Shabbat Shemot

Written by Alasdair Nisbet, Chairman of the Development Board Friday, 16 January 2009

The parashat Shemot, meaning Names, represents a change of gear in the Torah story.  Joseph got us, the Hebrew people to Egypt, it is now time for Moses, with God's help, to get us out.  Like many modern biographies, the story of Moses begins, in Shemot, by describing some key events in his early years up to his first meeting with Pharaoh that helped to shape the great leader.  These include: being  left floating in the Nile, found by Pharaoh's daughter and given a royal education, demonstration of his compassion for his people but overstepping the mark by killing an Egyptian, running away, meeting his wife and ultimately having a vision that was to define the rest of his life. In it God told him:

"“I have marked well the plight of My people in Egypt and have heeded their outcry because of their taskmasters.... I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey..." and you Moses will be my agent for doing this." (Ex: 3:7-8)

This parashah also has a description, or in fact a number of descriptions, of God:

First, the famous Tetragrammaton: derived from “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” (Ex 3:14) that can be translated variously into English as "I am that I am" or "I am that is who I am" or "I will be what I will be" the first person singular of  hyh, to be, that is in the third person singular  hwhy.  This is the Ineffable Name uttered by the High Priest on Yom Kippur.  It is now converted to Adonai, which in English translation becomes Eternal, or Everpresent.  These names hint at the majesty of the transcendent God, the great creator of the world that is beyond time and space,  that resides in the heavens above.

It is interesting that the next parashah begins by stating that this God is different to the Patriarchs' God: "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name hwhy"  (Ex 6:2)

But in our parashah God goes on to say: “Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you."  (Ex 3:15) For us today this is a much more personal, or imminant, view of God that we pray to every day in the Amidah reminding of our lineage to the Patriarchs who were looked upon favorably by God (zecut avot).

This is a profound truth about the Divine Nature that God is both Creator and Friend, transcendent and imminant, existing beyond time and space, known differently to different peoples, compassionate and yet judgmental. I want to hold onto this vision as, like the Torah, I believe that "it is a tree of life to all who grasp it and those who hold fast to it are happy.  Its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace."

Shabbat Shalom