On any given day there are many things that you really look forward to doing, but there are always a few things on your to do list that you dread. Usually those dreaded chores are on your list all week long. Initially, this dvar Torah started on the looking forward to list but eventually got pushed back day by day to the day before panic list.
It’s easy to remember the things that you wanted to avoid. I still remember as a child being in bed watching the clock and hoping my parents would not come to my room and say wake up it’s time to go to Sunday school. As an adult, an avoidance item was going to Shabbat services, however, through intense personal growth and a significant amount of shame, I feel blessed to have found meaning in Judaism and I feel blessed to be in this sanctuary on Shabbat to learn, to pray, and to support our Jewish community.
Last week’s was the first parsha of Exodus called Shemot (“Names”). It opens describing the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt. Moses is born, placed in a basket on the Nile, and adopted into Pharaoh’s household. He later encounters God at a burning bush and begins his mission of demanding that Pharoah let the Israelites go so that they may worship God.
Today we read parsha Va-era, and Va-era means “and I appeared.” As we read this parsha “appeared” clearly means more than just being present, rather it means present “to participate and to get involved.”
Vaera opens as God reiterates the covenant between Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He tells Moses that he has heard the moaning of the Israelites due to the Egyptians holding them in bondage, and God remembers his covenant, and promises to redeem the enslaved Israelites and deliver them to their promised land.
As the strain of bondage continues to weigh heavily upon the Israelites, their spirits become crushed by the cruelty that has been applied. Moses again appeals to the Lord, wondering if he’s the right man for the job and God says to Moses that you must go back to pharaoh and repeat the demand to allow the Israelites to depart from the land, but I will again harden Pharoah’s heart, and God then details to Moses how he will bring about liberation and thus we have a rendering of the first seven plagues: water turning to blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, death of livestock, boils, and hail.
This parsha is remarkable for many reasons according to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
“through Bereshit, God is the God of Creation, the God of nature, the aspect of God we call, the Creator of heaven and earth.
Now, in a sense, that aspect of God was known to everyone in the ancient world. It’s just that they did not see nature as the work of one God but of many: the god of the sun, the god of the rain, the goddesses of the sea and the earth, the vast pantheon of forces responsible for harvests, fertility, storms, droughts, and so on.
There were profound differences between the gods of polytheism and myth, and the one God of Abraham, but they operated, as it were, in the same territory, the same ballpark.
The aspect of God that appears in the days of Moses and the Israelites is radically different, and it’s only because we are so used to the story that we find it hard to see how radical it was.
For the first time in history God was about to get involved in history, not through natural disasters like the Flood, but by direct interaction with the people who shape history. God was about to appear as the force that shapes the destiny of nations. He was about to do something no one had ever heard of before: bring an entire nation from slavery and servitude, persuade them to follow Him into the desert, and eventually to the Promised Land, and there build a new kind of society, based not on power but on justice, welfare, respect for the dignity of the human person and on collective responsibility for the rule of law.
God was about to initiate a new kind of drama and a new concept of time. According to many of the world’s greatest historians, this was the moment when history was born.
And now God appears to Moses and tells him that something utterly new is about to occur, something the patriarchs knew about in theory but had never lived to see in practice. A new nation. A new kind of faith. A new kind of political order. A new type of society. God was about to enter history and set the West on a trajectory that no human beings had ever contemplated before.
Time was going to become the stage on which God and humanity would journey together toward the day when all human beings – regardless of class, color, creed, or culture – would achieve their full dignity as the image and likeness of God.
The idea that – together with God – we can change the world, that we can make history, not just be made by it, this idea was born when God told Moses that he and his contemporaries were about to see an aspect of God no one had ever seen before.
Rabbi Sacks concludes, “In this moment history was born, the moment God entered history and taught us for all time that slavery, oppression, injustice, are not written into the fabric of the cosmos, engraved into the human condition. Things can be different because we can be different, because God has shown us how.”
So God instructs Moses to tell Pharoah to “Let my people go so that they may worship me.”
Yet God also tells Moses that he will hardened Pharoah’s heart so his overture will be refused. Why has God hardened Pharoah’s heart? Our tradition tells us that it was necessary for God to not only show his power to the Israelites, but to the Egyptians as well. Our tradition explains that God wanted Israel to go through the experience of slavery and redemption to teach them compassion for the oppressed, and gratitude for their freedom. The purpose of the exodus is not only to free the Israelites, but to demonstrate the greatness of God over the idols and human rulers of Egypt. Had God moved Pharaoh to deal generously with Israel from the outset that lesson would not have been learned.
Through this shared experience of slavery and redemption, the Israelites transition from a community of families, to people with a shared history, and then to a nation of purpose, and eventually become God’s partner in this world as a light unto nations.
As I read this parsha I was overwhelmed by the challenge Moses faced and the courage he summoned. As I said before there are somethings you dread and work to avoid. In addition to Sunday School, the last thing I want to do to have to tell something to someone that they don’t want to hear, like telling patients that fees have increased, or telling an employee you have to work this weekend, or telling my wife you have to watch Iowa football with me.
Pharaohs, dictators, and authoritarians do not want to hear about compassion and mercy. They want their orders followed and their egos stroked.
Yesterday Bill Wallen forwarded an article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Rabbi Micah Streiffer. Rabbi Streiffer wrote: “A religious leader rises before a head of state. Calmly, deliberately, they teach from their tradition, quote words of scripture, plead with the powerful man to govern with mercy. In so doing they implicitly call the powerful to task, criticizing them for past actions and current policies and challenging them to change. They are rewarded with anger and a demand for apology.
This is a familiar scene. Such moments of priest-against-power dot the history of our society: Martin Luther King, Jr.; Abraham Joshua Heschel; Dietrich Bonhoeffer; even the biblical Moses — all stood before political leaders to demand justice. The scene played out again this week in the Inauguration Day sermon by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. Speaking in the National Cathedral on Monday in front of the incoming administration, Budde delivered a message in which she called for unity and warned against sowing seeds of division and fear. “Honoring the inherent dignity of every human being,” she said, “means refusing to mock, discount, or demonize those with whom we differ.”
Budde’s sermon ended with an explicit plea to “have mercy on the people in our country who are scared,” members of the LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities who “fear for their lives” or “whose children fear their parents will be taken away.”
Rabbi Streiffer further explains “that giving a sermon necessarily involves encouraging people to confront their own behaviors and choices: how we treat others, how we use resources, how we care for our planet, the people on it, and the vulnerable in society. Judaism has no expectation that religious leaders will stay away from talking about what is good for society. To the contrary, the Hebrew Bible institutionalizes this responsibility in the form of the prophet, who is a kind of social critic who reminds people of the gap between moral expectations and actual behaviors.”
Rabbi Streiffer concludes: Our biblical prophets consistently call upon leaders and citizens alike to do exactly what Bishop Budde pleaded: to have mercy and compassion on the vulnerable. In the end, religion is at its best when it serves to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” It offers us a thoughtful, truthful critique of our actions, while reminding us that we still have both the ability and the responsibility to make the world a better place.”
I pray that we do not let the materialism and polarization of our current culture harden our hearts. I pray that our hearts will always be full of faith, hope and compassion. I pray that we become champions for a kind and just society with democratic principles that emphasize human dignity and freedom of expression without bigotry and bias.
If only prayer were enough, it is a start, but I hope we all embrace “Va-era” and “appear” because we can only make a difference by moving from prayer into action.