This is the sermon I am delivering tonight at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island. Tonight's service is a "Visual T'filah" service in which the words of the prayerbook are projected onto a screen. This allows me to include some visual images to go with the sermon. I've included a few of them in this post.

This week’s Torah portion is Va’eira. It continues the story of Moses’ conflict with Pharaoh over God’s demand that the Israelite slaves be freed. When Moses famously told Pharaoh, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh responded angrily by ordering the Israelites to make their bricks without straw. The Israelites became angry with Moses for making their work even harder for them. Last week’s portion ended with Moses feeling pretty disappointed in himself and pretty discouraged about convincing Pharaoh. 

In the very first verse of this week’s Torah portion, God responded to Moses’ discouragement by saying, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name: Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey” (Exodus 6:2-3).

It’s hard to know what to make of this verse. In context, it appears that God told Moses God’s personal name – a name that was unknown even to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – as a form of reassurance. It is as if God was putting a divine hand on Moses’ shoulder and saying, “Don’t worry, Mo. I know that your mission seems impossible right now, but you should know that you have the best possible weapon in your corner in your conflict with Pharaoh. You have the God of heaven and earth as your best buddy. I’ll even let you call Me by the name that only My very best friends call Me. Do you trust Me now?” 

Was Moses encouraged by the knowledge of God’s name? It doesn’t appear so. Moses next complained that God must have made a mistake in choosing him. Moses said, “I have a speech impediment. Why should Pharaoh listen to me?”

So, maybe knowledge of God’s name isn’t really a form of encouragement for Moses after all. Maybe God’s name has a deeper meaning. We should wonder: What is God’s name and why is it so important here? Let’s explore.

It would be easy to assume that the point of the plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians was to convince Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves. The Torah, however, repeatedly insists that this is not the case. God and Moses knew that Pharaoh would not budge in his refusal because of the plagues. The plagues served a different purpose.

God tells Moses in this week’s Torah portion (Va’eira): 

The point of the plagues was to serve as a demonstration project. God wanted the Egyptians to know that the God of Israel was God Almighty, more powerful than any of the idols of stone worshipped in Egypt. The plagues — prolonged by God hardening Pharaoh’s heart — served to make sure that the Egyptians would never forget the power of the God of Israel.

Why? Why does the Torah repeatedly say that the plagues served only to make "Egypt know that I am Adonai" (Exodus 7:17, 8:18, 10:2, 14:4, 14:18)? Why would it matter to God, Moses or the Israelites whether the Egyptians believed in God? 

It is, actually, a radical question. In the ancient Near East, every nation had its own gods. Every nation recognized the gods of every other nation, but believed that their own gods reigned within their territory. The idea that Israel’s God must be acknowledged by the Egyptians as superior to their own gods, even in the heart of Egypt, overturned all the expectations of ancient civilizations.

Unlike any other nation of the time, Israel insisted that their God was the only God worthy of worship, the God of everything and everywhere. That may sound arrogant and chauvinistic — perhaps it is — but it is also central to the concept of a God who can command morality and a God who can unify our lives.

The God of Israel does not represent values and ethics of only one particular time and place. God is not in competition with other, equally valid gods that represent different values and moral positions. The God of the Hebrew Bible is the God of ideals that are universally true for all nations, all people, and for all time. When God says, “Thou shall not kill,” there is no alternate god to whom you can turn who will say, “Okay, you can kill sometimes.” God’s rule is exclusive, the highest authority on everything that will admit no equal.

That does not mean, though, that God is always clear on every moral question. A God of everything needs also to be a God who does not rule in black and white. With no alternate authority, the God of Israel must be a God that encompasses all of lived human experience. This is a God of nuance and complexity. Human imperfections and our complicated human relationships mean that God must reflect a range of conflicting interests to guide us toward doing the right thing.

Judaism, with its God of everything, teaches a single morality over all reality — even if it is a complex moral order that does not have specific answers for every human situation. That reflects the lived reality of our existence. We are multifaceted beings, but we require a unifying principle that makes our lives coherent. 

Like the pantheons of the ancient nations of the Near East, our own psyches are filled with competing forces. Sometimes we are ruled by the demigods of our own desires and craving for pleasure. Sometimes we are ruled by the demons of our fears. When we are able to admit to ourselves that all of these imagined forces within us are ruled by the one God of our higher selves — our best and noblest aspirations — we, ourselves, become unified beings. When we are ruled by the one God of everything, we find greater clarity in facing life's challenges. We find greater joy in living a life of meaning, undying values, and bedrock principles. 

God told Moses that the plagues would teach the Egyptians to know that "I am Adonai." The same lesson applies to each of us individually as we confront the Pharaoh within us — the part of ourselves that believes that we can make up our own rules and that wants to declare ourselves to be autonomous gods. Like Pharaoh, we also need to see the "signs and wonders" that prove that we are not nearly as in control of our lives as we like to imagine. We need to be reminded that there is a great power that rules our destinies far better than our desires and our fears. 

One hopes that we won't need to be overrun by frogs or pelted by burning hail to see it. Inevitably, though, life's hardships will teach us some of our most profound lessons of humility and acceptance. As we read this week's Torah portion, we can remember that there is a part of us that is Egypt, waiting to be awakened by the realization that there is a God of everything and of everywhere, and that it is not us. 

Other Posts on This Topic:
Va'eira: Playing God?
Va'eira: When We Cannot Be Joyful 

 In just the first year after I was ordained as a rabbi, I faced a situation that made me wish that I had a million years of preparation. A few days before I was scheduled to officiate at the wedding of a young couple, the father of the bride died suddenly of a heart attack. The family, of course, was in agony. I felt completely unable to handle the situation. How do you console someone at such a moment? What can you even say?

In retrospect, I wish that I had tried to say less. God can speak to us when we are in such pain, but listening can be very difficult. That was something I needed to recognize in the young couple in front of me, and it was something I needed to recognize in myself. I now wish that, instead of offering so many words, I had had the wisdom to listen more to them and to my own feelings of powerlessness. The pain of the situation made me deaf to both.

There is a Chasidic teaching about the way that pain deafens us in this week's Torah portion (Va'eira). It comes from an apparent contradiction in the text.

When God instructed Moses what to say to the Israelites, God told him, "They will listen to your voice…" (Exodus 3:18; the preposition "to," as we shall see, is important). However, when Moses actually does speak to them, the text says, "Moses spoke thus to the Israelites, but they did not heed Moses because of their crushed spirits and harsh labor" (Exodus 6:9). 

Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotzk once asked Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Worka, "How do we reconcile these two Scriptures? Heaven forbid that the words of the Holy One of Blessing were not fulfilled!" Is it possible, he wondered, that God was wrong about the Israelites paying attention to Moses?

Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Worka's answer turns on a small detail of the Hebrew. He explains, "God said to Moses, precisely, 'They will listen to your voice.' It is not, however, written, 'They will listen in your voice.'" He points out that when Moses later wants to makes sure the Israelites pay attention to him, he says, "And now, if you will listen in my voice…" (Exodus 19:5). 

The distinction, says Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Worka, is critical. He says that when God told Moses that the Israelites would "listen to his voice," it meant only that they would hear the sound of his voice, not the content of his words. Why didn't they hear what Moses was saying? “Because of their crushed spirits and harsh labor.” Their spiritual pain prevented them from taking in the full depth of Moses’ words. (Itturei Torah, Vol. 3, p. 55).

This is an experience that we all have known from childhood. When we are distraught, angered or in distress, we seldom hear clearly what is being said to us. Words that are meant to calm, soothe or comfort us do not come through. The words might even be misunderstood as challenging, judgmental or condescending. 

There is a corresponding teaching in Pirke Avot that tells us, "Do not attempt to appease a person when he is angry, to comfort a person when his dead lies before him, or to question a person when he utters a vow" (M. Avot 4:23). There is a time when we should acknowledge the limitations of words and to understand that even beautiful words will not be truly heard.

That is not an indictment against the person who cannot hear. It is not a spiritual failing. It is part of how we experience life with all of its ups and downs. 

There is a cycle of "a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance" (Ecclesiastes 3:4). Wisdom comes from recognizing each time and its appropriate boundaries. Wisdom is seeing that there is no joy that will drive away all sorrow, and there is no loss that will drive away all hope. Torah teaches that slaves may arise to see God's presence and hear God's voice on a mountain top. A bride who has lost her father may later find joy and fulfillment in marriage, children and family. Life goes on.

When I say—as I often do on this blog—that the challenge for our era of Judaism is to rediscover joy, I am not preaching a Judaism that is all happiness, all the time. That would be a Judaism no deeper than the light pablum of a television sitcom. Rather, I want to nurture a Judaism that speaks to us—and listens to us—through all the difficult passages of our lives and helps us return to joy. 

Joy is not the precondition of Jewish living. Life takes us through dark moments that must be acknowledged. But finding joy and returning to it is part of the life of Torah.


Other Posts on This Topic:
First Post!
Not Turning Away from Grief

There is nothing that Judaism seems to despise more than human beings who believe that they can take the place of God. That is a dire warning for an age in which we constantly play God. We manipulate DNA to create new life forms. We kill people on the other side of the world by pushing buttons. We carry access to the world's largest libraries in our pockets. We scoff at the stories of miracles in the Bible, not because they seem unbelievable, but because they seem so puny compared to what we can do with our technology. (Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls come tumblin' down? A single B-2 Stealth Bomber armed with precision weapons could do the job undetected in under a minute.)

So, the question we must be wondering is this: What shepherd dressed in Bedouin's clothes will come walking into our halls of power to bring us down, acting as God's agent? There are plenty of candidates. If we so insist on playing God, taking all of our power for granted, how will that power be turned against us in another case of cosmic comeuppance?

Perhaps, it is time for us to be less focussed on what we can do and more concerned about what we should do with our power. There is a man with a beard and a staff at the door and he is asking us to let his people go.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Vayikra: Should I Bow to a Block of Wood?