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Parshat Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1)
25th of Tevet, 5761

Four weeks, four parshayot, Yosef is lost, then found. The pained, angry split family reconciles. Yaakov extracts a promise, and dies. Except for Yaakov's dream-vision, G-d presence has been hidden away: Those most dedicated to serving the Infinite One live out their lives in absence, in an unredeemed world, struggling to find moral purpose. Thus ends Bereshit: Yosef dies.

It takes great temerity to comment on Sefer Shemot in general, and Parshat Shemot in particular. It is rash in the first place to comment on the text: Greater minds and great masters have mined Torah text for 2000 years. So boldness in Bereshit begets bashfulness in Shemot. This text is the foundation myth of just about every principle and value dear not only to Jews, but to the civilized Western world (which is not to distinguished us from an "uncivilized" East, but rather from the great number of barbarians who have lived in the West, and have occupied so many seats of power and terror).

Besides, who could possibly suggest that Cecil B. DeMille or Stephen Spielberg have done anything less than offered us the definitive renditions of Exodus, Moshe Rabbineu and G-d's re-entry into human history?

If we take a look at the text, however, we'll be startled at how little becomes so much. Somehow, both DeMille and Spielberg turned 12 short lines into an elaborate backstory of family intrigue, betrayal, love affairs and palace politics. All of Moshe's life in the Egyptian court is covered in lines 1-12 of chapter 2. Our text, plain and straight-forward, has no sibling rivalry, no doomed love affairs, not even a surprise plot twist wherein Moshe discovers his "true" identity.

What surprises us is not Moshe's unraveling life in the Egyptian court, nor some startling self-discovery. What strikes us first, as the story unfolds, is Moshe's precipitate act of striking down the Egyptian miscreant. In three simple lines, 20 minutes or so of Spielberg's "Prince of Dreams" is recast: "When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, who made him her son. She named him Moses, explaining, "I drew him out of the water". Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand." (2:10-12, JPS translation). (Moshe's name come from the root m-sh-h, Hebrew meaning "to draw up/out (of water). See Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary.)

Just from a literary perspective, the boldness, simplicity and plainness of the text are stunning. We have no inside information, no knowledge of Moshe's internal life. In 12 lines, he goes from the apparently abandoned baby in the floating basket to a young man capable of killing. (We should point out though that Rashi, commenting on the next two verses, brings down the tradition that Moshe killed the Egyptian by uttering the Ineffable Name, not by physical action.)

Secondarily, what strikes us is not only G-d's renewed presence, but the way that the One totally takes over the scene. The absence so notable in the Yosef novella is more than filled. G-d's presence overflows the scene. Often we focus on the big ideas here: G-d's overwhelming presence in the burning-yet-unconsumed bush, G-d's naming and implicit self-definition, G-d's majestic commands to Moshe.

Sometimes in the focusing on the big themes, we loose track of the little themes that unpack both the text and our relationship with G-d. In verses 2:24-5, we are introduced to the G-d of history who stands in unique relationship to the children of Israel: "G-d heard their moaning, and G-d remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. G-d saw the Children of Israel, and G-d knew." (Artscroll Saperstein translation)

G-d's "remembering" sets the tone for the next 27 verses, from Exodus 3:1 to 4:5. Four times G-d uses the same epitaph for Himself: The G-d of Abraham, the G-d of Isaac, and the G-d of Jacob. In 3:6, G-d says, "I am the G-d of your father, the G-d of Abraham, the G-d of Isaac, and the G-d of Jacob".

Does Moshe get it? When quoting G-d in 3:13, he simply says, "the G-d of your forefathers".

Perhaps not. G-d repeats the epitaph three more times: In 3:15, "So shall you say to the Children of Israel, "Ha-Shem the G-d of your forefathers, the G-d of Abraham, the G-d of Isaac and the G-d of Jacob has dispatched me to you."; in 3:16, "Go and gather the elders of Israel and say to them, 'Ha-Shem, the G-d of your forefathers, has appeared to me, the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."; and finally in 4:5, "So that they shall believe that Ha-Shem, the G-d of their forefathers, appeared to you, the G-d of Abraham, the G-d of Isaac, and the G-d of Jacob."

We take this phrase rather lightly-after all it is the opening phrase in the traditional Amidah. It is a phrase we all know so well. What if Moshe is hearing this phrase for the first time? In that context, it is revolutionary.

When Moshe killed the Egyptian, he acted as a kinsman defending a family member. Immediately afterwards, when threatened with exposure by Israelites, Moshe's faith in his family, one would suppose, was deeply shaken. We, on the other hand, are not the least bit baffled. After all, we have just finished reading a book of Torah full of family conflict, and brothers plotting against each other and, selling each other, murdering each other.

What Moshe need to learn was that his connection with these oppressed people he called kinsmen was more than "just blood". Israel came to Egypt with 70 souls, but there, even in the oppression, grew into a nation. Not just a nation, but a nation bound together by a commanding G-d, the G-d of the patriarchs.

Our Jewish identities, Moshe's Jewish identity (although it is anachronistic to refer to his identity at that time as "Jewish" per se), depends on a bundle of values. As a group, as a people, as a nation, as a faith, much of Jewish intellectual history over the past 1000 years has been negotiating (or fighting) over what those bundles of values are, and how those bundles impact our collective sense of group boundaries.

We in the United States often forget, or purposefully forget because we are uncomfortable, the other part of the recurrent epitaph in this chapter. Not only is our G-d the G-d of Abraham, the G-d of Isaac, and the G-d of Jacob, but that G-d repeatedly promise to bring the people up to a land that is "a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and hone, to the place of the Canaanite, the Hivvite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hittite, and the Jebusite." (3:8, and repeated with variation in 3:17).

A nation needs a place. A family needs a home. A faith needs expression. Moshe acted out of family impulse. We often are called to declare our Jewish self by a claim on our family. That isn't enough. How often do we argue about what it means to be a Jew, besides asking whether something is good for the Jews or not.

If we weren't called to bring the transcendent into the world, would we really, over time, care? No matter how we avoid it, we demand for ourselves that being Jewish bears some content, some purposefulness.

Perhaps Moshe models how slowly understanding dawns on us. G-d insists that Moshe recognize his connection to G-d through the patriarchs. It is to the patriarchs and their descendants that the land promised. As Moshe slowly will weld us into both a nation and a faith, that promise will be fulfilled. To get to the land, we need all three elements: family, faith, nation. Each intensifies and gives meaning to the other. Without each one element, the other two would not be enough.

Paradoxically, the promise is both conditional and unconditional. G-d's love is unconditional, and the love is expressed by G-d's promise of the land. Our possession of the land however is conditional. We have to love G-d too. Not just behave ourselves, but deeply, unambiguously love Him.

We try to do that. We don't always succeed. The truth be told, we rarely succeed. We must nonetheless strive to bring the transcendent One into our personal lives, our family lives, our tribal lives, our faith lives, and, yes, our national lives. When Moshe tries to get off the hook, when he proclaims to G-d both his inability and unworthiness to serve, G-d will not stand for Moshe's equivocation. In some odd way, perhaps it was Moshe's protestations that endeared him to G-d.

So which do we choose? Moshe's protestations? His humility? Or better yet, his love. G-d loves us, we are taught, with a great love: if we could return the favor just a bit, perhaps our personal lives, our national lives, would be a bit more settled. But we shouldn't count on it. After all, Moshe still has the rest of Shemot, and three books after that, to try and knock us into shape.

May the Holy One, Blessed be He, grant a perfect peace to our beloved Eretz Israel.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dennis