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Parsha by Gura

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Exodus 6:2-9:35 3rd of Shevat, 5761

Now, finally, the Jewish people, the potential Am Israel, is being formed. Commissioned by G-d to lead these slaves out of Egypt, Moshe has found previously that they just won't pay attention. Neither will Pharaoh.

For whom does this four part drama of the plagues unfold: Moshe, Pharaoh, the Egyptians? Or perhaps the real audience, the passive viewers of this play, are the Israelites themselves.

The dramatic structure is truly exciting. In this parsha, we are presented with seven of the ten plagues. As Nahum Sarna points out, citing Ziony Zevit, the first nine plagues are grouped into three groups of three.

In the first of each set of three, G-d tells Moses to go to Pharaoh in the mornings, and station himself before Pharaoh, and warn him of the impending plague. In the second of each set, G-d instructs Moshe to "come in before Pharaoh", that is, to enter the palace, and forewarn him. In the third, the plague occurs, unannounced.

During all these events, the slaves Moshe was to lead out of the Egypt and into the land promised to their forefathers were not only passive, but simply not on stage. They've no role, neither to protest, nor to gloat, or nor even to moan.

They have been introduced in an extensive genealogy that emphasizes the prominent social role and status of Aaron and his descendants immediately before Moshe confronts Pharaoh about the first plague. But then they are off stage, waiting to re-appear and finally to do something come the tenth plague (when they dip hyssop into lamb's blood and mark the doors of their homes).

One could argue that, for the narrative effect, marching the will-be Israelite nation or their representatives other than Moshe and Aaron on and off stage would disrupt a well-crafted, powerful drama. In each plague, G-d instructs Moshe, Moshe follows out the instructions, the plague occurs, Pharaoh and Moshe confront each other, Pharaoh promises to meet Moshe's demands, Moshe rescinds the plague, and Pharaoh recants. The structure is tight, the drama palpable. So, where are the Israelites?

And why don't we use this text directly for our Haggadah come Pesach?

There may be traditional answers to these questions of which I am not aware, but I think an argument could be made that the two questions are tied together. The flippant answer to the second is that it is too long. The seder is long enough, and demanding enough as it is, and the last thing any of us want is more stuff to read, especially with cranky kids or recalcitrant relatives more interested in the chicken soup than the text. A more traditional answer would concern this text itself: our Haggadah emphasizes G-d's direct and miraculous role in the liberation from Egypt. Moshe is part of the Haggadah at best in passing, so that we may emphasize the might of neither men nor angels but only the might of the L-rd.

We are also instructed to put ourselves into the story: We are the Israelites, suffering in slavery and marching into the great adventure of Sinai. The absent actors in this parsha are the active players in that seder.

So, why aren't the Israelites a part of the Torah text in this parsha? Because they weren't yet Israelites. They had clans, tribes, ancestors, some vague sense of a covenantal relationship though their ancestors with G-d. But they did not have a national identity, nor an understanding of their physical place.

This parsha is, according to Yezekiel Kaufman, "the beginning of the monotheistic revolution in Israel.The Torah literature testifies that this battle took place, not only before the formation of Torah literature itself. That no story of a battle with paganism is recorded before the age of Moses suggest a terminus a quo. Only with Moses does the contrast between the faith of YH-VH and paganism appear. The struggle with paganism began with Moses." (Quoted in The Torah: A Modern Commentary by W. Gunther Plaut)

Before Exodus, we had a tribal and family relationship with G-d. But, collectively, it was uncertain and unsettled. The unfolding drama in Egypt is not just for Pharaoh: It is for us, to cement our personal, collective and national relationship with G-d. We remain all too often unconvinced of that relationship, and that lack of conviction echoes throughout Jewish history. Clearly our national sense of self is tied to our commitment to monotheism. An issue hinted at in this parsha, when the Israelites are so passive, is how to find the balance between our three different components of identity: tribe, nation and faith.

Perhaps this suggests a way to deal with one of the paradoxes of Jewish life in the last century. Our collective relationship with Israel and Zionism, especially for American Jewry, is complicated and unsettled. The Jewish settlers of Eretz Israel from the 1880's to the 1920's were for the most part considered loonies, admirable loonies perhaps, but loony nonetheless. If one was going to leave Eastern Europe, at least make your way west: France, England, die goldeneh medinah.

All though that time, Jews were off the world stage as a national presence. We acted in history certainly: leaders of revolution, finance, reconstruction in a host of countries. Not as Jews as such, but as local nationalists, socialists, capitalists. We burst out the medieval Eastern European oppression onto to the world stage in the sciences, arts, business, but not as Jews, but as something or someone else.

All the while we were acted upon by history, and often in the most horrendous manner. As a group, we did not act in history. We could not act, for our sense of self was broken and incomplete. We needed our faith; we needed our tribe; we also needed our nation.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Israel is endlessly at center stage in the world. It is not just we Jews who endless examine each Israeli political player, at each turn of the programmatic screw, but the world-wide press. I would imagine that only the US elections are covered by the world media with the scrutiny delivered to the Israeli elections.

We've become Israelites and have a national sense. We read ourselves back into the text, back into history. Sometimes we are perhaps nostalgic for the days when we were out of history. The Israelites do not show up in this week's parsha: they are absent, passive, and victimized. That is the price of "being out of history", of being out of the text. The nation is nascent, as the genealogies mentioned before come to teach: but the nation is born though the crucible of action, and faith, and the acts of G-d.

Once the nation is born, it can be lead to the land promised. We are not there yet in this story, but we know that that story will come.

Meanwhile, we wait the end of the story, the time of perfect redemption. May that time come quickly and in our days, and grant a perfect peace to Eretz Israel.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dennis