Service or Festival? There was a breakdown in communication between the parties. Finally, after seven plagues, Pharaoh was ready to negotiate with Moses regarding who would be permitted to leave Egypt. The Torah relates: Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh, and he said to them, "Go, worship the Lord your God. Who and who are going?" Moses said, "With our youth and with our elders we will go, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our cattle we will go, for it is a festival of the Lord to us." (10:8-9) Pharaoh was sure that this was a scam. Pharaoh declared: Not so; let the men go now and worship the Lord, for that is what you request." And he chased them out from before Pharaoh. (10:11) Seemingly, Pharaoh wanted to ascertain that the Jewish people who were going to serve G-d in the desert would return to Egypt; he, therefore, wanted the women, children, and cattle to remain behind as security. There is, however, a deeper element to Pharaoh's refusal. In Egyptian culture, only the priestly class served their Gods. Service was relegated to a small group of individuals who could truly understand and meditate on spiritual concepts. For Pharaoh, it was conceivable that educated men would go and serve G-d in the desert, but it was implausible that women and children could be part of the service. Indeed, Pharaoh's words, "Go, worship the Lord your God. Who and who are going?" was not a question, it was a statement. Pharaoh stated: look at all the surrounding cultures, "who and who are going?" Only an elite group of men worship. Moses insisted that, if we are to serve G-d properly, all Jewish people must participate: "With our youth and with our elders we will go, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our cattle we will go". Our service of G-d is radically different. There are no representatives before G-d; but rather, each and every individual has a personal and unique relationship with G-d. Moses continues: "for it is a festival of the Lord to us"; the way we serve G-d is not only through study and meditation but also through festival and joy. The way we connect to G-d is through experiencing joy and happiness, which is possible only when we are all united and present together.
Blog - Torah Insights
Service or Festival? - בא
Part of a Greater Story - וארא
Part of a Greater Story It was, perhaps, the rock bottom moment of the slavery. G-d sent Moses to Pharaoh to demand, "Let my people go and serve me in the desert", yet not only did Pharaoh refuse to obey, but he intensified the burden on his Hebrew slaves. Moses cried out to G-d, demanding to know why G-d had sent him on this seemingly futile mission: So Moses returned to the Lord and said, "O Lord! Why have You harmed this people? Why have You sent me? Since I have come to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has harmed this people, and You have not saved Your people." (Exodus 5:22-23) In this week's Torah portion, we read G-d's elaborate response to Moses’ argument. There are many ways G-d’s response is interpreted, the following is one explanation. What do we do when we are trapped in a metaphorical Egypt? What do we do when we see no way out of our current difficulty and challenge? When Moses cried out to G-d, instead of providing a direct answer, G-d began by evoking events of the past, His covenant with the Patriarchs, Abraham, Issac, and Jacob: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob with [the name] Almighty God, but [with] My name Hashem, I did not become known to them. And also, I established My covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings in which they sojourned. (Exodus 6:3-4) Then G-d went on to talk about future events, the giving of the Torah and the entry into the land of Israel: And I will take you to Me as a people, and I will be a God to you, and you will know that I am the Lord your God, Who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you to the land, concerning which I raised My hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you as a heritage; I am the Lord. (Exodus 6:7-8) G-d conveyed to Moses that the way to be free is to raise oneself above the moment. This moment may be difficult, we may be trapped in Egypt, yet we are free if we realize that this moment does not define us. We are part of a bigger story. We are part of a greater history. We are a link between an illustrious past and a bright future. The same is true in our personal life. To experience liberation in a moment of challenge and difficulty, is to know that this challenge, this moment, this failure, or this setback does not define us. We are greater than the moment. The setback is here not to define us but as a springboard to bridge our past and our future, to help us reach a deeper dimension of our life, a greater chapter in our story.
Is the Name Moshe Grammatically Correct? - שמות
Is the Name Moshe Grammatically Correct? Moshe. What a beautiful name. The name was given to him by his adoptive mother, the daughter of Pharaoh, who called him Moshe because he was drawn from the water. As we read in the Torah: Pharaoh's daughter went down to bathe, to the Nile, and her maidens were walking along the Nile, and she saw the basket in the midst of the marsh, and she sent her maidservant, and she took it. (Exodus 2:5) After the baby was given to his birth mother to nurse, the Torah relates: The child grew up, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became like her son. She named him Moses, and she said, "For I drew him from the water." (Exodus 2:10) If you are familiar with Hebrew grammar, you may ask, why was he named Moshe ("the one who draws") and not Mashuy ("the one who was drawn")? After all, the one who drew was the daughter of Pharaoh and not the passive baby? The classic Biblical commentator Ibn Ezra raises this question and explains that in Biblical Hebrew nouns are flexible and do not conform to the specific rules of grammar: Do not be perplexed as to why moshe was not called mashuy, Yet, perhaps, the form Moshe ("the one who will draw") is indeed precisely what his adoptive mother had in mind. When we look at Moshe's life for clues as to why he was chosen to lead the Jewish people, a pattern emerges. The Torah tells us nothing about his greatness, wisdom, humility or prophecy. Instead, the Torah relates three stories in which Moshe stepped in to protect the vulnerable: Moses saved a Hebrew slave from the Egyptian oppressor, he saved a Jew from being struck by his fellow Jew, and he protected the daughters of Jethro at the well in Midian. Moshe learned to step in and help others, despite the risk to himself, from his adoptive mother.. His name served as a constant reminder that his adoptive mother defied her father Pharaoh's wicked decree and drew him from the Nile, saving his life. Yet the name Moshe focuses not on the great act that she did, but rather on the lesson that she sought to teach him. He too must follow his adoptive mother's example, "drawing others" from their "water", saving others from their plight. He must not only remember that he was saved, but that memory must motivate him to save others; he must not be a "Mashuy", "one who was drawn", but a Moshe, "one who draws others".
The Crouching Lion - ויחי
The Crouching Lion At the end of his life, Jacob summoned each of his children to his bedside and blessed each one with their individual blessing. The blessings are beautiful and poetic but also mysterious and cryptic; they address both the character of each son as well as future events that would unfold with their descendants and members of their tribe. There are, therefore, multiple layers of interpretations and perspectives on each phrase of the blessings. We will explore dramatically different interpretations of one phrase in the blessings to Judah. Jacob blessed Judah with leadership, military might, and an abundance of wine, representing the fertility of his future portion of land in Israel. Jacob stated: "A cub [and] a grown lion is Judah", which Rashi interprets as referring to King David: "He prophesied about David, who was at first like a cub: "When Saul was king over us… and at the end a lion, when they made him king over them". Then, continuing with the metaphor of the lion, Jacob continues: A lion's cub Judah, from prey my sin you ascended; he kneeled, crouched as a lion and as an old-lion who will raise him? (Genesis 49:9) If the lion represents the might of King David, then what is the symbolism of crouching? Rashi and Onkelous explain that the crouching lion is a metaphor for a time of peace and tranquility, when the lion can rest and does not have to assert his might, for all its enemies will have already been vanquished. As Rashi explains: This refers to the reign of King Solomon, when peace prevailed in the land and the people of Israel sat "each under his grapevine and each under his fig tree". No nation dared disturb their tranquility, as none would dare disturb a lion's rest. The Zohar, the primary book of Jewish mysticism, offers a completely opposite reading. To the Zohar, the crouching lion refers not to the tranquility of the era of King Solomon, when the Jewish people were at their peak both physically and spiritually, but rather to the time of exile, when the Jewish people are "crouching", are subjugated under oppressive nations. Yet they nevertheless retain the strength of the lion and remain steadfast in their commitment to Judaism and G-d. As the Zohar explains: This describes the people of Israel in their exiles: although they have been brought to their knees, they have the strength and perseverance of a lion, and are not swayed by the nations who persecute them and attempt to seduce them away from their faith and their practices. The Zohar, the inner perspective of the Torah, invites us to reexamine the apparent reality and find the deeper truth. Yes, the lion is crouching, seemingly in a weakened position, but, in truth, the lion is crouching in preparation of pouncing. The same is true for the Jewish people. Our personal and collective challenges, while they seem to weaken us, are, in truth, an opportunity to dig deeper and discover reservoirs of strength, to not only survive but ultimately to transform the world as well. As the Zohar continues: And as a lion who crouches not out of weakness but in order to pounce on its prey and vanquish it, so too the bride Israel in her exile is fallen only in order to pounce from her crouch as a lion and banish idolatry from the world. Translation of Onkolous and Zohar taken from the new Open Book Chumash
Why Recite Shema at the Reunion? - ויגש
Why Recite Shema at the Reunion? Finally, after twenty-two years of separation and mourning, Jacob was reunited with his beloved son Joseph. For twenty-two years, Jacob believed that his son Joseph had been devoured; and now, he was about to meet Joseph, who had risen to the position of viceroy of Egypt. The Torah describes Joseph's emotional reaction to the reunion: And Joseph harnessed his chariot, and he went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and he appeared to him, and he fell on his neck, and he wept on his neck for a long time. (Genesis 46:29) But wait, what about Jacob? The verse does not inform us about Jacob; what was Jacob doing? The Midrash, quoted by Rashi explains that Jacob did not react emotionally at all, for Jacob was preoccupied with reciting the Shema: Jacob, however, neither fell on Joseph's neck nor kissed him. Our Sages said that he was reciting the Shema. Why was Jacob reading the Shema at that very moment? What message was he conveying to himself and us by declaring the oneness of G-d in the Shema? The Talmud analyzes a verse from the prophecy of Zechariah, which states that in the Messianic era, "The Lord will be one and His name one". The Talmud asks, how can we say that only in the Messianic era the Lord will be one, "Is that to say that now He is not one?" The Talmud explains that now there are two names of G-d, there are two distinct blessings, one for good news and one for bad news. In the Messianic era, however, this will not be the case, "His name will be one", there will only be one blessing, the blessing for good tidings: Rabbi Aḥa bar Ḥanina said: The World-to-Come is not like this world. In this world, upon good tidings one recites: Blessed…Who is good and does good, and over bad tidings one recites: Blessed…the true Judge. In the World-to-Come one will always recite: Blessed…Who is good and does good. There will be only one mode of blessing God for tidings. (Talmud, Pesachim 50a) The Shema, the declaration of the oneness of Hashem, reminds us that not only is there only one G-d, but additionally there is nothing outside of His oneness; there is no creation or experience outside the oneness of G-d. This is a declaration of faith and belief, yet we don't always experience this truth. In this world, we experience the dichotomy of "good tidings", times when we see and feel the presence of G-d, and "bad tidings", times when we feel abandoned and disconnected from G-d. Yet, in the Messianic era, we will experience the deeper truth, we will recognize that indeed G-d was with us even when we did not feel His presence. When Jacob reunited with Joseph, he experienced the perspective of the Messianic era. Jacob sensed that, in retrospect, G-d was indeed with him all along, that the apparent calamity of Joseph's disappearance was, in fact, positive and good, for it led to Joseph's ascension to power and the salvation of his family and the entire region. Jacob recited the Shema in recognition that, indeed, Hashem is one, He is with us in every experience and in every moment.