" rather than "river".) Another, related, idea, based on a verse in Ezekiel, is that Pharaoh would go out to the river daily and stake his claim as a God over it, saying "this is my river, and I created it". The idea is that if you claim to be the God of Egypt, you have to lord it over the other obvious candidate for the job - the life-giving Nile. In both explanations of Pharaoh's early-morning visits, he is expressing his 'divinity'. In the one, he uses the Nile, physically, as a toilet, in order to keep up the pretence of his divine nature. In the other, he claims the Nile, the most important thing in Egypt, as his creation, his subject, as a way to assert his own divinity.

If we juxtapose these two stories, and posit that he did both - went to the bathroom in the Nile in order to hide his humanity, and, at the same time, claimed the Nile - the most powerful thing in Egypt - as his, in order to emphasize his divinity - we have a pretty interesting dynamic: at the same time that he claims the Nile as his subject, he abuses it, and fouls it.

I would argue that this behavior is typical of a certain kind of leadership, a leadership which actually destroys that which it claims to rule, and, in fact, to have created. For Pharaoh to be a God, he must be a God not only over something ("this is my river and I created it"), but also at its expense - he literally pisses on that which he rules; that is how he proves he is its ruler. Paradoxically, and tellingly, it is precisely this act of abuse which reveals to us that he is not actually a god, not really the creator and ruler of the Nile, because, after all, he has to go to the bathroom. The abuse of the Nile actually reveals Pharaoh's weakness, and failure as a god.

Pharaoh's behavior here at the Nile is, in fact, a model of his leadership all through the Exodus story. His need, as a new king, to subjugate the Jewish people at the beginning of the story; the way that, in order to prove that he is greater than the God of the Israelites, he allows his own people to go through the ten plagues, causing them endless suffering, is all part of an ongoing attempt to assert his primacy by harming, rather than helping, those he claims to rule.

This stands in sharp contradistinction to a leadership model which respects, and empowers, those who are led, which does not need to abuse those who are ruled over in order to prove who's in charge. The Exodus story, in which God frees the Jewish people from slavery, gives them an independent homeland, with instructions how to run it (the Torah), along with the freedom to succeed or fail on their own, is the archetypal example of an empowering, enabling leadership, the leadership of a God who respects and enables, rather than abuses and subjugates.

I want to take this opportunity to extend my sincere condolences, and those of the BYFI community, to Charles Bronfman and the entire Bronfman family on the tragic and shocking loss of Andrea Bronfman. The Bronfman family's model of leadership, which I, and all of us at BYFI, have been fortunate enough to experience, and which Andrea Bronfman was such a wonderful and central example of, has always been extraordinarily empowering, enabling, and caring. May her memory be a blessing for us all.

Cos' I'm a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in old West Virginia,
Never seen New Orleans, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
Still I dream of the Black Hills
that I ain't never seen.

Cos' I'm a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in old West Virginia,
Though my hills are not green,
I have seen them in my dreams,
Take me back to those Black Hills
That I have never seen.

The Kinks, Muswell Hillbillies; Ray Davies.

God spoke to Moshe, He said to him: I am YHWH. I was seen by Avraham, by Yitzchak, and by Yaakov as El- Shadai, but by my name YHWH I was not known to them.

This week's parsha, Va'era, begins with the verses above (not the ones by the Kinks, the other ones). Last week, God sent Moshe to tell Pharaoh, and the Jewish people, that He was going to free them and take them out of Egypt. The results were disastrous. Pharaoh angrily responded that, as punishment for Moshe's chutzpah, the Jewish slaves would not only not go free, they would also have to continue to produce the same number of bricks as always, without being supplied with the straw necessary to make them; they would now have to gather the straw themselves. This turn of events led the Jews to angrily confront Moshe and his brother Aharon and accuse them of 'giving a sword into their hand, to kill us.' Moshe, at the end of last week's parsha and his rope, then turned to God and asked: 'Why have you dealt so badly with this people? Why have you sent me?'

The opening verses of this week's parsha, quoted above, are part of God's response to Moshe. He goes on to assure Moshe that he and the Jewish people should not lose heart; the promised exodus really is about to happen. In these opening verses, God seems to be making some sort of theological distinction between how He was seen by the patriarchs and how he will be revealing Himself to the Israelites during the exodus. Rashi explains the difference in this way: The name of God YHWH indicates a God who promises, and fulfills His promise; a God who delivers. This is the God whom Moshe and his generation will see, will know, as He fulfills His promise and take them out of Egypt and brings them to the Promised Land. The patriarchs, on the other hand, never saw a God who keeps His promises, because He didn't! He told them a lot of things: that they will inherit the Land of Israel, that their children will grow to be a great nation, but none of it came true in their lifetimes. They, therefore, really only saw God as 'El-Shadai', which Rashi explains as indicating a God who makes promises which have not yet been fulfilled. The God experienced by the patriarchs - El Shadai - is one of longing, of having faith, of planning for and being focused on an unknown, hoped-for future. The God of the generation of Moshe - the ineffable name of YHWH - is an imminent God of actualization, of history, of promises kept and hopes fulfilled.

According to this understanding, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov lived lives of deferred theological gratification. The Jewish people, the homeland of Israel, their very existence as a nation, were things which they never saw. Situated in the future, beyond their actual field of vision, they were goals which they had to imagine, believe in, and search for in the far distant future. Moshe and his generation, on the other hand, were about to experience God's hand in history; they were about to really see Him. This is what God goes on to tell Moshe: I will bring them out of Egypt, and I will save them from slavery, and bring them to the Promised Land; they will actually experience all these things, you, together with them, will actually see this.

Now, the question is, why does God give Moshe this little lesson in the history of theology? Why do His reassurances that the exodus really will take place, now, need to be accompanied by this walk through memory lane with the Patriarchs? The Rabbis of the Talmud understand it as an invidious comparison. God is lamenting the passing of the earlier generations of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, who were more faithful than the generation of Moshe. They were willing and able to believe in a God who was seen by them only from a distance, who was all about promises, hopes, and dreams, whereas the generation of Moshe, which is about to see a God who is much more in the foreground of their actual historical experience, is already complaining! God, with this explanation of the difference between the way He was seen by the patriarchs and the way He is now seen by Moshe's generation, is expressing His disappointment at the loss of such a faithful generation, and His unhappiness with the impatience of the nudgy one He now has to deal with.

I was thinking about this while I was in my living room, and I noticed a small print on the wall. It is a Turner; the subject is "The Valley of the Brook Kedron, Between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives". Turner was never in Israel, and the lithograph is based on a sketch by one C. Berry, Esq.

We are looking into a valley, which extends, away from us, to the horizon. In the foreground we see a small flock of grazing goats. Above them, on the left, rising out of the valley, is the ancient mausoleum known as the Tomb of Absalom. A man, his head in his hands, is seated in front of it. He is, it seems, a Jew, facing in the direction of the Temple Mount and weeping. In the center of the picture, almost on the horizon, way off in the distance, barely visible, are the buildings of the Village of Siloam (today Silwan). To the right of the goats, a bridge extends over the 'Brook Kedron' and out of the picture. Above and behind it rises a large outcrop of darkly shaded natural rock, topped by a tiny bit of crenellated wall, with the light of the late afternoon sun above it: Jerusalem.

Looking at the picture, I was struck by the power and presence of that which was missing, or barely there: the village of Silwan, just visible, a whitish, ghostly presence on the horizon, and the city of Jerusalem, only hinted at by a mass of rock, a bit of wall, and the light of the setting sun. (I remembered that when I bought the print, the presence of that tiny bit of Jerusalem wall made it much more attractive to me.) Turner often forces the viewer to look deep into the space of his paintings to discover an almost-hidden subject; he is doing that here, as well, with the inhabited areas of this landscape, Silwan and Jerusalem.

God begins this week's parsha by looking back, longingly, into the distant past, at a lost, dead, missing generation, whose major theological accomplishment was to look forward, into a distant future, at a reality they could only imagine and hope for. The actual generation which God can see right in front of Him, the generation that is now enslaved and will soon experience the exodus, is a lot less impressive; their faith is not that of their ancestors. The God which this unimpressive generation sees, who is in the foreground, right in front of them, revealing Himself to them in history as the God of deliverance, doesn't seem to impress them that much either.

Aahhh, the beauty of absent things.

Shabbat Shalom,

Shimon Felix

At the end of last week's parsha, Moshe and his brother Aharon had, as instructed by God, gone to Pharaoh and asked that the Israelites be allowed to take a few days off from their labors in order to go and worship God in the wilderness. Pharaoh refused, and punished the people for their impertinence and laziness by cutting off their supply of straw, with which they made bricks for building, and yet demanding that they produce the same number of bricks as before. This additional oppression was, naturally, taken very badly by the Jewish people, who complain to Moshe, blaming him for their worsened situation. Moshe then seems to echo their complaints when he says to God: "Why did you make things worse for this nation? Why did you send me?" God's response, which begins at the end of last week's parsha, Shemot, and continues into the beginning of this week's parsha, is essentially to tell Moshe to wait and see. He reiterates His commitment to free the Jewish people, make them his nation, and bring them to the land he promised to their forefathers. This is what He says: "... say to the children of Israel: "I am the Lord; I will REMOVE you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will RESCUE you from their bondage, and I will REDEEM you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will TAKE you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will BRING you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and I will give it to you as a heritage: I am the Lord."'  READ MORE »

This week the process of Moshe negotiating with Pharaoh for the right of the Jewish people to leave Egypt and worship God in the desert moves into full swing. The negotiations are accompanied by the ten plagues - a pretty effective bargaining tool. The first three plagues - the waters of the Nile turning into blood, the plague of frogs, and of lice, all have an interesting element in common. All three of these plagues are brought about not by Moshe but by his brother, and assistant, Aharon: "And God said to Moshe, say to your brother Aharon: Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers and over their streams and over their lakes and over all their bodies of water and they will become blood..." "And God said to Moshe, say to Aharon: Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, over the streams, and over the lakes, and raise up the frogs on to the Land of Egypt." "And God said to Moshe, say to Aharon: Stretch out your staff and strike the earth of the land and it will be lice in all the Land of Egypt." After these three plagues, the next three plagues are announced by Moshe and brought about by God himself (with both Moshe and Aharon assisting with the sixth plague, boils). The next three are brought about by Moshe who, like Aharon, brings about the plague himself, with his staff. The last, the killing of the first born, is, again, announced by Moshe and brought about by God. On one level, this arrangement seems to give everyone a chance to be involved - God, Moshe, and Aharon are all part of this process. On another level, the Rabbis have tried to make some deeper sense of the way the roles of our three heroes are divided up. Rashi quotes an interesting Midrash, which attempts to explain Aharon's active involvement in the first three plagues.  READ MORE »