Encounter or Epiphany - Your choice: Parasha Shemot, Exodus 1:1-6:1

Shemot, or the book of Exodus, begins “These are the names of the children of Israel,” or the children of Jacob who came out of Egypt, the opening words of parasha Shemot.  In Torah, Jacob speaks to his humanity although Israel speaks to the special covenant connection between God and Jacob, with his children becoming the names of the tribes of Israel, first called a "people" this week (see Ex. 1:9).  That reflects the most notable change between Beresheit and Shemot per Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who writes, “Genesis was about individuals and their [family] relationships … Exodus is about the birth of a nation, a nation that is called a people, a nation, a congregation and a community.”  But this is just not any people, but a covenant people. So as far as Torah is concerned what began in Genesis continues in Exodus, God is partnering with descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, the children of Israel, who would become a nation (a people) led by the values of Torah, something that we see unfold beginning here in Shemot.  

Parasha Shemot is also a story within a story.  The story starts with the deaths of Jacob's sons, including Joseph, when a new Pharaoh arose to power and did not know the past, making him alarmed at the growth of these Jews in Goshen.  In our first case of Jewish Anti-Semitism Pharaoh turns the Jews into slaves and makes their labor harsh and burdensome. After some time, from an unlikely place, Moses comes into the story and eventually goes to this Pharaoh to ask for the Jews release for three days to go into the dessert and worship their God.  Pharaoh recognizing the economic implications off stopping all labor for even three days, as well as knowing nothing of this God Moses speaks of, says no and makes the work even harder for the Jewish slaves. That is one story but there is another we want to look at this week, and that is of Moses.

We also learn then about Moses who would be chosen to stand up for his people’s freedom.  As such Moses is born during a time when the same Pharaoh required that all baby boys be killed; only girls could live.  When Moses was born his mother, Jochebed, hid him for three months.  Jochebed then waterproofed a wicker basket and sent Moses downstream on the Nile where he is found by the daughter of Pharaoh, ironically bringing a Jewish baby to be raised by her within Pharaoh's palace.  As he grew up Moses was educated in the the ways of Egypt but also wrestled with his own identity as a Jew, something that was more so exasperated by the harsh treatment his own people received as slaves.  In one dramatic scene Moses kills an Egyptian taskmaster and when he finds out that two fellow Jews saw it Moses flees to the land of Midian where he marries Yitro’s daughter, has children and settles down to a much quieter life as a Sheppard.  It was while he was tending to the herd one day that he saw an unusual sight, “A messenger of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. Moses said, I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn’t the bush burn up” (Exodus 3:2-3).
  
In the same way Jacob, via a dream as he slept, encountered God standing beside him on the ground Moses, who was wide awake, encountered God in a bush on fire that did not burn. We must remember that the Jewish Sages for the most part focused on applications rather than seeking proof regarding this bush.  We see this with the Jewish mystical tradition with the followers of the Ball Shem Tov. in particular Rabbi Shneur Zalman, who taught that the fire in the bush represented the Shekinah, the presence of God, in the midst of the ordinary such as rocks or trees, just as it would represent God’s presence at Sinai later on. Rebbe Nachman of Breslev teaches that the "fire represented godliness … and the thorns represent the obstacles to spirituality,” something that taught Moses almost “prophetically” about the chore before him; leading Israel out of the thorns of Egyptian slavery to be a free people, a message that is timely given that the Monday after this Shabbat is Martin Luther King Day.  This theme carries on with the words of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch who teaches that the fire was a metaphor, so while the fire rests in the thorn bush the angel resides in the fire, meaning that even in this thorny situation, which R'Hirsch says are the sufferings of Israel in Egypt, God will be there.  Rabbi Elie Muuk, of the last century, along the same lines writes “that as long as the Lord watches over Israel, no one can destroy them.” 

Regarding the eternality of the Jewish people Jewish tradition teaches that this itself was a part God’s design, learning in a Midrash (Genesis R. 1:4) that the very thought of Israel, or the Jewish people, preexisted the physical world itself.  Maybe that was awoken in Moses on the day he saw the Taskmasters beating his fellow Jews who were slaves, yet what he did come to know is that those flames represented God, who in the midst of Israel's slavery, could not forsake the people but provided them the means to find strength to endure their plight on the way to their next steps.  Moses knew that unless the presence of God would join him along the journey this would be a near impossible task. Moses also knew that the people would ask about the name of this God, a name as mysterious as the bush, the people encountering this God for the first time could only ponder that name, the name being Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, “I am who I am." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes that “The exodus was more than the liberation of slaves, it was about the redrawing of the moral landscape,” but what does that mean?  It means that Israel, stating with Moses, would be a people who would represent and partner with this God as a nation just like Abraham and his family did before, being a people who amongst the thorns of life were no longer beholden to a slavery of darkness but are going to be asked to be a community of light within their world, just as the same is being asked of us today. In short, call it an encounter or call it an epiphany, but that is what happened with Moses as he stood before that bush, and later with Chal Yisrael (all Israel) at Mount Sinai, renewing their life commitments and purposes based on their own divine encounters.  We should also seek to find meaning in the encounters that we experience and what that means as we too take our next steps.   

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Adam