The Burning Bush
In the portion of Shemot, the first portion of the book of Exodus, we read about Moses experiencing Divine revelation for the first time. The revelation was unique. Moses was tending the sheep of his father-in-law in the desert, when he saw a bush burning, yet the bush was not consumed.
As the Torah [1] describes:
Moses was pasturing the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, the chief of Midian, and he led the flocks after the free pastureland, and he came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from within the thorn bush, and behold, the thorn bush was burning with fire, but the thorn bush was not being consumed. So Moses said, "Let me turn now and see this great spectacle why does the thorn bush not burn up?" The Lord saw that he had turned to see, and God called to him from within the thorn bush, and He said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am!" And He said, "Do not draw near here. Take your shoes off your feet, because the place upon which you stand is holy soil."
In the book of Genesis, when G-d spoke to Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Hagar, Isaac, Rebekah, Laban, and Jacob, G-d spoke to them directly, without the need for an attention grabbing scheme. Why did G-d choose to reveal himself to Moses from amidst a bush that was burning but was not consumed?
Moses experienced the Divine revelation, not for his own personal sake, rather for the sake of the Jewish people who Moses would lead out of Egypt and to Mount Sinai - the very mountain on which Moses saw the burning bush - to become the nation of G-d, a nation charged with the mission of making G-d’s vision for this world a reality. It follows, then, that the burning bush was not merely a way to grab Moses’ attention, but rather it was the mission statement of the nation that would be born at Sinai, immediately following the Exodus.
A surging fire represents a soul surging upward, yearning to transcend the physical world and connect to spirituality. The annals of religious experience are full of people who felt this burning passion in their heart, and who chose to retreat from this world. They chose to escape civilization, to flee to the forests and hills in an effort to escape the material. They fled the prickly thorns of daily existence in order to bond with the spiritual.
The most important message of Judaism,, and the first message which G-d communicates to Moses was, that indeed in order to connect to G-d one must reveal the fire burning within the human heart. To experience the Divine one must discover the fire, the passion, the yearning and longing to reconnect with the Divine source of all existence. The fire, however, must not consume the bush. One must not look to escape the world, which sometimes feels like a thorn bush in a desolate place, unsuitable for spiritual growth.
G-d's first message to Moshe was that the “bush is not consumed” - the fire should not lead one to escape the physical. The consuming fire of G-d must burn in one’s heart, yet, paradoxically, one cannot allow himself to be consumed. One may be the greatest prophet of all time, one may be the lawgiver, one may speak to G-d “like a man speaks to his friend”, but one may not be consumed by the fire. One may not abandon the reality in which one lives, one must not forget about the people around him, one must be like the flame surging upward yet remaining grounded by its wick.
Moses was fascinated.
How could this be? How could one maintain the fire while living in a thorn bush? Moses said to himself: “Let me turn now and see this great spectacle, why does the thorn bush not burn up?"
G-d responded to Moses’s wonder:
“Take your shoes off your feet, because the place upon which you stand is holy soil."
G-d told Moses that the physical, “the place on which you stand”, is itself a creation of G-d, which can be elevated to become sacred soil. Indeed, all of the earth can become as holy as Mount Sinai. G-d revealed to Moses the mission statement and purpose of the nation that was about to be born. “The place upon which you stand is holy soil”, we are instructed, not to wear a shoe, which represents separation from the soil, but rather we are instructed to imbue the earth itself with holiness.
The purpose of creation, the reason the soul descends into this world, is to sanctify the material, to discover and to unveil that upon any place on earth there can be a burning bush. [2]
[1] Exodus, 3:1-5.
[2] Inspired by Sefer Hamaamarim 5704, page 117.