Moses tells Pharaoh that when he and his people leave Egypt even all his flock and cattle must leave with them, “For we shall not know how we are to worship Hashem TILL WE GET THERE (10:26).” Our Chasidic masters proclaim that this teaches us an important lesson for our spiritual growth. They suggest that when it comes to the worship of G-d, one should not expect to find ready-made formulas. True worship of G-d requires ever-new wonder and discovery through painful trial and error, ever-new decisions and leaps of faith. Rav Chaim of Tzanz tells a story that he asked one of his students, “Tell me if you happen to come across a wallet full of money on Shabbat, what would you do, would you pick it up?” “Of course not, the Rebbe responded.` “Fool!” And the next student said, “Of course I would pick it up.” ‘Sinner’, said the Rebbe. The third student after hearing the master rebuking the first two students replied hesitantly: “Well I do not know. At finding the wallet full of money, I would struggle with myself in deciding whether or not to take it. I hope I would be able to make the right decision.” “At last we have the right answer,” said Reb Chaim. “Truly we shall not know how we are to worship the Lord until we get there.”
Another poignant lesson in worship is taught in relation to the plague of ‘Darkness.’ It was “A darkness so thick that they did not see one another (10:21).” The obvious question is raised about the nature of this plague, why was it called a plague in the first place? After all, the Egyptians could have lit lamps and been able to see despite the darkness. Isn’t that what they did every night when it got dark? Our Sages explain that the darkness from which the Egyptians suffered was a special kind of darkness. It was not a darkness that affected the eyes; it was a darkness that affected the heart. Physically they were able to see, but they did not feel for each other, they did not care for one another. This is what the Torah means when it says, “They did not see one another.” They were blind to each other’s needs. Each person saw only him or herself. And this is a terrible plague. Judaism expects of us that we shall “see” and hear each person as a human being who has needs, feelings, fears, hungers, hopes, just as we do; who is a child of G-d just as we are; who is fully entitled to be treated with the dignity, justice, and compassion we claim for ourselves. This is the essence and the prime teaching of our tradition, and the hope for our world!
Thus, Judaism teaches us how to behave ethically and uplift our world, but it also teaches us about the nature of the world, its inevitable changes, its contradictions, and how we are to proceed with all its complexity, utilizing our faith as the Life force that guides us to maturity.
Maturity in the human psyche means an increased capacity to hold opposite ideas at the same time and to be open to uncertainty. (To keep moving forward ‘Till we get there”). Faith emerges from patient reflection, and in the process we must be able to endure some uncertainty. If we only hold a single idea (Sheker) we only see the world through a narrow lens. A great tension may arise when we see the world moving in a direction that is contrary to our previous beliefs. At this point we may have to be able to see the world differently and hold some contradictory ideas or competing perceptions at the same time (Emet). We have to learn as Moshe did to be open, to be ‘present’ in the midst of potential conflicting ideas and challenges. There is a danger of being unable to bear this creative tension and opt to obviate the opportunity to experience ‘the new’ that emerges; there is the temptation, because of the tension, to close off ‘to the new’ and hold on rigidly to something familiar and secure. This attempt to reduce the tension instead of recognizing that change is inevitably occurring, and renewal is necessarily emerging is inimical to the life force, to the ability to grow. We must be able to keep going “Till we get there.”
We must be open to ‘turn aside’ to discover the burning bush. We must be courageous to leave the secure place in the Palace to trek in the desert and discover the ‘new;’ to miraculously experience that G-d is in every place if we are centered enough to open our eyes and hearts and embrace the Light that is always there waiting for us. This calls for risk taking and the knowledge that creativity comes through a new way of seeing that is very different from the habitual pattern that closes off the new that is waiting to be born.
Amidst all these inevitable uncertainties our true calling can emerge. Our fearful (ego) self may feel that we cannot continue with this apparent chaos. But, the deeper Soul is not defeated by the confusion that raises its head. Our faith carries us forward. We know why we have been created, and what we are intended to live for. The life of Emunah (faith even with uncertainty) aligns us with the path of true meaning. We understand that we can not only endure the tensions of life but we have the capacity, the gift and the responsibility to contribute to the healing and renewal of our world.
We must be able to trust and know that we will ‘get to the place where we are meant to be,’ and we must always be open to the Light within the darkness. The Light within our hearts will see clearly the Light within each of us created in the image of G-d. May you have a blessed, enlightened Shabbat!
Lighting the Plague of Darkness
By Rabbi Tiferet Berenbaum
Parashat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16) –
“Turn it and turn it for everything is in it,” we read in Pirkei Avot 5:22—“it” being the Torah. Elsewhere in Pirkei Avot we read, “Torah k’neged kulam,” Torah is relevant to everything. These verses are often cited when we are searching for a connection between our current realities and the Torah text. This week’s parasha, however, requires no such justification.
Parashat Bo describes the final three plagues that God wrought on the Egyptian government and its people—plagues of locust, darkness and the death of the firstborn. With the intensity of climate change over the past decade, we have seen a number of headlines that could have been taken straight from these chapters. Yet, nothing has rivaled these past two years of the pandemic. The plague of Covid-19 has touched all of our “tents” in some way, and the new Delta and Omicron variants continue to plague our communities.
In the Torah, the Egyptian people suffered eight plagues before they encountered the plague of darkness:
People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; (Exodus 10:22-23).
Reading these verses today, we are reminded of the lockdowns and social distancing of recent years, and the “darkness” that many have experienced as a result. The Egyptians only had to lockdown for three (or some say seven) days. As we enter the third year of this enduring pandemic, the “descending darkness” calls out from the text to be explored.
Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla, a 13th Century Spanish Kabbalist, wrote:
Deep in the depths there are many kinds of pits and deep holes that are endlessly deep called “sectors of Gehinnom.” There, much destruction and misfortune can be found and because of the depth, the pits are completely dark. They are always dark and despondent places and as such are called “laila” (night) because there is no light, rather it is a place of perpetual darkness.
This description is reminiscent of the language of depression. Many people experience Seasonal Affective Disorder, a form of depression that comes with the darkness of winter, and those people pass through the dark places only temporarily. Others experience depression in the ways described by Gikatilla, as pit of “perpetual darkness.” But, having experienced the pandemic for almost two years (whereas Rashi said the ten plagues took only ten months!), the varying levels of depressive darkness that the Egyptians may have experienced as result of the persistent plagues is understandable and, unfortunately, relatable as well.
But there is always hope. The Talmud (Brachot 5b) tells the story of Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba, who was sick, and Rabbi Yochanan, who came to visit him. Rabbi Yochanan asked, “Are your sufferings desirable?” To which Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba replied, “I welcome neither they nor their reward.” Rabbi Yochanan then reached out his hand and lifted his friend up. Later, Rabbi Yochanan himself fell ill and Rabbi Hanina came to visit him. Rabbi Hanina asked, “Are your sufferings desirable?” To which Rabbi Yochanan replied, “I welcome neither they nor their reward.” Rabbi Hanina then reached out his hand and lifted Rabbi Yochanan up.
The Gemara wonders why Rabbi Yochanan, who was able to lift someone else up from their illness, was unable to lift himself out of his own illness. The answer: “A prisoner cannot free themselves from prison” (Talmud, Brachot 5b). We need to lift each other up and to allow ourselves to be lifted. On the plague of darkness, the verse continues, “But the Israelites had light in their dwellings.” (Exodus 10:23) This light serves as a key, a release from prison, a tool for uplift. The Torah reminds us that even in the darkest dark, we always have some light within.
As we continue through the dark months of winter, it is critical for us to guard the light, the joy, burning within ourselves so that we can share it with others and help drive out some of the darkness. Let us remember that the days are getting longer, and commit to finding ways to reach out and lift up others and light up one another’s lives. Check on your friends, a short call or text to share some light. Especially, let us check on the “Rabbi Yochanans” in our circles, those helpers, healers, and happy ones whom we might assume are doing “okay.” We never know who might need our hand until we reach it out.
Rabbi Dahlia Shaham
Rabbis for Human Rights
Dvar Torah on “Bo” – Come as You Are
The weekly Torah portion of “Bo” (literally: come) is particularly difficult for those of us who uphold a humanistic worldview. At the heart of the eternal universal story of liberation and exodus, lies a painful story of collective indiscriminate punishment – the 10 plagues, reaching their peak in this week’s portion with the last three, which are the deadliest:
Locusts, turning everyone hungry, with no one to feed them; Darkness, turning everyone blind, with no one to see or guide them;And the death of first-born children, turning everyone bereaved, with no one to console them. Everyone – except the people of Israel.
The people of Israel did not experience hunger, since the plagues of livestock pestilence and hail skipped the land of Goshen, where they resided (Exodus, ch. 9), and the locusts have devoured all the fields and plants, but not the wild grazing grounds on which this people of shepherds rely.While darkness paralyzed the entire land of Egypt, “all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings” (Exodus 10: 23). And as for the first-borns – we all know the story.
The reason we all know the story is that “Bo” commands us to remember. This is the portion in which the Torah turns from myth to law. Up until this portion, only 3 Mitzvot (commandments) are mentioned. In this portion alone, along with the painful descriptions of the plague, we are given no less than 20 different commandments, all of which direct the Israelites to differentiate themselves (ourselves…) from all other peoples – by preserving an independent count of months and years, by observing the rituals of Passover and especially by remembering and passing on the story from generation to generation:
“You shall observe this as Law, for you and for your descendants, for all time.” (Exodus 12:24)
It is not a coincidence that this is one of the only Torah portions (a total of 7) that opens with an imperative verb, a command: “Bo” means Come. In this respect it is preceded only by “Lech Lecha” (which means Go) – the portion that brings us the first commandment that distinguishes our nation from others: circumcision.
Avram is commanded to “Go” on a personal, independent, lonely open-ended path of self-seeking. Moses, however, is commanded to “Come” along a collective, detailed predetermined path:“Come to Pharaoh. For I have made heavy his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display My signs among them” (Exodus 10:1).Moses is called to witness the actions of God and the horrible cost of the folly of Pharaoh and his people.
The word “Folly” here is imbued with meaning. Pharaoh is the prototype of leaders that historian Barbara Tuchman explores in her famous book “The March of Folly” (1984), in which she defined “Folly” as persistent policy pursued by strong leaders who, driven by an inexplicable self-destructive force, choose to sacrifice their people and their country rather than acknowledge an evident truth. 2000 years earlier, our sages used similar language to explain Pharaoh’s condition. They quote King Solomon’s Proverbs (27:3), “A stone has weight, sand is heavy, but a fool’s vexation outweighs them both.”
They then explain that while the people of Israel are like sand and stone, Pharaoh, with his heavy heart, is the ultimate fool. (Shemot Rabbah, 13:1) Such interpretation serves to strengthen the separatist approach, distinguishing between “us” – Israel, redeemed and pure – and “them” – Egypt oppressive and foolish. This approach may have served us over generations of discrimination and homelessness. But reading this portion in our days, at the dwellings of Israelites, at the land of Judea, the apparent lines distinguishing between Israelites and Pharaoh are no longer clear.
The Israelites are not in Goshen anymore, no longer landless shepherds, but also landlords, turning soil into profit, racing to climb up social pyramids of dispossession and exploitation. The Israelites are no longer immersed in light, we choose darkness, closing our eyes and hearts to the agonies and desires of others with whom we share the same land, water and air.
The plague of first-borns has not passed over us. The condition in which “there was no house where there was not someone dead” (Exodus 12:30) is ongoing in our perception. Every year, every cycle of violence, we count and name our dead, and ignore those of our neighbors. And we also share the folly. Especially in these times, when we are facing the same dangerous plague, painfully aware of how land and air connect us all. As long as we perceive ourselves as separate from our neighbors, as rulers over other peoples – we draw nearer and nearer to Pharaoh’s state of mind.
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, in the Zohar asks: Why does the Torah say “come to Pharoah”, it should have been “Go to Pharaoh”, why say “come”?
And Rabbi Ashlag interprets: “The difference between come and go, is that come means that we go together, as one says to a friend: ‘come’.”
Let us come, as friends, make use of this ancient memory and our great story of liberation, not as a window overlooking a distant past, but as a mirror reflecting the present. Come look at reality together, even if it hurts, and help each other out of this March of Folly, holding strong, yet compassionate hands.
Taking Notice in Our Time
Renewal is possible at every moment.
BY RABBI SHAUL D JUDELMAN
The original Jewish geography, according to our mystical tradition, has three components–Place, Time and Soul (Olam, Shana and Nefesh). These are the basic dimensions in which we exist and interact with our world.
Environmental thought often dwells in the realm of place, as clearly the physical world has inherent ecological import. Therefore, when we read the Torah for its environmental wisdom, we usually look for passages relating to land or material goods.
In the Torah portion Bo, however, our attention turns to time: “This month will be to you the head of the months (Exodus 12:2).” An exploration of this unique mitzvah can reveal profound insights into the Jewish nature of time, and unlock the secret of how the realm of time is also of deep environmental significance.
The First Mitzvah
The commandment to mark the month of Nisan is the very first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a whole. While still in Egypt the people are commanded to note the month so that they may prepare to observe the first Passover at the time of the Exodus.
This mitzvah is so significant that Rashi‘s first question on the entire Torah (Genesis 1:1) is: If the Torah is the book of the Jewish people’s Divine Law, why doesn’t it start with Parashat Bo? We know that it does not; we go through the whole process of the book of Genesis before arriving to this place of mitzvah. But what is so crucial about the awareness of the new month that it holds the significance of being the Torah’s first mitzvah?
Conceptions of Time
In some of the environmental movement’s writings on religion, what has been called the “Judeo-Christian” conception of time as a linear progression comes under attack. In such a view, history moves towards a culmination of God’s plan–the attainment of an ultimate, eternal good, far beyond that which is accessible in this world. Herein, we find our “end.”
The conception of time as cyclical is considered primitive, oblivious to the reality of a final, heavenly Truth. One of the tasks of Jewish environmentalism is to grapple with this version of religious belief and question whether Judaism really sees time and nature this way.
We are free to view time as an unstoppable vector moving towards a pre-determined end. But what are we to make of the events and processes along the way? Are they really just means to an end? Certainly not.
Subtle changes of weather, daylight, and flora signify complex changes in time. When we pay attention to our actual experience of these changes, we find a dynamic source of connection with our Creator. Far from being conceived as purely linear, our Jewish calendar reflects the cyclical nature of the year with a precise system of holidays and observances connected to each moment and season.
The Jewish Calendar
The beginning of our year, as proclaimed in the first commandment in Parashat Bo, is the linchpin of that connection. The Torah calls Passover “Hag haAviv,” the holiday of the spring, and the Talmudic prescription of the Jewish leap year, implanting an extra month in the year, is done in order that Passover will indeed always occur in the spring.
This is a dramatic statement of environmental consequence. The Sages could have declared a purely astronomical, lunar-based calendar, but based on the Torah’s prescription, they took steps to ensure that the calendar also reflects the cycles of nature. This demonstrates Judaism’s deep awareness of the Divine character of nature’s processes.
The confluence of redemption and springtime is no coincidence. Everyone is aware of the tremendous energy of renewal that occurs in the springtime. The rebirth of flowers and greenery, the new life in the fields–these are all symbols of our redemption. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyadi in a teaching about Passover mentions an anthropocentric view that the renewal of spring actually stems from the redemption of the Jewish people.
The truth, he teaches, is that there is no such primacy or causality–the Divine energy that brings forth the birth of spring in nature is the exact same energy that brought about the redemption of our people in Egypt. And it is precisely the return of spring each year that inspires our personal redemption with each Passover.
Months and Years
The word we receive with the commandment of time is chodesh–month, or more literally, newness. It is extremely instructive that our word for this basic time unit implies renewal and revelation, as opposed to a continuation of the status quo. Even the word for year, shana, is connected to the word for change, shinui.
Although we do view history as a march towards an ultimate Redemption, we are reminded–on Passover, on Rosh Hodesh, on Shabbat , and with the rising of the sun each day–that the renewal possible at every moment is of as much significance as the final goal. As we experience the changes of time, we should be changing and adapting along with them. And as we grow, we cannot afford to ignore the natural world, or to act in ways that suppress or spoil the inherent wisdom of God’s Creation.
Finding the revelation of God through time happens when we connect with the Divinity of natural changes. I was once a Shabbat guest in a very well-to-do synagogue. Many of the people there wore fine watches on their wrists. But as the third meal of Shabbat winded down, the Rabbi walked outside, looked up at the sky to count the three stars that mark the end of Shabbat, and only then gave the call for the evening prayer.
There is something beautiful in how our tradition’s attention to the natural cycles still impacts us today, how our Jewish practice brings us out of doors to find our connection with God. Rabbi Menachem Frumin of the Israeli town of Tekoa once asked, “How can Jews, who are commanded to develop Yirat Shamayim (fear of Heaven), live in a place where they can’t even see the Shamayim(skies)?”
The commandment of Rosh Chodesh teaches us to continually m’chadesh, renew, our perspectives and relationships, and to embrace chiddush, innovation, as a fundamental value of Jewish being. Our belief in time as a source of newness and opportunity is one of the deep tenets of Judaism that allows for a modern ethos of change like environmentalism to take root in the daily life of Jewish people.
Such an awareness can empower us to make the radical changes that sustainable lifestyles demand. Realizing that Jewish theology does not write off the revelation happening within the cycles of time, we are encouraged to engage and celebrate the changing nature of this world and to find profound and simple ways for us as Jews to serve God and live responsibly.
Provided by Canfei Nesharim, providing Torah wisdom about the importance of protecting our environment.
Zakhor—Remember this day, on which you went free from Egypt, from the house of bondage, for with a mighty hand Adonai brought you forth from this . . . (Exod. 13:3).
The Exodus from Egypt is the first of several things the Torah commands us to remember (zakhor). What does it mean to remember, and how do we accomplish it?
In addition to the specific ritual aides-mémoire provided in the text itself (such as the observance of Passover [e.g. Exod. 12:14 ff.] and the wearing of tefillin [Exod. 13:9 ff.]), many authorities inferred from the zakhor command an obligation to mention the Exodus out loud, every day. Because of this, the tradition developed of reciting a list of the various things the Torah commands us to remember at the conclusion of the morning prayers. The most common version, known as the Shesh Zekhirot (“Six Remembrances”), contains:
the Exodus from Egypt (citing Deut. 16:3)
standing at Sinai (Deut. 4:9-10)
the incident with Amalek (Deut. 25:17–19)
the Golden Calf (Deut. 9:7)
when Miriam was punished for speaking ill of Moses (Deut. 24:9)
Shabbat (Exod. 20:8)
With all due wariness about the dangers of reductionism, the list itself is a pretty compelling curriculum for basic Jewish literacy, comprising core components of Jewish narrative and identity.
But beyond the specifics of what we are to remember, the very notion of remembering as a religious obligation—and a spiritual, intellectual, and ethical practice—is itself unusual, even extraordinary.
On the most obvious level, we’re commanded to remember because we human beings tend to forget. Of course we forget trivialities (where did I put my keys?), and that can be frustrating. But we also forget essential things—our values, our place in the world, our humility or our nobility, our identities, our mission—and that can be devastating. Especially when we’re angry or frightened, or distracted or manipulated, we can easily fall prey to becoming, in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words, “a messenger who forgot the message.” So a daily spiritual practice of calling to mind some of the key elements of our identity and purpose (mostly through narratives, which are easier to remember) makes sense.
But the command to remember—and the practice of the “Six Remembrances”—isn’t only about the danger of forgetting. It’s about a religious obligation to consciously shape our consciousness.
In its broadest sense, the Exodus reminds us that change is possible; both individually and societally, who we were yesterday need not dictate who we are today. But that freedom to change and evolve doesn’t come automatically. It’s hard-won, demanding constant internal vigilance and work.
We know that we don’t wake each morning as blank slates, objectively experiencing a brand-new world, entirely free to choose who and how to be today, or what to think and believe. Among the most powerful things that dictate our current reality is our past experience—our memories. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, the way we perceive and respond to the present is always filtered through and shaped by the past. We see what is through our memories of what was.
But it turns out that the influence goes both ways. Current cognitive research reveals that human memory is fluid and continually evolving. A memory isn’t like a document we pull up on our computer screen and close again, unchanged. Rather, every time we evoke a memory, we change it. Thus, our memories not only shape our current experience, they are also shaped by our current experience, in a continuous feedback loop.
The Torah and Jewish tradition have long intuited this, understanding that memory is different from history. Jewish memory makes no claim to consistency, completeness, or objectivity. It is brazenly and proudly subjective, selective, and ever evolving. For us, memory is an active process of shaping the past to create a meaningful present and a more hopeful future, the practice of reciting “Six Remembrances” being a prime example. History is right or wrong, true or false. Memory is alive or dead, contiguous or broken, meaningful or empty, helpful or destructive.
Perhaps then, the fact that the first command to remember relates to the Exodus from Egypt is no mere accident of narrative chronology. Remembering is part and parcel of the Exodus, because active remembering—consciously shaping our consciousness—is essential to freedom.
The internal feedback loop of past and present tends to be self-confirming and self-reinforcing. So, when we allow it to proceed unconsciously and undirected, our worldview can get stuck in a self-reinforcing pattern, with no real learning. Any false inferences we’ve drawn, untruths we’ve come to believe, distortions in our perceptions of self and other, will go unchallenged. As a result, we will continue to see only what we already believe, without even being aware of it, and we will be in “Egypt.”
That’s why propaganda has been a tool of enslavement by Pharaohs in every generation, the Russian effort to shape Americans’ opinions through deceptive social media posts being a recent example. Merely learning that “information” we once read and believed was falsehood, calculated to enflame our fear and anger, is insufficient to alleviate the impact of those falsehoods. Without consciously, intentionally, confronting how those falsehoods have impacted our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, they will continue to shape how we process new information, and reinforce themselves in our consciousness.
It takes particular effort to remember that we have the freedom—and therefore the responsibility—to choose what we allow to take root and remain in our memories. (Of course this freedom is not absolute; our consciousness and memory are influenced by physiological and psychological factors outside of our control. The religious obligation is therefore limited to shaping our consciousness to the extent we are able.)
That’s what the zakhor command, and the “Six Remembrances,” are all about: intentionally calling to mind certain values, practices, commitments, and warnings in order to consciously shape our consciousness, our responses, and our actions. Each item on the list is worthy of examination in its own right, but topping the list: remember the Exodus from Egypt.
Evoking that memory daily does far more than strengthen our identity as Jews. It reminds us to greet the day with gratitude and hope. It prepares our hearts and minds to empathize with the vulnerable, to value equality, freedom, and justice, and to experience pain and anger when those values are violated. It primes our consciousness to see opportunities for action and change in the world around us and within ourselves, rather than seeing inevitability and impossibility.
Most importantly, remembering the Exodus from Egypt is a daily reminder to fully embrace freedom of conscience and consciousness. It’s a reminder that we have an ethical and spiritual obligation to choose our inner reality, which will in turn shape our outward behavior and ultimately our world. “Remember”—not to allow your values, your desires and needs, your attitudes, your emotions, your reactions, to be enslaved to popular culture and societal norms; instead, deliberately shape them yourself. “Remember”—not to allow yourself to be a slave even to your own past; instead, deliberately shape your memories yourself—“re-member” them, putting the pieces together in a new, healthier way.
Memory can be a very strict taskmaster or the instrument of our redemption; it can keep us stuck or propel us forward, enslave or free us. We have to choose. It takes vigilance and discipline to revise our mental maps to accord with current reality, rather than contorting reality to conform to our mental maps. But only by doing so can we be truly free. And it is all too easy to accept as inevitable whatever worldview the Pharaohs of our world are currently peddling—it requires only forgetting. But insisting on our own values, persisting in our vision of what the world could and should be, demands courage, imagination, and a good memory.
Zakhor. Remember.
The following excellent books have influenced this commentary: Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything; Yehuda Kurtzer, Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past; Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory; and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory.
Animal characters in Hebrew Bible are never random. The authors know their biology. And they know their ecology. And they assume that you do too. So if you know how an animal lives, then you can understand its role in a story, and you can deeply receive the story’s spiritual message.
Today’s animal is…the grasshopper. A strong supporting character throughout Hebrew Bible.
ISAIAH INVOKES GRASSHOPPERS…ALSO KNOWN AS LOCUSTS
The Prophet Isaiah says, “Don’t you get it? God dwells above the circle of the earth, and those who dwell on earth are like grasshoppers” (Isaiah 40: 21-22).
From the human perspective, grasshoppers are really small. About the size of an adult’s thumb. From this human perspective, Isaiah reminds us that God is infinitely creative, powerful, everlasting, energetic, and wise – while we are only kinda sorta a little bit creative and wise, with a little bit of power and a little bit of energy.
But from the grasshopper’s perspective, a grasshopper is not small at all. It’s just the right size. The right size to inspect grassy grains, to see how plants grow, and decide what to eat. And the right size to launch a leap with a height 10x the grasshopper’s length…and a distance 20x the grasshopper’s length. The grasshopper is just the right size to vault up…and catch a glimpse of heaven as it travels. Isaiah wants us to know that we may be small, but we can glimpse the infinity of God. Just like the grasshopper!
GRASSHOPPERS CARRY SPARKS OF DIVINITY
Isaiah’s poetic Hebrew gives us two hints of the grasshopper’s spirituality. Two hints that the grasshopper holds a little spark of the essence of God. Isaiah uses the same word to talk about how God lives, and how the grasshopper lives. God yoshev, dwells, above the earth, and the grasshopper is among the earth’s in-dwellers, yoshveiha. Both God and the grasshopper “dwell.”
Isaiah also draws a connection between where God lives and the word for “grasshopper.” God dwells above the chug, the circle, of planet earth, and earth-dwellers are like chagavim, the grasshoppers. Can you hear the alliteration? Yoshev, yoshveiha; Chug, chagavim. A grasshopper may look small to us, but God’s life and the grasshopper’s life are connected.
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE GRASSHOPPERS
Isaiah presses this message because misunderstanding a grasshopper’s power can have terrible consequences. As it does in this story from the Book of Numbers (Num. 13:1-14:39). The Israelites are camped in the wilderness, somewhere between Egypt and Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey. God says to Moses, “Get yourself twelve scouts. Twelve distinguished people with good leadership qualities. Send them to scout out this land of Canaan where you’ll be living. You can hear straight from them what kind of a land it is.”
Moses appoints the scouts, and sends them out. Forty days later, the scouts come back. They report to Moses in front of all the people. They say: “This is indeed a land flowing with milk and honey. Just look at these grapes and pomegranates and figs we brought back! They’re gigantic! But so are the people. Next to them, we looked to ourselves like grasshoppers.”
As soon as the people hear the word “grasshoppers,” they start yelling and crying. They become terrified. They rail against Moses and Aaron. “Why did God bring us to the wilderness just to kill us!?! We might as well die right here and now!”
And God says, “You know, you’re right. You are not ready to enter the land. You’ll get your wish to die in the wilderness. When the next generation grows up, they’ll have the opportunity to enter the land flowing with milk and honey.”
WHEN GRASSHOPPERS BECOME LOCUSTS
Why do the people become afraid as soon as they hear “we looked to ourselves like grasshoppers”? Because they are thinking only of how small the grasshopper’s body is. They’ve forgotten about the grasshopper’s extraordinary jump, and the glimpses it gets of heaven every time it jumps.
And they’ve forgotten one more important thing about grasshoppers. They’ve forgotten about grasshopper transformation. When a big group of grasshoppers get together, their bodies and their minds change. They become migratory locusts.
For years, modern biologists tried to identify the baby form of a migratory locust. But they couldn’t find any babies – until entomologist Boris Uvarov figured it out in the early 20th century. When desert drought gets extreme, and only a few tiny patches of moist grass can be found, grasshoppers congregate there. When the area gets so crowded that the grasshoppers can’t move without rubbing up against one another, their brain chemistry literally changes. Their serotonin levels rise. Their bodies harden. They eat more. Mate more. Develop a group mind. And they fly off together, a billion strong, in search of food. Once they’ve swarmed, nothing can stand in their way. Your field becomes their lunch. Their dinner. And their breakfast.
BIBLICAL LOCUSTS ARE MISSION SPECIALISTS
In Hebrew Bible, locust swarms are God’s armies. Their deployment is never random. Locusts are mission specialists. Sometimes people forget that a creative, energetic, and wise God dwells above the chug, the circle of the earth. That’s when the locusts, the community of chagavim, grasshoppers, show up.
They visit Pharaoh in the Exodus story. Pharaoh is not a fan of inclusive community. He feels terribly threatened by immigrants. Especially the numerous Israelites. So he oppresses them, enslaves them, kills them. God sends a message, “Let my people go.” Pharaoh ignores God and ignores God’s message. So God sends a giant community, a swarm of locusts, to strip Pharaoh’s fields. Pharaoh doesn’t get it, but his advisors do. They say, “Let the people go, so they can worship their God!”
LOCUSTS: A POWERFUL COMMUNITY
Locusts visit the Israelites in the time of the prophet Joel. Years of abundant harvest have destroyed Joel’s community. Agribusiness has created huge divisions between exploitive landowners and desperate day laborers. Rich and poor alike have forgotten that their number one religious responsibility is to look out for the welfare of others. So, God sends a giant community, a swarm of locusts, to remind them. When the locusts consume the fields, the prophet Joel sees the power of their community. And he calls his people into community to start over together (Joel 1-4).
And now you see, that Isaiah’s little reference to the grasshopper is not little at all. Isaiah hints at the locusts. He hints at Pharaoh, at Joel, at the power of inclusive community. After mentioning the grasshopper, Isaiah continues. “God brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, when God blows upon them, and they wither. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? The One who brings out their host and counts them, calling them all by name. Because God is great in strength, mighty in power, not one fails to show up.” (Isaiah 40:23-26)
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ISAIAH’S GRASSHOPPERS?
Isaiah just about says that we are the grasshoppers. We’re tiny, in the grand scheme of creation. Sometimes we get lost in our solitary concerns. But when times get tough, we glimpse a different spiritual possibility. We gather into community to support one another. In community, we become strong, we find a political voice, and we inspire other communities.
Isaiah speaks to the community of Judeans returning from exile in 530 BCE. Today, our communities include synagogues, mosques, churches and temples. They can include networks of spiritual groups across traditions. When our connections are strong, no one can divide us for political gain.
Last week, God pummeled Egypt unprecedentedly with hail:
The LORD sent thunder and hail, and fire streamed down to the ground, as the LORD rained down hail upon the land of Egypt. The hail was very heavy—fire flashing in the midst of the hail—such as had not fallen on the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. (Exod. 9:23–24)
On the combination of fire and ice, Ibn Ezra comments that this was “a wonder within a wonder.”
As this week’s portion opens, Moses and Aaron announce:
If you refuse to let My people go, tomorrow I will bring locusts on your territory. They shall cover the surface of the land, so that no one will be able to see the land . . . something that neither your fathers nor fathers’ fathers have seen from the day they appeared on earth to this day. (Exod. 10:4–6)
And so it was. “Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again” (10:14).
The Torah emphasizes the unprecedented nature of these two plagues. Neither hail nor locusts are miraculous. Naturally, some bouts are more severe than others. But the unique severity of these assaults, and their onset and cessation at God’s directive, places them beyond the natural order.
Hail and locusts are followed by impenetrable darkness upon Egypt while light shone upon the Israelites. The plagues culminate with the horror of the selective deaths of the firstborn, in which the Israelites shield themselves from danger by smearing blood upon their door posts.
And finally, following the Israelites’ release, the great coda of the splitting of the sea. These, the Torah practically shouts, are miracles. Signs of God’s power and unbounded sovereignty. Instructive events down through the ages both to Pharaoh (Exod. 7:17) and the Israelites (e.g. Exod. 11:7 and 13:14): to Pharaoh, who sees himself as god and sovereign, and to the Israelites, who through the Exodus are meant to grow out of degradation in servitude to their slave master and into redemptive and sacred service to God.
These cataclysms are what we have in mind when we talk about events on a biblical scale. I’m thinking of historic weather events like Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey. Such storms’ enormous scale, destructive force, and fatefulness feel “biblical.”
However, absent the biblical antecedents’ will and purpose, catastrophic weather in our day is not miraculous. Fearsome winds or waters are neither orchestrated nor deliberately unleashed. Harvey and other megastorms last summer are, indeed, telling us something, and they feel biblical in scale, but the Torah is after something else when relating its miracles.
As a rabbinical student, I had the privilege to study Bible with Moshe Greenberg, one of the great scholars of Bible of the last century. By the second semester I got up the courage to meet with him privately to ask some questions. “I have no problem,” I began, “that the Torah as written is a human document and I am untroubled that its events are neither historical nor scientific reports. But I don’t know what to do with the miracles. Why does the Torah need them? Why does it relate them that way?”
“When one experiences a transformational event in one’s life, it takes on enormous scale,” Greenberg replied. He related that once he was invited to the Johnson White House to sit on a panel of religious scholars. He recalled the awe he felt waiting in the Cabinet Room, overwhelmed by his august surroundings. All of a sudden, in walked President Johnson, a very tall man. Greenberg saw Johnson that day as a giant. Larger than life.
And he recalled, too, watching TV reports of the Freedom Riders in 1961. Greenberg was so moved by the righteousness of their cause and the courage of their journey that the young activists on the screen were, he was sure, the most beautiful men and women he had ever seen.
Whatever the (unknowable) events of the Exodus, Greenberg taught that that Torah’s miracles are animated by a transformational, lived experience of redemption.
I came to understand that the Torah seeks to bestir in me, and in every listener or reader, the Israelites’ leap to faith and fealty that is an explicit aim of the Exodus, but which so famously fails in the desert. “And when, in time to come, your child asks you, saying, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘It was with a mighty hand that the LORD brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage” (13:14). It astounds how much weight the Torah places on the telling. What alternative is there? Miracles don’t happen every day.
Or do they? Just before the morning Shema, the Siddur proclaims: “With kindness, You illumine the earth and all who dwell on it; in Your goodness, You renew creation day after day.” Embedded in Birkhot Hashahar, we extensively recount the crossing of the sea, and recall it yet again in preparation for the Amidah. By reciting Mi Kamokha, “Who is like you, God?” as the Israelites sang out on the far shore of the sea, we embody them. The Siddur challenges us to regard each sunrise as the recreation of the world. And to feel that being awake another morning is no less than the crossing of the sea.
The Torah’s telling of the Exodus is gripping. I experience a chill each time I read, “And Pharaoh rose at night, he and all his servants and all Egypt—and there was a great outcry in Egypt; for there was no household in which there was no dead” (12:30). Those miracles pulse with every telling.
But upon the first wakeful breath of every morning, to inhale hope from God’s love, and to exhale with wonder over renewed creation? Every day? To feel the exhilaration of redemption daily? These are the challenges of the religious life. Breaking through to gratitude is miraculous. Plain and simple.
By Jordan Schuster Rabbinical Student
On Approaching the Tyrannical Heart
There is this scene from a tale by Rabbi Nakhman of Breslov that’s been hounding me lately. In it, the world has fallen under the sway of a handful of tyrants. Each tyrant claims a different moral truth. Each truth-claim begets a different moralizing discourse. As these discourses proliferate, the world divides, polarizes, rends itself apart. Mountains quake. The earth comes undone.
Into the midst of this trembling, tyrannical world, Nakhman places the figure of a zaken – an elder – bearded, pious, frail – who draws a circle of protection around himself and his family. One day, Nakhman tells us, one of the world’s royal tyrants approaches this elder and begs him for healing. A healer by trade, the elder welcomes the tyrant into his circle, then restores his vitality. In thanks, the tyrant yields to the elder a weighty tome: “This book contains a list of all the demons known to rage in the heart of the human-being,” the tyrant says. “By identifying which demon is active in which individual’s heart, you will be able to seize control over that individual.”
The elder smiles, thanks the tyrant, but refuses the book. “My power does not come through naming the demons that possess the human heart,” the elder replies. “My power comes from the faith I have in the human heart’s divine potential, from my ability to see that potential in each individual, then raise it up to the supernal root from which it was hewn.”[1]
Nakhman never describes the process by which the zaken of his tale develops this capacity to unearth from the tyrannical heart a sense of buried divinity. For this, one needs to turn away from Nakhman’s tales and towards Nakhman’s torot – Nakhman’s teachings. The following teaching Nakhman bases upon the first two verses of this week’s Torah Portion, Parashat Bo:
And God said to Moses: Approach Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart…in order that I might place My signs in his midst [be-qirbo]…that you might know: I am God…(Exod. 10:1-2)
When read within the context of the Exodus narrative, the “signs” God intends to “place in [Pharaoh’s] midst” refer to the plagues God intends to inflict upon Pharaoh’s kingdom. As a result of witnessing the execution of these plagues, Moses will come to “know…God.” This seems to be the basic, contextual reading of the above passage. When Nakhman confronts these verses, however, he replaces their contextual meaning with a kind of hyper-literalism. Indeed, in Nakhman’s hands, “the signs” God “places in [Pharaoh’s] midst” allude not to plagues placed within the midst of Pharaoh’s land, but rather to slivers of divine potential placed within the literal “midst” of Pharaoh himself [be-qirbo].[2] In relocating God’s divine signs from the external sphere of Egypt to the internal sphere of Pharaoh’s psyche, Nakhman effectively redefines the phenomenon by which Moses will come to “know…God” as well. Instead of “knowing God” through the physical experience of witnessing a series of supernatural plagues, Moses will now come to “know…God” through the spiritual revelation of how – even in the darkest and most tyrannical of hearts – traces of God still exist.
There is something beautiful to Nakhman’s claim that there dwells within all existence a constant, underlying capacity for transformation, growth, redemption, godliness. That said, Nakhman’s claim carries with it an extraordinarily problematic implication as well. It feels painful, if not entirely manipulative, to expect a victim to detect, then “lift up,” the “divine potential” of his or her oppressor. And yet, in the midst of our trembling and tyrannical world – where truth claims collide and moralizing discourses generate seemingly unbridgeable ideological chasms – there is something to Nakhman’s vision I can’t quite let go of. For while I deeply believe that we must continue to call out injustice and fight actively for the execution of what we deem is “just,” I also can’t help but linger – again and again – on this image of an elder refusing to exploit the demonic in others, on this depiction of an ancient leader gazing into the hardened heart of a tyrant to find – buried “within its midst” – something human, something divine, something infinitely worth approaching.
Jordan Schuster is in his final year at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, where he will be co-teaching a course on the tales of Rabbi Nakhman of Breslov this spring with Rabbi Arthur Green.
[1] Adapted from my reading of Sippurey Mayses, A Mayse Vegn a Higer (#3).
Exile and expansiveness – a d’varling for parashat Bo
Right now in our cycle of Torah readings (parashat Bo) we’re reading about the plagues and the start of the Exodus. Looking for inspiration on this week’s parsha, I turned to the Hasidic master known as the Me’or Eynayim, “The Light of the Eyes.” (His given name was Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl.) He writes about Egypt as a place of existential exile, and about what happens to us spiritually when we are brought forth from there.
Slavery in Egypt is our tradition’s ultimate example of גלות / galut, existential alienation from God. It’s the paradigmatic example of constriction. When we talk about being slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt, we’re also always talking about experiences of constriction in the narrow places of our lives now.
For the Me’or Eynayim, galut is a state of not-knowing God. It’s a state of having fallen so far from unity that we don’t even realize we’ve fallen. This, he says, is what we experienced in the Narrow Place. And Pharaoh is the exemplar of exile. He saw himself as a god, and had no awareness of a Source greater than himself.
When one is in this kind of galut, it’s hard to know the difference between what will give life and what will deaden us. Torah instructs us to “choose life,” but it’s hard to know what will enliven us when we’re in a place of alienation from our Source. What the Exodus offers us is the opportunity to leave existential exile, and in that leaving, to regain the capacity for moral choice.
In the state of galut that we experience when we’re in life’s Narrow Places, there’s only katnut-consciousness, small mind. It’s a vicious cycle, because exile creates small mind, and small mind makes it hard to imagine breaking free from exile.
Emerging from the Narrow Place means being reborn from katnut into gadlut, from small mind into expansive consciousness. The words גלות / galut and גדלות / gadlut are similar, but there’s one letter of difference between them: the letter ד / daled, which — as I was powerfully reminded by Rabbi David Ingber in his extraordinary sermon on doorways and welcoming the stranger last night — is a delet, a door. Galut is exile; gadlut is greatness, or expanded-mind. We begin in exile. We go through a door, a transformation, a state-change. And then we reach gadlut, “big mind.” And once we’ve reached expansive consciousness, we can seek to know God wholly. That’s why we were brought forth from Egypt, says the Me’or Eynayim: in order to know God wholly.
We were brought forth from Egypt in order to see beyond the binaries of our own constriction. Once we begin to glimpse gadlut, the constrictions of exile fall away.
Exile can be self-perpetuating, because when we’re in it, it’s hard to see a way out. Depression is like that. Despair is like that. Overwhelm is like that. Sometimes if I look at everything that’s wrong with the world, exile rushes in and washes me away. But if we can open our minds even for an instant to glimpse the prospect of a better life, the fact of glimpsing a redemptive possibility makes that redemption possible.
Shabbat is our chance to glimpse the world redeemed — to live for one day a week not in grief at the world as it is, but in celebration of the world as it should be. May we emerge from Shabbat ready to roll up our sleeves, to combat small-mindedness wherever we find it, and to choose to bring more life everywhere we go.
With what we are to serve – a dvar Torah for WCJA 2017
In this week’s Torah portion, Moses argues with Pharaoh about letting the people go.
It’s framed as “let the people go so they may worship Adonai.” Torah doesn’t speak in terms of freedom for its own sake. Moshe seeks his people’s freedom from servitude and oppression and hard labor — and, it’s not just about being freed from, it’s also about being freed toward.
Pharaoh suggests he might let them go, but only the men, which Moses rejects: no, we’re not leaving women and children behind. Then Pharaoh suggests he might let them go, but says they can’t take herds or flocks with them. And Moshe says no, because:
וַאֲנַ֣חְנוּ לֹֽא־נֵדַ֗ע מַֽה־נַּעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־ה׳ עַד־בֹּאֵ֖נוּ שָֽׁמָּה / “We shall not know with what we are to serve until we get there.”
On the surface, he’s making a practical point. The request was to let our people go so that we could worship God in the wilderness, and the way we did that back then was through animal sacrifice. In the physical world, when he says “we shall not know with what we are to serve” he’s talking about goats and sheep. But in the worlds of emotion and spirit, Moshe’s highlighting a fundamental truth of every new undertaking: we never know what a journey will ask of us.
Going from slavery to freedom, from servitude to Pharaoh to service to the One, from narrow straits to liberation: it’s the core story of Jewish peoplehood. We retell it every year at the Passover seder. We remind ourselves of it every Shabbat when we sing Mi Chamocha, and when we make the kiddush over wine. Those of us who have the practice of daily Jewish liturgical prayer remind ourselves of it every day.
It’s also a core story of our lives. We move from constriction to expansion, from unconsciousness to consciousness, from calcified habits to transformation, over and over again. As we grow up and leave a childhood home for college, or leave the Purple Valley for the wide world outside. As we outgrow old circumstances and start over. As we discover that we can be more than we have been, and then pursue that becoming.
Hold that thought, because I want to pause and look at what it means to serve. I said earlier that Moshe’s request is to free the people, but not so they can be accountable to no one. He seeks to free them from Pharaoh so they can serve God instead. That may sound like trading one master for another. But I think it’s not, and here’s why.
Pharaoh dehumanized us. He signed an executive order to have our baby boys murdered. Pharaoh believed that we were inferior to “regular” Egyptian citizens. Pharaoh saw us as teeming masses of foreigners, people who prayed differently and dressed differently and therefore deserved a lifetime of slavery in the pyramid-industrial complex. When describing how Pharaoh saw us, Torah says “the Israelites were fruitful and they swarmed” — swarmed, like bugs. Being enslaved to Pharaoh meant working for the betterment of someone who saw us as equivalent to cockroaches.
Service to God is the opposite of that. To Pharaoh we were indistinguishable insects, but in God’s eyes each of us is infinitely precious. Torah teaches that every human being is made in the image and the likeness of the One — regardless of race or religion, shape or skin tone. To serve God means to serve the source of love and liberation. It means to choose to align ourselves with the force that brought us out of slavery, and to seek to break the shackles of those who are still enslaved.
But maybe you don’t believe in God, not even the one I just described. That’s okay. We can talk another time about why I’m more interested in engaging with — talking to, wrestling with, demanding things of — than believing in. No matter what you “believe in,” there is service that awaits you, if you’re willing to hear the call. Leave the world a better place than you found it. Work toward justice and human rights for all. Feed the hungry, protect the powerless, speak up for those who are victimized by structures of power and domination. That’s the calling to which Judaism summons us.
And you won’t know what resources you’ll need for that work until you get there. You can learn. You can study. You can prepare with all your might. But the work of making the world a better place will require all of who you are, and you’ll have to reach for strength and courage and conviction that you didn’t know you had. Not once, but over and over again.
Every new chapter requires us to grow and deepen what we can offer to the world. It’s true of a new semester. It’s true of a new relationship, or a new job, or a new Presidential administration. We won’t know with what we are called to serve until we get there. We won’t know what this new adventure demands of us, what internal qualities of kindness or strength, courage or resolve we’re going to need — until we get there.
And “getting there” may be a misnomer. Because every moment asks us to dig deep and draw on the best of who we are. I know what resources I needed for yesterday, but yesterday’s over. I know what resources I needed an hour ago, but that’s then, and this is now. וַאֲנַ֣חְנוּ לֹֽא־נֵדַ֗ע מַֽה־נַּעֲבֹד֙ אֶת–ה׳ עַד־בֹּאֵ֖נוּ שָֽׁמָּה — We won’t know what this new moment asks of us until we reach it. And then there will be another new moment, and another after that.
Right now it’s Shabbes, a deep dive into holy time. This is the time to soak up what nourishes us, to set aside the pressures of the week. This is the time to remember who we truly are — not when we’re defining ourselves through what we do, or what we’ve accomplished, or what’s on our to-do list, but through who our hearts and souls yearn to be.
And when we emerge from this Shabbat, life will ask things of us. The new week will make demands on us. Our professors, or bosses, or families, will make demands on us. The world at large will make demands on us. May you be blessed with the ability to dig deep and find the reserves you need for whatever liberation, whatever new adventure, whatever challenges lie ahead. Shabbat shalom.
What Are We Afraid Of?
And G-d said to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh…” – Exodus 10:1
Said Rabbi Shimeon: Now it is time to reveal secrets that are bound above and below. Why does it say, “Come to Pharaoh”? It should have said, “Go to Pharaoh” …. But G-d brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the… supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve…which Moses feared to approach himself because he saw that he was rooted in supernal roots…
Zohar, part II, 34a
Fear is perhaps our greatest enemy. Not because it is loud and aggressive, but because it is invisible. Is there a person alive that does not suffer from some fear, known or (even worse) unknown? And what effects do our fears have on our lives – what impact does it have on our choices and ambitions, on our behavior, pride, jealousy, anger and so many other emotions? Can it even be measured?
Is our drive for success a way to mask or compensate for some of our fears? What critical mass effect does fear have on society?
Above all, what are we exactly afraid of and what is the root of fear? Without getting to the core of our fears we can hardly expect to alleviate them.
This question is more compelling today than ever as we face fears of all sorts, as Muslim radicals wage war, now not just against Israel, but against the entire free world, unleashing our underlying emotions in this climate of global uncertainty.
Though our fears today have obvious roots (fear of attack, fear of death), yet we see that there are individuals – as has always been the case in history – that do not get paralyzed by fear and have the ability to grow through it. What is their secret?
This week’s Torah portion, parshat Bo, teaches us the secret to both the root of fear and to its antidote.
The chapter opens with the following words: And G-d said to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh…” The Zohar [classical mystical text] asks the question: Why does it say, “Come to Pharaoh”? It should have said, “Go to Pharaoh” … But G-d brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the… supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve…which Moses feared to approach himself because he saw that he was rooted in supernal roots…”
Moses had already visited Pharaoh many times before this commandment, “Come to Pharaoh.” What suddenly frightened Moses this time around? And how did G-d’s response “Come to Pharaoh” assuage his fear?
Up till this point Moses dealt with Pharaoh in his various manifestations, not his essence. But now he is told to enter into the core essence of Pharaoh’s evil, the ‘great serpent.’ This terrified Moses. To which G-d responds: “Come to Pharaoh,” Come with me. G-d is saying that you don’t go alone. I come with you and help you eradicate the evil at its source.
And here we see the true nature of fear.
Fear’s true power is in the loneliness that it imposes upon us. We feel we are alone in our predicament. We feel that no one can understand our pain and suffering. And even if someone can empathize, we still feel that they are not with us, not one with us and therefore ultimately we remain isolated.
Life inherently has a built in existential insecurity. Upon birth, the Talmud tells us, we are made to forget the teachings ingrained into our very psyches and souls. Existence, the mystics teach us, is an effect of a cosmic detachment. As a result of the ‘great tzimtzum’ we feel all alone; we feel we are on our own – isolated in a desolate universe, disconnected from any source of sustenance.
This existential loneliness is the root of fear. And this is what Moses – even the great Moses – was so terrified of as he prepared to confront the core evil of Pharaoh, the ‘supernal serpent.’ He was afraid and felt that he was going alone.
Obviously, Moses’ fear is relative to him and to the unprecedented challenge he was facing: Encountering and purging the root essence of evil. Fear is relative to each person and his/her situation, the difficulties each of us faces and the strengths each of us has. What frightens one person may not even stir another. Yet, the common denominator between all of us is – and this is the relevant lesson we derive from Moses – that fear (on the level relative to us) results from our sense of isolation.
And therefore G-d’s response to Moses’ terror is, “Come with Me,” I go with you.
This is the powerful message that each of us must take from parshat Bo – “Come with Me.” No matter how lonely we may feel, especially in our loss and pain, we are not alone.
The only answer to the invisible power of fear – the fear of being alone – is to recognize that you are not alone.
You are never alone.
It’s difficult not to notice darkness at this time of year; so many of us set out for work in the dark and leave our places of business long after the sun has set. In these cold and potentially dreary winter months, the dark may feel heavy, and we long for a few rays of light.
But darkness is a part of the natural order of things. Our Torah tells us we emerged from darkness: “the earth was unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep . . . (ve-ha’aretz hayta tohu va-vohu, ve-hoshekh al p’nai t’hom . . . )” (Gen. 1:2); “and God separated the light from the darkness (va-yavdayl Eloheem bayn ha’or u-vayn ha’hoshekh)” (Gen. 1:4). Notice, God does not destroy the darkness; rather, it is pulled back, separated to expose the light and the dark, each in its own time and place.
The absence of light, in its literal sense, may designate a time for rest. Dark is a time to be—without the glare of computer screens, television sets, the Wii. We close our eyes, notice our breath, and bring things down a notch (or more). In these moments, darkness may bring awareness, even comfort. Yet almost all of us can think of a time when we were afraid of the dark. We imagined monsters under our beds and in our closets, we heard noises and footsteps in the house. Whatever grounded us, whatever made us feel safe, secure, and protected, disappeared within the dark. Darkness signaled fear, uncertainty, and a loss of control, not a way in which we wanted to live.
Parashat Bo introduces darkness, the penultimate plague to afflict the Egyptians before the Israelites are freed from slavery, as something that could not be mitigated. This hoshekh, an extreme darkness, not only highlights the potentially terrifying nature of the dark but also demonstrates the capacity for darkness to become a plague, affecting physical and spiritual well-being.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Hold out your arm toward the sky that there may be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched.” Moses held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings. (Exod. 10:21-23)
The darkness for the Egyptians in Egypt is not merely an absence of light; it has substance that remains for an extended period of time. In his commentary, Ramban (1194-1270) suggests that the darkness was composed of such a thick, foglike substance that it extinguished all of the lamps; there was no fire at all. No light. No way to see up or down; no means of telling day from night. No opportunity to see oneself in relation to others.
The Torah reminds us that the Israelites were afflicted with hard labor and spiritual strain. The Egyptians did not see the despair of the people of Israel. They could not look into the eyes of their fellow human beings and acknowledge their pain. They stumbled about in the darkness, tripping over the core institutions of respect and freedom. “No one could see the other. And no one could rise from his or her place for three days (Lo ra’u ish et ahiv. V’lo kamu ish mitachtav shloshet yamim)” (Exod. 10:23). These were a people blind and rooted to the ground, a people engulfed by spiritual and emotional darkness. How does darkness become a plague? By blocking the light, turning off our awareness, shutting down relationships, and preventing us from becoming agents of change.
Think back, for a moment, to those times when you were truly afraid of the dark. What brought you back to the safety of your surroundings? Calling out for a loved one, turning on a light, checking under the bed and in the closet, thinking outside of yourself, finding the spiritual and intellectual proof that you were not alone. What prevents our own experiences of the dark from filling us with terror and cutting us off from one another? Honesty, about how and where we are. Ongoing awareness of God. Commitment as a people to remain in relationship with one another and our Creator.
Honesty with self: We remain mindful of our vulnerability in the dark each evening when we recite the second blessing after the Shema’. Hashkeeveinu (Siddur Sim Shalom, 292) offers the space and context in which to articulate our fears, both personal and communal, and to call upon God’s presence in our lives as companion and protector. We need not do this alone. God may help mitigate our fears and our demons.
Ongoing awareness of God: In his negotiations with Pharaoh, Moses insists, in verses twenty-five and twenty-six, not only that the people go up to worship the Lord, but that the flocks and herds accompany the men, women, and children as well. He maintains that “not a hoof shall remain behind; for we must select from it for the worship of the Lord our God.” Why must they take the animals as well? “We will not know with what we are to worship the Lord until we arrive there (va-anachnu lo-nayda mah na’avod et Adonai ad boaynu sha’mah).”
Rashi, our eleventh-century commentator, suggests we understand these words in a literal manner—we don’t know how many animals we will need. Thinking more broadly and, for our purposes, somewhat anachronistically, one might say there is no way to know if their service to God will be different or not when they get to where they are going. The Etz Hayyim Humash notes that we cannot know what God wants of us until we encounter God in each new stage of our lives. More than that, we don’t know with what we will serve God until we are in that placecalls on us to be mindful, as a people and as individuals, of how God resides in our world (whether that be a communal or a personal space), so that moment to moment, as our journey unfolds, we may have the wisdom and the energy to engage.
Commitment to relationship: How do we end Shabbat each week? We light a braided candle to illuminate the night. The torchlike flame helps us to see through the dark, to identify the people who fill our celebrations with life, and to help guide us into another week, another opportunity to elevate ourselves and our world through acts that express kindness and motivate justice. In order to survive, in order to move forward and grow, one must see the other not as other but as an-other: another being critical to our society and our world.
In the book of Proverbs we learn, “ner Adonai nishmat adam”—”the lamp of God is the soul of the individual” (20:27). Each of us carries God’s spark. May we have the courage and the wisdom to illuminate the dark, shining light on the blessings we have to offer the world.
Sometimes you might be fooled into thinking that spiritual freedom is a delusion, that in order to have it you would need to ignore your real problems. Actually, the opposite is true. When you lose your happiness and freedom because you are thinking about your problems, isn’t that the delusion? Is it not delusion to think that by making yourself miserable you are somehow addressing or improving your situation? In reality, you now have two problems- the difficult situation and the inner tension and negative energy generated by your thoughts.
In this week’s reading, Parshat Bo, Moses has been presenting plague after plague to Pharaoh, but Pharaoh just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t realize that his refusal to let the Israelites go free is bringing plagues upon himself. What does he think he is accomplishing? But that is exactly what the ego does: it brings suffering upon itself, rather than allowing liberation to happen.
The remedy is in the opening lines in which G-d says to Moses, “Bo el Paro- come to Pharaoh.” G-d doesn’t say, “go to Pharaoh” but “come to Pharaoh”, indicating that G-d is there with Pharaoh, telling Moses to “come”. In other words, the Divine is found in the suffering itself, not in trying to avoid it.
Bring your awareness into your suffering. Don’t look out into the future from your suffering, imagining that things will be better once you get what you want. The end of suffering and the beginning of liberation is the un-knotting of the Pharaoh, and that begins with bringing your attention into the Pharaoh, becoming conscious of the energetic knot of resistance within. Once that knot is broken, liberation is immediate; it is a leap. Don’t try to be too prepared. When it’s time to go, just go. Unleavened bread and all. There is only one chance, and that chance is now… and yet “now” never ends!
There is a hint of this in the word “bo” which means “come”. It is composed of two letters- bet and aleph. The bet has the numerical value of two, and can mean “house”. The aleph as the value of one, and among its many meanings are “chief” and “ox”. In the movement of consciousness toward any contraction that is arising within your body, the contraction can release and the duality between consciousness and contraction of consciousness can shift into unity. Rather than there being suffering on one hand, and resistance to suffering on the other, there is just presence with Being as it is unfolding. To do this, you have to be like a bayit- a welcoming home for whatever arises within. Then, you can evolve into an aluf- a “chief” of self mastery, unified within, strong and rooted like an ox.
May this Shabbat see the un-knotting of all contracted separateness and may we come close to the Divine Presence in sweet intimacy for healing, peace and wisdom. Amein.
All of us, bringing our all: a d’var Torah for Bo
Posted: 03 Jan 2014 07:34 AM
Last week we read about Moses and Aaron going to Pharaoh, asking for permission to take their people into the wilderness to make offerings to Adonai. Pharaoh, not surprisingly, said no. God’s response was the first several plagues.
In this week’s Torah portion, the plagues continue. And for a moment, Pharaoh relents. “Go worship your God,” he snaps to Moses and Aaron. “Who’s going with you?”
Moses replies, “We will all go, with our youths and elders; we will go with our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds.” The phrase “youths and elders” is a rhetorical figure of speech which uses two extremes to convey a totality. The text says “young and old,” and we’re meant to fill in “and everyone in between.”
The Eskenazi and Weiss translation reads “We will all go, regardless of social station.” Rich and poor and everyone in between. Those who had assimilated into Egyptian ways, and those who had retained strong Hebrew practices, and everyone in between. Those who had power, and those who were powerless, and everyone in between.
How powerful that in this moment, as Moses has first taken on the mantle of leading our people out of slavery, he insists that making offerings to Adonai is something which all the people must do.
The Hebrew word עבודה (avodah) means service, as in the service of sacrifices we once offered, now replaced by the service of the heart which is prayer. We will read soon in Torah about how the priestly system of sacrifice began in the wilderness, and then about the priestly apparatus which existed once the Temple is built. But here in this moment before the Exodus, Moses offers a glimpse of a radically egalitarian future in which all of us are called to be servants of the Most High.
Not just the priests. Not just the men. Not just those with social standing. All of us.
Unsurprisingly, Pharaoh balks. “May God be with you the same as I mean to let your descendants go with you,” he sneers. He knows that it’s not possible to serve two masters, and that if he lets us be in relationship with God, we will no longer be completely under his thumb.
The Hebrew words for slavery and for service come from the same root, ע / ב/ ד. This root is a recurring motif in this week’s Torah portion; it appears, in various forms, 21 times (an average of once every three verses!)* In the haggadah we read avadim hayyinu, “we were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt…” And once we enter into covenant with God at Sinai we become avdei Adonai, servants of the Most High. The word denoting service is the same…but who or what are we serving? That’s what makes all the difference.
In the Jewish understanding, we don’t shrug off Pharaoh’s chains in order to be completely unfettered, free of responsibility to anyone or anything. The truest freedom comes in choosing to serve: to serve the greater good, to serve creation, to serve the source of love in the universe. Either our lives belong to Pharaoh — to overwork, to empire, to power-over, to that force which seeks to dominate and to own us — or they belong to the Source of all, the Wellspring of creation, the One Who speaks and the world comes into being.
The gift of Shabbat is that it removes us from Pharaoh’s domain every week. No matter what our obligations — to our jobs, to the bank which holds the mortgage, to social pressures or unrealistic expectations — on one day each week, we let all of that go. We stop serving our bosses and instead remember that we are truly servants of God, blessed and enlivened by that enduring relationship with something greater than ourselves.
And that is true no matter who we are. Young and old, righteous and wicked, rich and poor, all of these binarisms and everyone in between — all of us are called to offer our hearts and our hands.
After two more plagues, Pharaoh changes his mind again. “Fine,” he says, “all of your people can go, but leave behind your flocks and herds.” And Moses says no, we need to take everyone and everything. “We shall not know with what we are to worship God until we get there.” The simplest understanding of that line is that he’s talking about animals for sacrificing. In those days we offered praise and thanksgiving through animal sacrifice; the Hebrews needed all of their livestock in case God asked for more sheep or goats. But I think this line from Torah has a deeper truth which is clear to us today in our post-sacrificial world: when it comes to divine service, we have to bring all that we are.
We never know which parts of ourselves will be needed, which talents or skills or ideas or yearnings will fit the bill. We won’t know, we can’t know, how we will serve God until we reach each new moment, each new challenge. That’s why we have to bring all of us: not only the whole community, but also all of each individual person’s body, mind, heart, and soul.
If we leave any person behind — if we leave any part of ourselves behind — we won’t be able to serve wholly (or to serve the Holy.) When it comes to serving God, all of us have to bring our all.
*The source for the citation on 21 appearances of עבד is this My Jewish Learning commentary
Bo: The Dog in the Night
January 14, 2013 at 10:14 pm | Posted in Bo, Passover/Pesach | Leave a comment
To me, dogs are pets. Most dogs have appealing personalities, and the love between dog and human is real. I rarely cry, but I cried when our dog died.
In the Torah, dogs are bad news. The ancient Israelites did not domesticate dogs until late in the First Temple period, even though their neighbors had long been training dogs for hunting, herding, and guarding. So most of the 24 references to dogs in the Hebrew Bible view them as disgusting feral scavengers. Calling a man a dog (or worse, a dead dog) means that he is the lowest of the low.
The first appearance of the Hebrew word for dog, kelev, is in this week’s Torah portion, Bo (“Come”).
Moses said: Thus said God: In the middle of the night, I Myself will go out in the midst of Egypt. And every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne, to the firstborn of the slave-woman who is behind the millstones, and every firstborn beast. Then there will be loud wailing in all the land of Egypt, the like of which has never happened, and the like of which will not happen again. But as for all the children of Israel, not a dog yecheratz its tongue against man or beast; in order that you shall know that God makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. (Exodus/Shemot 11:4-7)
yecheratz = will cut, will use a sharp instrument, will decide
On the night of the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, not a dog will use its tongue as a sharp instrument against the Israelites. In other words, while God is killing Egyptians, not even a dog will growl or bark to threaten the Israelites.
The verses translated above include two contrasts between the highest and the lowest. First, God says all the firstborn of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne, to the firstborn of the slave-woman who is behind the millstones. The phrase “slave-woman behind the millstones” is a translation of a phrase that an Egyptian document uses to indicate someone of the lowest possible social class. In other words, God will make no exceptions; everyone belonging to Egypt will suffer, regardless of social position, and regardless of guilt or innocence.
Next, the Torah says that everyone belonging to Israel will be safe from all threats: from the highest power possible–God Itself–to the lowest danger–dogs. In the middle of the night, while God is killing the Egyptian firstborn, and the Israelites are eating their Passover lamb, roaming dogs will not bite any Israelite humans or beasts. They will not even bark.
This reminds me of the dog that did not bark in the night in “Silver Blaze”, a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle. Inspector Gregory asks Holmes, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.”
Sherlock Holmes has deduced that the guard-dog was silent in the middle of the night because the intruder was not a stranger, but the dog’s owner.
The passage in Exodus/Shemot contrasts the loud wailing of the Egyptians with the silence of the dogs. Dogs get agitated when their owners start screaming and wailing, and they respond by whimpering and barking. The dogs who will not growl or bark during the night of the death of the firstborn clearly do not have Egyptian owners. The Israelites who wrote down the Torah thought of dogs as ownerless wanderers, so the silent dogs do not belong to the children of Israel, either. Whose dogs are they?
And it was at midnight when God struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on this throne, to the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon, and every firstborn beast. (Exodus 12:29)
God goes from house to house in Egypt that night, skipping over only the houses of the Israelites. But the dogs roaming in the streets are silent, like the dog in “Silver Blaze”–because they recognize their owner.
I want to be like a dog. I don’t want to be the lowest of the low. But I do want to recognize my owner.
I have often wondered why the scout in the book of Numbers/Bamidbar who argues that the Israelites should go ahead and enter Canaan, and trust God to give them the land, is named Caleb, Kaleiv in Hebrew. His name comes from the same root as kelev, “dog”. Yet Caleb’s actions are all virtuous, not base and low, the way most dogs in the Torah behave. Perhaps Caleb is named after the dogs in Egypt—because he, too, recognized God.
From Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
This was written for Rabbi Rachel’s ordination this week from Aleph.
READY 2011
“So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders.” —Exodus 12:34
You’ll need to travel light.
Take what you can carry: a book, a poem,
a battered tin cup, your child strapped
to your chest, clutching your necklace
in one hot possessive fist.
So the dough isn’t ready. So your heart
isn’t ready. You haven’t said goodbye
to the places where you hid as a child,
to the friends who aren’t interested in the journey,
to the graves you’ve tended.
But if you wait until you feel fully ready
you may never take the leap at all
and Infinity is calling you forth
out of this birth canal
and into the future’s wide expanse.
Learn to improvise flat cakes without yeast.
Learn to read new alphabets.
Wear God like a cloak
and stride forth with confidence.
You won’t know where you’re going
but you have the words of our sages,
the songs of our mothers, the inspiration
wrapped in your kneading bowl. Trust
that what you carry will sustain you
and take the first step out the door.
In this weeks Torah reading the people of Israel, still tightly bound in the constraints of their Egyptian bondage, receive the first Mitzvah, or invitation to connect.
“This month shall be to you the head of the months; to you it shall be the first of the months of the year.” (12:2)
This introduces the Mitzvah of sanctifying the new moon and the beginning of counting time through Lunar patterns.
There is a profound distinction between Solar and Lunar time. Sun-time is rigid. There is a set pattern of movement. The sun rises and sets day in and day out.
In the book of Kohelet it is written “There is nothing new under the sun.” In a rigid predictable universe there is no newness.
The ancient Egyptians worshipped the pagan deity RA – the ‘Sun deity.’ In this reality there was no possibility of breaking out of the natural order of things.
A person who was born a slave would remain a slave forever.
The Zohar adds, that while under the sun there is nothing new the moon does contain newness.
The moon waxes and wanes and is ever changing and renewing itself. The word Chodesh – month, is from the root word ‘Chadash’ – new.
The children of Israel believed and then envisioned themselves free and were therefore able to become free people and break out of their slave reality.
This is the third stage in freedom. First is the need to reject your negative story, not accepting your situation as permanent. Secondly, you need to believe in the possibility of change, accept the possibility of the miraculous. The third and final stage is actually visualizing this new reality and creatively imagining yourself already in that new state of being.
THE WEEK’S ENERGY
Creative VisualizationThis week’s Torah reading imbues us with the energy to creatively visualize ourselves in a better reality and in that way offers us a direct link to that reality.
Whatever reality you wish for yourself is within your reach.
Visualize yourself with clear imagination living in the reality which you desire.
When you place yourself in the picture of that place you begin to create that reality.
By fully imagining ourselves into this new reality we can truly be liberated from all constrictions and limitations.
This new moon (Ha’chodesh Hazeh) shall be to you the head of months (This week’s Torah portion – 12:2).
Moses found difficulty with the renewal of the moon…G-d therefore showed him with His finger the moon in the sky and said to him, “You will see a moon like this and you will then sanctify [the month].” Now how did G-d show it to Moses? Did He not speak to him only by day? …Rather, this chapter was said to Moses just before sunset, and He showed him [the moon] when it became dark (Rashi, from Midrash Mechilta. Talmud Menachot 29a)
Why did Moses have a problem with the moon’s renewal?
And what did G-d show him? If there was a moon in the sky, Moses could have looked up and seen it on his own. And if there was no moon yet – which is more likely because the new moon was just being born – what exactly did G-d show him? How can a new moon be seen with the naked eye?
Various reasons for Moses’ difficulty are posited by the sages. Some explain that Moses was unclear as to the exact criteria necessary to determine when we must sanctify the new moon. Others suggest that Moses was unsure how to determine whether he was actually seeing the new moon or perhaps the final stages of the old moon. But all these explanations seem inadequate for several reasons: Moses, who was quite an educated man, could have figured out, like any astronomer, the factors that constitute a new moon. Why did he need G-d to show it to him? Clearly, Moses was disturbed by something that only G-d could resolve. Additionally, as mentioned, the new moon does not yet have any shape and form, so what exactly did Moses see?
The mystics explain that Moses was struggling with some of the fundamental dilemmas of existence as they are reflected in the birth of the new moon (see Ohr HaTorah on this chapter, vol. 8 pp. 2902). Here we will focus on the psychological and personal application of this strange episode – which illuminates one of the most profound challenges in life: How to deal with pain and loss.
But first, another practical question. Why is the mitzvah of sanctifying the new moon told to Moses as a prelude to the redemption of the Jews from Egyptian bondage? What connection is there between the moon’s renewal and the Egyptian Exodus?
The waxing and waning moon reflects the ups and downs of life and history. The waning moon represents difficult times; periods that get darker and darker, like the fading moon. But just as the moon disappears, when all seems bleak and lost, we experience rebirth, newfound life – a new moon has been born.
The long Egyptian exile was the first documented instance of institutionalized oppression perpetrated by one nation against another. Multitudes of Jews were killed, tortured or worked to death in forced labor. The moon was dark indeed.
By commanding Moses to sanctify the new moon G-d was in effect imparting to Moses the power of renewal: Just as the moon is reborn right after its disappears, so too will the Jewish people experience a renaissance following their darkest moments.
Moses, however, was disturbed. He was happy to hear that the time of redemption – the birth of the new moon – had arrived. But he was bothered by the fact that when things get so dark, to the point that the moon emits no light at all, how can mortal man hold on? How do we gather strength when we don’t see any glimmer of hope? If we don’t have the energy to see it through, we can be consumed and destroyed by the darkness, and then never reach the new light…
Philosophically, Moses understood that a mortal human being will never fully fathom the mystery of pain and suffering. He also understood and believed that the “end story” was that we will endure and prevail over all our adversaries. Indeed, the Egyptian oppression forged a nation with enormous power, an eternal nation. The more they were oppressed, the more they proliferated and grew.
But Moses was disturbed because he knew that this was not enough. Moses in effect was saying: “If you want man to grow through the dark challenges, You, G-d, must give us the power of hope – the strength to see it through and forge ahead despite the inability to see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.”
G-d agreed. In response, G-d “pointed His finger” and showed Moses something that is otherwise impossible to see: The birthing itself. The point when the darkness turns into light, the exact moment when the seeds of suffering yield the fruits of greatness
When we cry over a disappointment or loss we feel pain and sorrow. We (and others) may understand that “those that sow in tears will reap in joy” (Psalms 126:5). But while we weep and taste our bitter tears, we cannot at the same time see the joy that will come. The seed by its very nature conceals its future fruit.
G-d therefore divulged to Moses the mystery of transformation, how darkness turns into light. And He revealed it as the sun was setting. Usually G-d spoke to Moses during the day. But in this instance G-d wanted to show Moses that even darkness yields light. He therefore spoke to him just before sunset, and He showed him the moon as darkness was falling.
This vision of Moses has a perpetual effect for all generations to come – to give us the power to make it through any challenge, no matter how difficult.
All birth in this world comes only after a moment of darkness. Growth is always preceded by a void. Creativity is a child of frustration. But when things seem bleak we get demoralized, and that in turn makes things far worse. If only we were able to see the birthing to come we would be able to endure the hardest times. The problem is that we cannot see from beneath the rubble the light ahead.
So once in history a man was shown the moment of rebirth. Once in history the invisible became visible.
That one vision has given us strength throughout history, as our lives have waxed and waned like the moon, to see it through. Even as we have stood at the abyss, at the brink of extinction, something deep inside us reminded us that all is not lost.
Where does such conviction come from? How does a mother have strength to fight for her child even when all doctors have given up hope? What power did the Jews have when they were herded into the gas chambers to sing “Ani Maamin” (“I believe”)? How is it possible that against all odds, in situations that were absolutely hopeless, a nation has not just survived but thrived?
This enormous, superhuman, power is rooted in Moses’ vision one lonely night in Egypt. As he looked up into the skies Moses saw nothing. The moon had completely disappeared. But then G-d pointed his finger and directed Moses to look closer: Hachodesh hazeh – here, look at the secret of rebirth, here I show you the moment that no man has ever seen and no man will ever see – the moment of transition, when one state is about to end only to open up a new state. Here is the invisible intersection where dark meets light, pain meets joy and exile meets redemption.
Birth means something new. We therefore can never actually see the exact moment when the old becomes new. But Moses did see – once for all times. G-d showed Moses the new moon at its moment of rebirth, and said to him: “When the moon is reborn, mark the beginning of a new month.”
As we now read the story of Exodus, the “book in which Israel goes from darkness to light” – the story of process, the process of loss and renewal, of suffering and growth, the process of death and birth – we can gather in our own lives much fortitude from the events that took place 3319 year ago.
When the next new moon arrives, go outside and look up into the sky. If we look hard enough perhaps we may get a glimpse of what Moses saw. But even if we can’t, our very gaze into the dark heavens, looking, searching, yearning, for the sliver of the new moon’s birthing, carries immense power – strength that can help us though any challenge.
From AJR/CA
Parshat Bo
Torah Reading for Week of January 17 – 23, 2010
“Come to the Winter of Our Content”
by Lori Schneider
AJR,CA, Fifth Year Rabbinical Student
Last month Santa Monica, CA witnessed “autumn for a block” – a line of trees awash in vivid maroons and yellows. The leaves lingered for a few weeks until, one at a time, they fell onto the sidewalk, crunching under school children’s feet. Today, these trees stand naked, a visible reminder that seasons do change, even in Los Angeles. If we look closely, we can discern the changing of seasons – a barren tree, a cold shot of wind from the north; here in Los Angeles, seasons can be subtle. But, with every winter, our Torah brings us Parshat Bo. And with the coming of Bo, I know winter has arrived.
Winter asks of us to go inward – the dormancy of the natural world redirecting our attention to our interior landscape. And like a molecule in the cold, we are forced to slow down as well. When reading this week’s Torah portion, we experience the entropy of the natural world with the fait accompli of the final plagues: locusts — the devastation of sustenance; darkness – the blindness that comes with being unable to recognize the world before oneself; and finally, the killing of the firstborn – the undoing of natural order. These three plagues mirror our interior experience of winter: we are hungry for the succulence of summer fruits, cloaked in long, dark nights, and long for the rebirth of spring. It’s as if this cycle of un-life is the biblical narrative’s mirror of the season engulfing us.
And, indeed, we have fallen through our “Biblical Looking Glass”, as even the Biblical voices seem confused. G-d commands us to “Come to Pharaoh”; Pharaoh commands us to “Go out…” and even implores that we grant him a blessing. With the gestation period of 10 plagues complete, we go into ‘un-creation labor’, as Pharaoh commands the Israelite slaves to “…Go worship Yah.” From the one who sought to destroy us, our nation is born.
But what does it mean that Pharaoh, our oppressor, commands us to not only worship G-d, but grant the source of our barrenness a blessing?
In response to the charge of our oppressor, Rashbam teaches “May you also bring a blessing upon me” meaning: our enemy is requesting that we bless only him. Rashi explains “Pray for me that I shall not die, even though I am a firstborn!” Both portray the selfish interests of Pharaoh. However, from within the barrenness of devastation and darkness, we are given the eyes to see beyond Pharaoh’s surface character flaw.
From the vulnerability of natural disasters, Pharaoh’s humanity is revealed. It is as if the stripping away of the natural world ripens a circumcision of the heart; and just as Pharaoh transforms through the undoing of creation in his midst, and commands the Israelites to go, so, too does the un-creation of New Orleans or Haiti reveal the supple and tender truth of our global community that lies within every beating of the lev – to be alive is to be just a heartbeat away from not. Perhaps Pharaoh, whose name derives from the word “to unbind or remove restraint,” is the character of winter itself, teaching us that our enemies or “anti-selves” possess dormant wisdom which draws forth our humanity, our vulnerability, our truest selves.
However, it is not easy to recognize our enemies as a life-breeding source. And so, our parasha also teaches us through subtle signs – the symbol of tefillin, or the coming of spring with the harbinger of the Pesach festival; or even the creation of Rosh Hodesh – a marking of women’s time, another reminder of creation. Winter is a time of hidden messages; but, it is only through the surrender of will to something larger than ourselves that we understand the wisdom of its stillness. Its challenges – whether literal and physical or metaphoric and psycho-spiritual – ask each of us to dwell in a deep, dark, interior space until the time of rebirth is upon us.
In this week’s Torah reading, when God sends Moses to face Pharaoh, God says, “Bo el Pharaoh.” Most English translations say, “Go to Pharaoh.” But “Bo” means “come,” not “go.”
“Come to Pharaoh!”
How could God be saying “Come!” unless God was already there? — already within Pharaoh!
“Come toward Me.”
And God’s call to Moses continued: “Hikhbad’ti libo.” That is usually translated, “I have made his [Pharaoh’s] heart heavy, hard.”
But the Hebrew root KVD can mean heavy, bearing gravitas, or glorious, or honorable, or radiant. When a leader is said to possess “gravitas,” it means he is a “heavy dude,” worthy of honor, radiating forth his own glory to faraway places.
So the phrase can be read as: “I, God, have put my radiance in his, Pharaoh’s, heart.”
In other words: “Come to Me — the Me who lives hidden inside Pharaoh. Don’t be afraid of Pharaoh: what looks like HIS radiance, HIS glory, HIS power, is really just a mask for MY radiance, MY glory, MY power.”
From seeing God hidden within Pharaoh, Moses could learn both courage and compassion.
Courage as he realized that Pharaoh’s seeming power was not his, but just a part of the enormous power of the flow of life, the Unity of universe. If Pharaoh tried to grasp that power as his own, the river and the locusts, the frogs and the first-borns, would overflow his rigid boundaries and sweep away his power. No one need fear it.
Compassion as Moses recalled that even within Pharaoh was the Tzelem Elohim, the spark of God. So he could resist the Pharaoh’s tyranny while yet remembering the KaVoD — honor — due his spark of divinity.
[1] Come to Pharaoh: As stated in the Overview, the Torah’s use of the expression “Come to Pharaoh” rather than “Go to Pharaoh” is striking. One way of explaining this is that the Exodus is predicated on approaching life as “coming” rather than “going.”
“Going” implies that the home base is where one already is presently located; one is simply visiting the place he is “going to.” “Coming,” on the other hand, implies that one is moving his home base, that he is going where he is going with his whole being.
So when we commune with God in Torah study or prayer, we should be sure to “come” into the words and ideas, rather than just “go” there for a visit. This way, our study and prayer can affect us and change us; it can take us out of our personal Egypt.
Going out of our personal Egypt hastens the collective redemption of the Jewish people and all humanity, as well.1
Chapter 11
[4] Exactly at midnight: Night is divided into two halves: from dusk until midnight, the sun sinks deeper below the horizon and the sky becomes progressively darker; from midnight until dawn, the sun begins its ascent to the opposite horizon and the sky becomes progressively lighter. The first half of the night is therefore associated with God’s attribute of severity and judgment (gevurah), while the second half is associated with God’s attribute of kindness (chesed).
Midnight, however, being the exact midpoint between the beginning and end of the night, is associated with neither attribute. In fact, midnight is just a theoretical construct rather than an actual span of time—for the moment immediately before midnight is part of the first half of the night and the moment immediately after it is part of the second half. Although midnight defines a specific time, it itself “takes up” no time, similar to how the corner where two walls intersect defines a location in space but itself takes up no space.
Midnight is thus beyond time, and it is by virtue of this transcendence that it can connect the two opposite halves of the night and negotiate the transition from the first to the second. Although we take for granted the “transition” from pre-midnight to post-midnight (as well as the “transition” from one direction to another), it in fact takes a time-transcending input to switch from one type of time to another (and a space-transcending input to change from one direction to another), since nature, by its own inertia, always tends to continue in the direction in which it is already going.
Hence the great significance of midnight: it is a “moment” when God’s transcendence is revealed. The slaying of the firstborn therefore had to occur exactly at midnight, since it was the final stroke of the Exodus, and in order for the Exodus to occur God had to reveal His transcendence beyond the laws of nature. Naturally, the Exodus could never have occurred, since it was entirely “natural” for Egypt to be the world’s superpower and enslave the Jews, etc. Nature had to be overruled, and this is the essence of midnight.17
The Torah commands us to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt by wearing tefillin (phylacteries) on the arm and head.
“It will be for you a sign on your arm and a reminder between your eyes, so that God’s Torah will be in your mouth; for God brought you out of Egypt with a strong arm.” [Ex. 13:9]
What is the connection between tefillin and the Exodus? How does wearing tefillin ensure that the Torah will be ‘in our mouths’?
An Outstretched Arm
Superficially, the redemption from Egypt was a one-time, historical event, forging a potent memory in the collective consciousness of the Jewish people and all of humanity. But if we listen to our inner soul, we will recognize that the Exodus is truly a continuous, ongoing act. The Divine miracles and signs that took place in Egypt launched the continual revelation of the hand of God, publicly and visibly, on the stage of world history. The Exodus was an outburst of Divine light, potent and vibrant, in all realms of the universe. Its inner resonance continues to make its impact throughout the ages.
Before wrapping tefillin on the arm, we reflect that this mitzvah commemorates God’s “zero’a netuya”, His “outstretched arm.” What does this metaphor mean?
The word zero’a (‘arm’) comes from the root zera, meaning ‘seed’. The redemption of Israel in Egypt was a holy seed, planted at that point in time. That wondrous event prepared the way for the spread of its message, unhindered and uninterrupted, stretching out across the generations. As we bind the tefillin to our arms, we are reminded of God’s “outstretched arm,” the inner godliness that constantly develops and perfects worlds, elevating their treasures of life to the pinnacle of divine fulfillment.
A Strong Arm
Yet, there is a deeper connection between the mitzvah of tefillin and the Exodus.
The purpose of the liberation from Egyptian bondage was to combat the debasement of life, which threatened to drown humanity in the depths of its crassness and vulgarity. Since the materialistic side of life is so compelling, so overwhelming, it was necessary for God to reveal a “strong arm” to overcome our base nature, and allow the light of our inner holiness to shine from within. The holy act of fastening the tefillin to the arm and head helps us transform the coarse and profane aspects of life into strength and vitality for a life beautiful in its holiness.
To triumph over humanity’s coarseness – then at its peak in the contaminated culture of Egypt – required God’s “strong arm.” We similarly need to make a strong effort so that the Torah will be in our minds and hearts. Tefillin are called a sign and a reminder, for they evoke the wondrous signs and powerful miracles of our release from Egyptian slavery. We must engrave the legacy of those miracles on our faculties of action, emotion, and thought. By binding these memories to our hand, heart, and mind, we can transform our coarse nature to a holy one. Then the Torah will naturally “be in your mouth,” in the thoughts of our hearts.
Through this powerful mitzvah, engaging both the arm (our actions) and the eye (our outlook and thoughts), we continue the Divine process that God initiated in Egypt with a “strong arm.”
THE BLESSING OF BO IS OUR FREEDOM. We finally take that first step out of the narrow spaces of Mitzrayim and become conscious journeyers touched by the dream of awakening.
Freedom in our tradition is not merely “freedom from,” freedom from oppression, suffering, or servitude. It is “freedom to,” freedom to be in direct relationship with God our liberator. Being in that relationship means serving the One, the Whole, the Holy. Our freedom depends on this servitude.
At the beginning of the portion God speaks to Moses, the prophet within us, and says, ” Bo! Come on in! I am waiting for you inside the heart of Pharaoh. The heart of Pharaoh is inside you. It is the place that has grown heavy with the weight of life’s experience. It is the place that has hardened – its outer shell cynical, and its inner layers made of fear and unhealed grief. Through this heart of Pharaoh you must come if you are to know Me, if you are to find your freedom.”
THERE IS A STORY about some jealous angels who are asked to hide the spark of the Divine in the world.
“Let’s put it atop the highest mountain,” offers one.
“No,” says another, “The Human is very ambitious; he will find it there.”
“Well then, let’s bury it beneath the deepest sea.”
“That won’t work either,” another chimes in. “The Human is very resourceful. She will even find it there.”
After a moment’s thought the wisest angel says, “I know. Put it inside the Human heart. They will never look there.”
And so the spark of God is hidden in the heart of Pharaoh where we are kept out by the heaviness that has accumulated, by the hardness that we meant for our protection. Sometimes that spark will speak to us from within, and say, “Bo! Come on in. I have been waiting for you for so very long.”
WHEN WE COME THROUGH the heart of Pharaoh and enter in to those depths within, the blessing we receive is freedom and protection from the Angel of Death, whose only realm is the surface of things.
We are called into consciousness during a “night of watching,” a night of vigilance.
We are blessed with a ritual of celebration and renewal so that we can re-experience the miracle of freedom with a feast of Matzah, unleavened bread. Matzah represents our essential self before it is “leavened” with ego.
THE SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE
THIS WORLD IS FOREVER CALLING US to the surface of things with its drama, seduction, humor, and entertaining dilemmas. Constantly bombarded with stimulation, we begin to rely on that stimulation to keep us from boredom, and dreaded emptiness. The spiritual challenge of Bo lies in the cultivation of a rich inner life. The obstacles to inner-ness, and depth, are represented by the heart of Pharaoh, the obstruction through which we must pass on our way to freedom.
How do we address the weight of our burdens? How do we acknowledge the hard shell of a self-image that has become too small? There are moments when the burden is lifted, when the hard surface softens, and the heart of freedom is revealed in its glory. Even as those moments fade I lift them up with my awareness and my gratefulness. I keep the memory of that inner vastness and hold it as witness against a world that pretends to reflect the whole truth.
ONE OF THE KEYS to freedom lies in Moses’ insistence that the whole of the people must be freed together. When Pharaoh offers freedom if the feminine and child parts are left behind in bondage, Moses refuses, for he understands that to be free is to be whole and integrated. When Pharaoh offers freedom to the people if they will leave their animal selves behind, again Moses refuses, knowing that without the acknowledgment of all aspects of our selves, we cannot serve God.
The challenge before us is to accept and honor all parts of the self as the pre-requisite to freedom. In answering the call of Bo, we are led onto the path of healing and wholeness.
This teaching from Rabbi Shefa Gold was included here since the sentence from this
parsha, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months.” has been used as the basis for the celebration of Rosh Chodesh.
In any spiritual practice, preparation and intention make all the difference. When the preparation for Rosh Chodesh can occur in all four realms of my being – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual – then my receptivity to its transformative effects is maximized. The Kabbalists of 16th century S’fat understood this essential truth, and they had the creativity and the courage (some might say audacity) to respond by developing a holy-day that would address the spiritual challenges of renewal that Rosh Chodesh brings. That holy-day came each month on the day preceding Rosh Chodesh and was called Yom Kippur Katan. The custom was to fast from sunrise to sunset and to recite certain prayers which had the flavor of Yom Kippur and would facilitate the process of self-examination and purificatiion and preparation for receiving the new moon.1
Those kabbalists were moon watchers. The lenses through which they gazed were intensely focused on issues of exile and redemption. And so as the moon waned, the exile of the Shechina (the divine presence), was noted and mourned. With the moon’s return came the celebration of the miracle of redemption, a redemption which could be tasted and known but briefly before the cycle of exile continued. They based their custom on a legend that was recorded in the Babylonian Talmud in which God Says to Israel, “Bring atonement upon me for making the moon smaller.” 2
They understood “making the moon smaller” as referring to a contraction of divine essence, which in human terms could be experienced as exile. There is another legend that at the time of Messiah, the moon will again be as bright as the sun.3 The moon’s return to glory will mark our redemption. The Kabbalists based their reading of these myths on a Lurianic Kabbalistic conception of Creation, which says that it was the divine act of tzimtzum (God’s self-contraction) which made room for the existence of our world. Yet it was this very act of tzimtzum which set into play the dramatic cycle of exile and redemption which has become the vehicle for the the soul’s evolution and the self-realization of every aspect of Creation.
As Gershom Scholem explains it, “..the act of tzimtzum itself, in which God limits Himself, requires the establishment of the power of Din (judgment), which is a force of limitation and restriction. Thus the root of evil ultimately lies in the very nature of Creation itself, in which the harmony of the Infinite cannot, by definition persist; because of its nature as Creation – i.e., as other than Godhead – an element of imbalance, defectiveness, and darkness must enter into every restricted existence, however sublime it may be.” 4
With the exile of the Shechina, darkness enters into our existence and with that darkness comes a longing for her return. Yom Kippur Katan comes at a point in the cycle when that longing is at its peak. Inner reality reflects the absence of moon and manifests as a longing for fullness that claws at the dark empty pause. It is a call to re-create ourselves in God’s image.
At the same time, it feels as if God might be doing tshuvah (turning, repentance), taking another look at us and reconsidering the relationship. On Yom Kippur Katan we feel those all-seeing eyes on us and we do what must be done to make ourselves beautiful to God. The dark moon night allows for the visibility of stars and planets that would ordinarily go unnoticed. On Yom Kippur Katan we do an examination of the inward skies as well – the constellations of our being that in the busy light of our lives might remain hidden from view. It is the time for correcting our aim, seeing the ways that we have been pulled off course. It is the time for paying attention to the subtle details, a time to feel the internal striving after righteousness, that is born of love.
The symbol of the moon and its cycles representing our experience of God’s presence is significant because it is multi-layered. As the moon waxes and wanes, there is a part of me that experiences the shrinking and swelling of light in the night sky. There is another part of me that knows and experiences the moon as a whole sphere which happens to reflect different amounts of the sun’s light. I can often even see the dark part of the moon when there is only a sliver of light. It is the same with the experience of exile. There are times when I feel so very far from God, and yet another part of me knows that it is only a “seeming” distance. God has never left my orbit. Yet I live my life in the drama of these cycles – the waxing and waning of God’s presence in my life. Another part of me stands back and understands these cycles as the contractions of labor that birth the soul into wholeness. Though all these layers exist simultaneously, I know that I must give myself fully to the experience of this drama, even to the pain of it.
The challenge of renewal requires us to look hard and honestly at the aspects of our personalities, habits, beliefs and patterns that need renewing- whatever it is that we have outgrown, whatever it is that holds us back, distorts our vision, prevents our love from flowing freely. If we do this work of examination, purification and realignment each month, then on Rosh Chodesh we will indeed have something to celebrate.
In a class with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in which we studied the liturgy of Yom Kippur Katan, he said that to really know and celebrate the essence of lunar energy, we must experience the “dark rays of the moon.” 5 When we notice and pay attention to the particular power of this time, those “dark rays” will aid us as we meet the challenge of renewal.
As our celebrations of Rosh Chodesh evolve in ways that express our deepest joys and concerns, so must our preparations, both inner and outer, effectively address our present needs. Although I can appreciate the beauty of the liturgy of those 16th century kabbalists, I have also felt a need to express the process of Yom Kippur Katan in a more personal way. And so I offer the following song. The chorus is in Aramaic and comes from the traditional liturgy of Yom Kippur Katan. It says, “Compassionate One, who answers broken hearts, answer us, answer us.”
May we all have the courage and strength to let our hearts break, and may the light of renewal, healing and wisdom stream in to those broken places so that in our wholeness we may shine.
The Dark Rays of the Moon6
My flaws are showing all too clear, In the dark rays of the moon, All my certainties will disappear, In the dark rays of the moon, I surrender to the shadow’s glare, In the dark rays of the moon, I am strengthened by the truth I bare, In the dark rays of the moon, Rachamana d’oney litvirey liba, aneyna, aneyna. (Compassionate One who answers broken hearts, answer us, answer us.)
When the tide is low I search the beach, In the dark rays of the moon, Broken dreams wash up within my reach, In the dark rays of the moon, I will hold the shell up to my ear, In the dark rays of the moon, Till the voice of God is all I hear, In the dark rays of the moon, Rachamana d’oney litvirey liba, aneyna, aneyna.
In exile I am forced to roam, In the dark rays of the moon, Till my prayerful longing brings me home, In the dark rays of the moon, Though I see my life in shades of dark, In the dark rays of the moon, In the deepest depths there glows a spark, In the dark rays of the moon, Rachamana d’oney litvirey liba, aneyna, aneyna.
1 Yom Kippur Katan is not observed for the following months’ Rosh Chodesh: Cheshvan, because Yom Kippur has just passed; Tevet because it would fall during Chanukah when fasting and penitential prayers are not permitted; Iyar, because it would fall during Nissan which doesn’t allow fasting; and Tishrei because it would fall on the day of Erev Rosh Hashana which doesn’t permit penitential prayers. If Rosh Chodesh falls on Shabbat, Yom Kippur Katan is observed on the preceding Thursday. (Klein, Isaac. A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1979 pages 262-3.)
2 Hullin 60b
3 Based on Isaiah 30:26
4 Scholem, Gershom. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead. New York: Shocken Books, 1991. p. 83.
5 The phrase “Dark Rays of the Moon” appears to have been coined during a conversation between Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Eric Neumann in Jerusalem. Discussing whether the moon gives off its own light or only reflects the sun’s light, Eric Neumann said, the moon has its own rays, they are the dark rays of the moon.
In Rashi’s opening comment on the Torah (Gen. 1:1), he indicates that the real “beginning” of the Torah is in our present parshah of BO. “Rabbi Yitzchak said: the Torah should have started from ‘This month will be for you the head of the months’ (Ex. 12:2) since this is the first commandment that the Children of Israel were commanded.” [See Rashi on Gen. 1:1, where he explains that the account of the Creation and the ensuing history recounted in Genesis are proof of the Children of Israel’s G-d-given right to the Land of Israel.]
In other words, the “real” start of the Torah is when we read it first and foremost as a message about our obligations rather than one about our rights. Having been passively freed by G-d from servitude to man, we have obligations to the “hero”, the only true Savior. If anyone lays claim to any lien on us, G-d’s lien always has priority.
The first mitzvah of the Torah to the Children of Israel is that of “sanctifying the month” (KIDDUSH HACHODESH). This involves counting the months of the year from Nissan, the month of redemption, and, when the Sanhedrin sits in the Land of Israel, taking testimony from witnesses who have sighted the new moon in order to declare the start of the new month. Marking time from the point at which the moon, having briefly disappeared from sight, begins to wax and grow, is a sign of constant regeneration and vitality. The sign of the crescent was taken over by Islam, but the unique power of the crescent of the new moon as a symbol of renewal is known only to the Children of Israel, who observe the commandment of Sanctifying the Month. Alone among the nations, the Children of Israel possess the Secret of IBBUR (literally “pregnancy”). This involves the method of reconciling the Lunar year (of 354 days) with the Solar year (of 365 days) through the insertion of an extra month in certain “leap” years (= SHANAH ME-UBERET, a “pregnant” year of 13 instead of only 12 months). It is to this and the related astronomical and mystical wisdom of the Children of Israel that Moses alluded when he said: “For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations” (Deut. 4:6, see Shabbos 75a).
From Rabbi Noa Kushner
https://www.thekitchensf.org/read-listen-posts/we-are-marked
From Rabbi Mel Gottlieb
Moses tells Pharaoh that when he and his people leave Egypt even all his flock and cattle must leave with them, “For we shall not know how we are to worship Hashem TILL WE GET THERE (10:26).” Our Chasidic masters proclaim that this teaches us an important lesson for our spiritual growth. They suggest that when it comes to the worship of G-d, one should not expect to find ready-made formulas. True worship of G-d requires ever-new wonder and discovery through painful trial and error, ever-new decisions and leaps of faith. Rav Chaim of Tzanz tells a story that he asked one of his students, “Tell me if you happen to come across a wallet full of money on Shabbat, what would you do, would you pick it up?” “Of course not, the Rebbe responded.` “Fool!” And the next student said, “Of course I would pick it up.” ‘Sinner’, said the Rebbe. The third student after hearing the master rebuking the first two students replied hesitantly: “Well I do not know. At finding the wallet full of money, I would struggle with myself in deciding whether or not to take it. I hope I would be able to make the right decision.” “At last we have the right answer,” said Reb Chaim. “Truly we shall not know how we are to worship the Lord until we get there.”
Another poignant lesson in worship is taught in relation to the plague of ‘Darkness.’ It was “A darkness so thick that they did not see one another (10:21).” The obvious question is raised about the nature of this plague, why was it called a plague in the first place? After all, the Egyptians could have lit lamps and been able to see despite the darkness. Isn’t that what they did every night when it got dark? Our Sages explain that the darkness from which the Egyptians suffered was a special kind of darkness. It was not a darkness that affected the eyes; it was a darkness that affected the heart. Physically they were able to see, but they did not feel for each other, they did not care for one another. This is what the Torah means when it says, “They did not see one another.” They were blind to each other’s needs. Each person saw only him or herself. And this is a terrible plague. Judaism expects of us that we shall “see” and hear each person as a human being who has needs, feelings, fears, hungers, hopes, just as we do; who is a child of G-d just as we are; who is fully entitled to be treated with the dignity, justice, and compassion we claim for ourselves. This is the essence and the prime teaching of our tradition, and the hope for our world!
Thus, Judaism teaches us how to behave ethically and uplift our world, but it also teaches us about the nature of the world, its inevitable changes, its contradictions, and how we are to proceed with all its complexity, utilizing our faith as the Life force that guides us to maturity.
Maturity in the human psyche means an increased capacity to hold opposite ideas at the same time and to be open to uncertainty. (To keep moving forward ‘Till we get there”). Faith emerges from patient reflection, and in the process we must be able to endure some uncertainty. If we only hold a single idea (Sheker) we only see the world through a narrow lens. A great tension may arise when we see the world moving in a direction that is contrary to our previous beliefs. At this point we may have to be able to see the world differently and hold some contradictory ideas or competing perceptions at the same time (Emet). We have to learn as Moshe did to be open, to be ‘present’ in the midst of potential conflicting ideas and challenges. There is a danger of being unable to bear this creative tension and opt to obviate the opportunity to experience ‘the new’ that emerges; there is the temptation, because of the tension, to close off ‘to the new’ and hold on rigidly to something familiar and secure. This attempt to reduce the tension instead of recognizing that change is inevitably occurring, and renewal is necessarily emerging is inimical to the life force, to the ability to grow. We must be able to keep going “Till we get there.”
We must be open to ‘turn aside’ to discover the burning bush. We must be courageous to leave the secure place in the Palace to trek in the desert and discover the ‘new;’ to miraculously experience that G-d is in every place if we are centered enough to open our eyes and hearts and embrace the Light that is always there waiting for us. This calls for risk taking and the knowledge that creativity comes through a new way of seeing that is very different from the habitual pattern that closes off the new that is waiting to be born.
Amidst all these inevitable uncertainties our true calling can emerge. Our fearful (ego) self may feel that we cannot continue with this apparent chaos. But, the deeper Soul is not defeated by the confusion that raises its head. Our faith carries us forward. We know why we have been created, and what we are intended to live for. The life of Emunah (faith even with uncertainty) aligns us with the path of true meaning. We understand that we can not only endure the tensions of life but we have the capacity, the gift and the responsibility to contribute to the healing and renewal of our world.
We must be able to trust and know that we will ‘get to the place where we are meant to be,’ and we must always be open to the Light within the darkness. The Light within our hearts will see clearly the Light within each of us created in the image of G-d. May you have a blessed, enlightened Shabbat!
Sending much love and peace,
Rabbi Mel
From The Hebrew College
Lighting the Plague of Darkness
By Rabbi Tiferet Berenbaum
Parashat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16) –
“Turn it and turn it for everything is in it,” we read in Pirkei Avot 5:22—“it” being the Torah. Elsewhere in Pirkei Avot we read, “Torah k’neged kulam,” Torah is relevant to everything. These verses are often cited when we are searching for a connection between our current realities and the Torah text. This week’s parasha, however, requires no such justification.
Parashat Bo describes the final three plagues that God wrought on the Egyptian government and its people—plagues of locust, darkness and the death of the firstborn. With the intensity of climate change over the past decade, we have seen a number of headlines that could have been taken straight from these chapters. Yet, nothing has rivaled these past two years of the pandemic. The plague of Covid-19 has touched all of our “tents” in some way, and the new Delta and Omicron variants continue to plague our communities.
In the Torah, the Egyptian people suffered eight plagues before they encountered the plague of darkness:
וַיֵּ֥ט מֹשֶׁ֛ה אֶת־יָד֖וֹ עַל־הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם וַיְהִ֧י חֹֽשֶׁךְ־אֲפֵלָ֛ה בְּכׇל־אֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם שְׁלֹ֥שֶׁת יָמִֽים׃
Moses held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days.
לֹֽא־רָא֞וּ אִ֣ישׁ אֶת־אָחִ֗יו וְלֹא־קָ֛מוּ אִ֥ישׁ מִתַּחְתָּ֖יו שְׁלֹ֣שֶׁת יָמִ֑ים
People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; (Exodus 10:22-23).
Reading these verses today, we are reminded of the lockdowns and social distancing of recent years, and the “darkness” that many have experienced as a result. The Egyptians only had to lockdown for three (or some say seven) days. As we enter the third year of this enduring pandemic, the “descending darkness” calls out from the text to be explored.
Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla, a 13th Century Spanish Kabbalist, wrote:
Deep in the depths there are many kinds of pits and deep holes that are endlessly deep called “sectors of Gehinnom.” There, much destruction and misfortune can be found and because of the depth, the pits are completely dark. They are always dark and despondent places and as such are called “laila” (night) because there is no light, rather it is a place of perpetual darkness.
This description is reminiscent of the language of depression. Many people experience Seasonal Affective Disorder, a form of depression that comes with the darkness of winter, and those people pass through the dark places only temporarily. Others experience depression in the ways described by Gikatilla, as pit of “perpetual darkness.” But, having experienced the pandemic for almost two years (whereas Rashi said the ten plagues took only ten months!), the varying levels of depressive darkness that the Egyptians may have experienced as result of the persistent plagues is understandable and, unfortunately, relatable as well.
But there is always hope. The Talmud (Brachot 5b) tells the story of Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba, who was sick, and Rabbi Yochanan, who came to visit him. Rabbi Yochanan asked, “Are your sufferings desirable?” To which Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba replied, “I welcome neither they nor their reward.” Rabbi Yochanan then reached out his hand and lifted his friend up. Later, Rabbi Yochanan himself fell ill and Rabbi Hanina came to visit him. Rabbi Hanina asked, “Are your sufferings desirable?” To which Rabbi Yochanan replied, “I welcome neither they nor their reward.” Rabbi Hanina then reached out his hand and lifted Rabbi Yochanan up.
The Gemara wonders why Rabbi Yochanan, who was able to lift someone else up from their illness, was unable to lift himself out of his own illness. The answer: “A prisoner cannot free themselves from prison” (Talmud, Brachot 5b). We need to lift each other up and to allow ourselves to be lifted. On the plague of darkness, the verse continues, “But the Israelites had light in their dwellings.” (Exodus 10:23) This light serves as a key, a release from prison, a tool for uplift. The Torah reminds us that even in the darkest dark, we always have some light within.
As we continue through the dark months of winter, it is critical for us to guard the light, the joy, burning within ourselves so that we can share it with others and help drive out some of the darkness. Let us remember that the days are getting longer, and commit to finding ways to reach out and lift up others and light up one another’s lives. Check on your friends, a short call or text to share some light. Especially, let us check on the “Rabbi Yochanans” in our circles, those helpers, healers, and happy ones whom we might assume are doing “okay.” We never know who might need our hand until we reach it out.
Rabbi Dahlia Shaham
Rabbis for Human Rights
Dvar Torah on “Bo” – Come as You Are
The weekly Torah portion of “Bo” (literally: come) is particularly difficult for those of us who uphold a humanistic worldview. At the heart of the eternal universal story of liberation and exodus, lies a painful story of collective indiscriminate punishment – the 10 plagues, reaching their peak in this week’s portion with the last three, which are the deadliest:
Locusts, turning everyone hungry, with no one to feed them; Darkness, turning everyone blind, with no one to see or guide them;And the death of first-born children, turning everyone bereaved, with no one to console them. Everyone – except the people of Israel.
The people of Israel did not experience hunger, since the plagues of livestock pestilence and hail skipped the land of Goshen, where they resided (Exodus, ch. 9), and the locusts have devoured all the fields and plants, but not the wild grazing grounds on which this people of shepherds rely.While darkness paralyzed the entire land of Egypt, “all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings” (Exodus 10: 23). And as for the first-borns – we all know the story.
The reason we all know the story is that “Bo” commands us to remember. This is the portion in which the Torah turns from myth to law. Up until this portion, only 3 Mitzvot (commandments) are mentioned. In this portion alone, along with the painful descriptions of the plague, we are given no less than 20 different commandments, all of which direct the Israelites to differentiate themselves (ourselves…) from all other peoples – by preserving an independent count of months and years, by observing the rituals of Passover and especially by remembering and passing on the story from generation to generation:
“You shall observe this as Law, for you and for your descendants, for all time.” (Exodus 12:24)
It is not a coincidence that this is one of the only Torah portions (a total of 7) that opens with an imperative verb, a command: “Bo” means Come. In this respect it is preceded only by “Lech Lecha” (which means Go) – the portion that brings us the first commandment that distinguishes our nation from others: circumcision.
Avram is commanded to “Go” on a personal, independent, lonely open-ended path of self-seeking. Moses, however, is commanded to “Come” along a collective, detailed predetermined path:“Come to Pharaoh. For I have made heavy his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display My signs among them” (Exodus 10:1).Moses is called to witness the actions of God and the horrible cost of the folly of Pharaoh and his people.
The word “Folly” here is imbued with meaning. Pharaoh is the prototype of leaders that historian Barbara Tuchman explores in her famous book “The March of Folly” (1984), in which she defined “Folly” as persistent policy pursued by strong leaders who, driven by an inexplicable self-destructive force, choose to sacrifice their people and their country rather than acknowledge an evident truth. 2000 years earlier, our sages used similar language to explain Pharaoh’s condition. They quote King Solomon’s Proverbs (27:3), “A stone has weight, sand is heavy, but a fool’s vexation outweighs them both.”
They then explain that while the people of Israel are like sand and stone, Pharaoh, with his heavy heart, is the ultimate fool. (Shemot Rabbah, 13:1) Such interpretation serves to strengthen the separatist approach, distinguishing between “us” – Israel, redeemed and pure – and “them” – Egypt oppressive and foolish. This approach may have served us over generations of discrimination and homelessness. But reading this portion in our days, at the dwellings of Israelites, at the land of Judea, the apparent lines distinguishing between Israelites and Pharaoh are no longer clear.
The Israelites are not in Goshen anymore, no longer landless shepherds, but also landlords, turning soil into profit, racing to climb up social pyramids of dispossession and exploitation. The Israelites are no longer immersed in light, we choose darkness, closing our eyes and hearts to the agonies and desires of others with whom we share the same land, water and air.
The plague of first-borns has not passed over us. The condition in which “there was no house where there was not someone dead” (Exodus 12:30) is ongoing in our perception. Every year, every cycle of violence, we count and name our dead, and ignore those of our neighbors. And we also share the folly. Especially in these times, when we are facing the same dangerous plague, painfully aware of how land and air connect us all. As long as we perceive ourselves as separate from our neighbors, as rulers over other peoples – we draw nearer and nearer to Pharaoh’s state of mind.
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, in the Zohar asks: Why does the Torah say “come to Pharoah”, it should have been “Go to Pharaoh”, why say “come”?
And Rabbi Ashlag interprets: “The difference between come and go, is that come means that we go together, as one says to a friend: ‘come’.”
Let us come, as friends, make use of this ancient memory and our great story of liberation, not as a window overlooking a distant past, but as a mirror reflecting the present. Come look at reality together, even if it hurts, and help each other out of this March of Folly, holding strong, yet compassionate hands.
From My Jewish Learning
Taking Notice in Our Time
Renewal is possible at every moment.
BY RABBI SHAUL D JUDELMAN
The original Jewish geography, according to our mystical tradition, has three components–Place, Time and Soul (Olam, Shana and Nefesh). These are the basic dimensions in which we exist and interact with our world.
Environmental thought often dwells in the realm of place, as clearly the physical world has inherent ecological import. Therefore, when we read the Torah for its environmental wisdom, we usually look for passages relating to land or material goods.
In the Torah portion Bo, however, our attention turns to time: “This month will be to you the head of the months (Exodus 12:2).” An exploration of this unique mitzvah can reveal profound insights into the Jewish nature of time, and unlock the secret of how the realm of time is also of deep environmental significance.
The First Mitzvah
The commandment to mark the month of Nisan is the very first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a whole. While still in Egypt the people are commanded to note the month so that they may prepare to observe the first Passover at the time of the Exodus.
This mitzvah is so significant that Rashi‘s first question on the entire Torah (Genesis 1:1) is: If the Torah is the book of the Jewish people’s Divine Law, why doesn’t it start with Parashat Bo? We know that it does not; we go through the whole process of the book of Genesis before arriving to this place of mitzvah. But what is so crucial about the awareness of the new month that it holds the significance of being the Torah’s first mitzvah?
Conceptions of Time
In some of the environmental movement’s writings on religion, what has been called the “Judeo-Christian” conception of time as a linear progression comes under attack. In such a view, history moves towards a culmination of God’s plan–the attainment of an ultimate, eternal good, far beyond that which is accessible in this world. Herein, we find our “end.”
The conception of time as cyclical is considered primitive, oblivious to the reality of a final, heavenly Truth. One of the tasks of Jewish environmentalism is to grapple with this version of religious belief and question whether Judaism really sees time and nature this way.
We are free to view time as an unstoppable vector moving towards a pre-determined end. But what are we to make of the events and processes along the way? Are they really just means to an end? Certainly not.
Subtle changes of weather, daylight, and flora signify complex changes in time. When we pay attention to our actual experience of these changes, we find a dynamic source of connection with our Creator. Far from being conceived as purely linear, our Jewish calendar reflects the cyclical nature of the year with a precise system of holidays and observances connected to each moment and season.
The Jewish Calendar
The beginning of our year, as proclaimed in the first commandment in Parashat Bo, is the linchpin of that connection. The Torah calls Passover “Hag haAviv,” the holiday of the spring, and the Talmudic prescription of the Jewish leap year, implanting an extra month in the year, is done in order that Passover will indeed always occur in the spring.
This is a dramatic statement of environmental consequence. The Sages could have declared a purely astronomical, lunar-based calendar, but based on the Torah’s prescription, they took steps to ensure that the calendar also reflects the cycles of nature. This demonstrates Judaism’s deep awareness of the Divine character of nature’s processes.
The confluence of redemption and springtime is no coincidence. Everyone is aware of the tremendous energy of renewal that occurs in the springtime. The rebirth of flowers and greenery, the new life in the fields–these are all symbols of our redemption. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyadi in a teaching about Passover mentions an anthropocentric view that the renewal of spring actually stems from the redemption of the Jewish people.
The truth, he teaches, is that there is no such primacy or causality–the Divine energy that brings forth the birth of spring in nature is the exact same energy that brought about the redemption of our people in Egypt. And it is precisely the return of spring each year that inspires our personal redemption with each Passover.
Months and Years
The word we receive with the commandment of time is chodesh–month, or more literally, newness. It is extremely instructive that our word for this basic time unit implies renewal and revelation, as opposed to a continuation of the status quo. Even the word for year, shana, is connected to the word for change, shinui.
Although we do view history as a march towards an ultimate Redemption, we are reminded–on Passover, on Rosh Hodesh, on Shabbat , and with the rising of the sun each day–that the renewal possible at every moment is of as much significance as the final goal. As we experience the changes of time, we should be changing and adapting along with them. And as we grow, we cannot afford to ignore the natural world, or to act in ways that suppress or spoil the inherent wisdom of God’s Creation.
Finding the revelation of God through time happens when we connect with the Divinity of natural changes. I was once a Shabbat guest in a very well-to-do synagogue. Many of the people there wore fine watches on their wrists. But as the third meal of Shabbat winded down, the Rabbi walked outside, looked up at the sky to count the three stars that mark the end of Shabbat, and only then gave the call for the evening prayer.
There is something beautiful in how our tradition’s attention to the natural cycles still impacts us today, how our Jewish practice brings us out of doors to find our connection with God. Rabbi Menachem Frumin of the Israeli town of Tekoa once asked, “How can Jews, who are commanded to develop Yirat Shamayim (fear of Heaven), live in a place where they can’t even see the Shamayim(skies)?”
The commandment of Rosh Chodesh teaches us to continually m’chadesh, renew, our perspectives and relationships, and to embrace chiddush, innovation, as a fundamental value of Jewish being. Our belief in time as a source of newness and opportunity is one of the deep tenets of Judaism that allows for a modern ethos of change like environmentalism to take root in the daily life of Jewish people.
Such an awareness can empower us to make the radical changes that sustainable lifestyles demand. Realizing that Jewish theology does not write off the revelation happening within the cycles of time, we are encouraged to engage and celebrate the changing nature of this world and to find profound and simple ways for us as Jews to serve God and live responsibly.
Provided by Canfei Nesharim, providing Torah wisdom about the importance of protecting our environment.
From JTS
Memory and the Exodus from Egypt
BO
BY RABBI JAN UHRBACH
זָכוֹר אֶת-הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר יְצָאתֶם מִמִּצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים כִּי בְּחֹזֶק יָד הוֹצִיא ה’ אֶתְכֶם מִזֶּה
Zakhor—Remember this day, on which you went free from Egypt, from the house of bondage, for with a mighty hand Adonai brought you forth from this . . . (Exod. 13:3).
The Exodus from Egypt is the first of several things the Torah commands us to remember (zakhor). What does it mean to remember, and how do we accomplish it?
In addition to the specific ritual aides-mémoire provided in the text itself (such as the observance of Passover [e.g. Exod. 12:14 ff.] and the wearing of tefillin [Exod. 13:9 ff.]), many authorities inferred from the zakhor command an obligation to mention the Exodus out loud, every day. Because of this, the tradition developed of reciting a list of the various things the Torah commands us to remember at the conclusion of the morning prayers. The most common version, known as the Shesh Zekhirot (“Six Remembrances”), contains:
the Exodus from Egypt (citing Deut. 16:3)
standing at Sinai (Deut. 4:9-10)
the incident with Amalek (Deut. 25:17–19)
the Golden Calf (Deut. 9:7)
when Miriam was punished for speaking ill of Moses (Deut. 24:9)
Shabbat (Exod. 20:8)
With all due wariness about the dangers of reductionism, the list itself is a pretty compelling curriculum for basic Jewish literacy, comprising core components of Jewish narrative and identity.
But beyond the specifics of what we are to remember, the very notion of remembering as a religious obligation—and a spiritual, intellectual, and ethical practice—is itself unusual, even extraordinary.
On the most obvious level, we’re commanded to remember because we human beings tend to forget. Of course we forget trivialities (where did I put my keys?), and that can be frustrating. But we also forget essential things—our values, our place in the world, our humility or our nobility, our identities, our mission—and that can be devastating. Especially when we’re angry or frightened, or distracted or manipulated, we can easily fall prey to becoming, in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words, “a messenger who forgot the message.” So a daily spiritual practice of calling to mind some of the key elements of our identity and purpose (mostly through narratives, which are easier to remember) makes sense.
But the command to remember—and the practice of the “Six Remembrances”—isn’t only about the danger of forgetting. It’s about a religious obligation to consciously shape our consciousness.
In its broadest sense, the Exodus reminds us that change is possible; both individually and societally, who we were yesterday need not dictate who we are today. But that freedom to change and evolve doesn’t come automatically. It’s hard-won, demanding constant internal vigilance and work.
We know that we don’t wake each morning as blank slates, objectively experiencing a brand-new world, entirely free to choose who and how to be today, or what to think and believe. Among the most powerful things that dictate our current reality is our past experience—our memories. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, the way we perceive and respond to the present is always filtered through and shaped by the past. We see what is through our memories of what was.
But it turns out that the influence goes both ways. Current cognitive research reveals that human memory is fluid and continually evolving. A memory isn’t like a document we pull up on our computer screen and close again, unchanged. Rather, every time we evoke a memory, we change it. Thus, our memories not only shape our current experience, they are also shaped by our current experience, in a continuous feedback loop.
The Torah and Jewish tradition have long intuited this, understanding that memory is different from history. Jewish memory makes no claim to consistency, completeness, or objectivity. It is brazenly and proudly subjective, selective, and ever evolving. For us, memory is an active process of shaping the past to create a meaningful present and a more hopeful future, the practice of reciting “Six Remembrances” being a prime example. History is right or wrong, true or false. Memory is alive or dead, contiguous or broken, meaningful or empty, helpful or destructive.
Perhaps then, the fact that the first command to remember relates to the Exodus from Egypt is no mere accident of narrative chronology. Remembering is part and parcel of the Exodus, because active remembering—consciously shaping our consciousness—is essential to freedom.
The internal feedback loop of past and present tends to be self-confirming and self-reinforcing. So, when we allow it to proceed unconsciously and undirected, our worldview can get stuck in a self-reinforcing pattern, with no real learning. Any false inferences we’ve drawn, untruths we’ve come to believe, distortions in our perceptions of self and other, will go unchallenged. As a result, we will continue to see only what we already believe, without even being aware of it, and we will be in “Egypt.”
That’s why propaganda has been a tool of enslavement by Pharaohs in every generation, the Russian effort to shape Americans’ opinions through deceptive social media posts being a recent example. Merely learning that “information” we once read and believed was falsehood, calculated to enflame our fear and anger, is insufficient to alleviate the impact of those falsehoods. Without consciously, intentionally, confronting how those falsehoods have impacted our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, they will continue to shape how we process new information, and reinforce themselves in our consciousness.
It takes particular effort to remember that we have the freedom—and therefore the responsibility—to choose what we allow to take root and remain in our memories. (Of course this freedom is not absolute; our consciousness and memory are influenced by physiological and psychological factors outside of our control. The religious obligation is therefore limited to shaping our consciousness to the extent we are able.)
That’s what the zakhor command, and the “Six Remembrances,” are all about: intentionally calling to mind certain values, practices, commitments, and warnings in order to consciously shape our consciousness, our responses, and our actions. Each item on the list is worthy of examination in its own right, but topping the list: remember the Exodus from Egypt.
Evoking that memory daily does far more than strengthen our identity as Jews. It reminds us to greet the day with gratitude and hope. It prepares our hearts and minds to empathize with the vulnerable, to value equality, freedom, and justice, and to experience pain and anger when those values are violated. It primes our consciousness to see opportunities for action and change in the world around us and within ourselves, rather than seeing inevitability and impossibility.
Most importantly, remembering the Exodus from Egypt is a daily reminder to fully embrace freedom of conscience and consciousness. It’s a reminder that we have an ethical and spiritual obligation to choose our inner reality, which will in turn shape our outward behavior and ultimately our world. “Remember”—not to allow your values, your desires and needs, your attitudes, your emotions, your reactions, to be enslaved to popular culture and societal norms; instead, deliberately shape them yourself. “Remember”—not to allow yourself to be a slave even to your own past; instead, deliberately shape your memories yourself—“re-member” them, putting the pieces together in a new, healthier way.
Memory can be a very strict taskmaster or the instrument of our redemption; it can keep us stuck or propel us forward, enslave or free us. We have to choose. It takes vigilance and discipline to revise our mental maps to accord with current reality, rather than contorting reality to conform to our mental maps. But only by doing so can we be truly free. And it is all too easy to accept as inevitable whatever worldview the Pharaohs of our world are currently peddling—it requires only forgetting. But insisting on our own values, persisting in our vision of what the world could and should be, demands courage, imagination, and a good memory.
Zakhor. Remember.
The following excellent books have influenced this commentary: Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything; Yehuda Kurtzer, Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past; Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory; and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory.
From Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan
LOCUSTS AND GRASSHOPPERS: BIBLICAL POWER ANIMALS
WHY PAY ATTENTION TO LOCUSTS AND GRASSHOPPERS?
Animal characters in Hebrew Bible are never random. The authors know their biology. And they know their ecology. And they assume that you do too. So if you know how an animal lives, then you can understand its role in a story, and you can deeply receive the story’s spiritual message.
Today’s animal is…the grasshopper. A strong supporting character throughout Hebrew Bible.
ISAIAH INVOKES GRASSHOPPERS…ALSO KNOWN AS LOCUSTS
The Prophet Isaiah says, “Don’t you get it? God dwells above the circle of the earth, and those who dwell on earth are like grasshoppers” (Isaiah 40: 21-22).
From the human perspective, grasshoppers are really small. About the size of an adult’s thumb. From this human perspective, Isaiah reminds us that God is infinitely creative, powerful, everlasting, energetic, and wise – while we are only kinda sorta a little bit creative and wise, with a little bit of power and a little bit of energy.
But from the grasshopper’s perspective, a grasshopper is not small at all. It’s just the right size. The right size to inspect grassy grains, to see how plants grow, and decide what to eat. And the right size to launch a leap with a height 10x the grasshopper’s length…and a distance 20x the grasshopper’s length. The grasshopper is just the right size to vault up…and catch a glimpse of heaven as it travels. Isaiah wants us to know that we may be small, but we can glimpse the infinity of God. Just like the grasshopper!
GRASSHOPPERS CARRY SPARKS OF DIVINITY
Isaiah’s poetic Hebrew gives us two hints of the grasshopper’s spirituality. Two hints that the grasshopper holds a little spark of the essence of God. Isaiah uses the same word to talk about how God lives, and how the grasshopper lives. God yoshev, dwells, above the earth, and the grasshopper is among the earth’s in-dwellers, yoshveiha. Both God and the grasshopper “dwell.”
Isaiah also draws a connection between where God lives and the word for “grasshopper.” God dwells above the chug, the circle, of planet earth, and earth-dwellers are like chagavim, the grasshoppers. Can you hear the alliteration? Yoshev, yoshveiha; Chug, chagavim. A grasshopper may look small to us, but God’s life and the grasshopper’s life are connected.
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE GRASSHOPPERS
Isaiah presses this message because misunderstanding a grasshopper’s power can have terrible consequences. As it does in this story from the Book of Numbers (Num. 13:1-14:39). The Israelites are camped in the wilderness, somewhere between Egypt and Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey. God says to Moses, “Get yourself twelve scouts. Twelve distinguished people with good leadership qualities. Send them to scout out this land of Canaan where you’ll be living. You can hear straight from them what kind of a land it is.”
Moses appoints the scouts, and sends them out. Forty days later, the scouts come back. They report to Moses in front of all the people. They say: “This is indeed a land flowing with milk and honey. Just look at these grapes and pomegranates and figs we brought back! They’re gigantic! But so are the people. Next to them, we looked to ourselves like grasshoppers.”
As soon as the people hear the word “grasshoppers,” they start yelling and crying. They become terrified. They rail against Moses and Aaron. “Why did God bring us to the wilderness just to kill us!?! We might as well die right here and now!”
And God says, “You know, you’re right. You are not ready to enter the land. You’ll get your wish to die in the wilderness. When the next generation grows up, they’ll have the opportunity to enter the land flowing with milk and honey.”
WHEN GRASSHOPPERS BECOME LOCUSTS
Why do the people become afraid as soon as they hear “we looked to ourselves like grasshoppers”? Because they are thinking only of how small the grasshopper’s body is. They’ve forgotten about the grasshopper’s extraordinary jump, and the glimpses it gets of heaven every time it jumps.
And they’ve forgotten one more important thing about grasshoppers. They’ve forgotten about grasshopper transformation. When a big group of grasshoppers get together, their bodies and their minds change. They become migratory locusts.
For years, modern biologists tried to identify the baby form of a migratory locust. But they couldn’t find any babies – until entomologist Boris Uvarov figured it out in the early 20th century. When desert drought gets extreme, and only a few tiny patches of moist grass can be found, grasshoppers congregate there. When the area gets so crowded that the grasshoppers can’t move without rubbing up against one another, their brain chemistry literally changes. Their serotonin levels rise. Their bodies harden. They eat more. Mate more. Develop a group mind. And they fly off together, a billion strong, in search of food. Once they’ve swarmed, nothing can stand in their way. Your field becomes their lunch. Their dinner. And their breakfast.
BIBLICAL LOCUSTS ARE MISSION SPECIALISTS
In Hebrew Bible, locust swarms are God’s armies. Their deployment is never random. Locusts are mission specialists. Sometimes people forget that a creative, energetic, and wise God dwells above the chug, the circle of the earth. That’s when the locusts, the community of chagavim, grasshoppers, show up.
They visit Pharaoh in the Exodus story. Pharaoh is not a fan of inclusive community. He feels terribly threatened by immigrants. Especially the numerous Israelites. So he oppresses them, enslaves them, kills them. God sends a message, “Let my people go.” Pharaoh ignores God and ignores God’s message. So God sends a giant community, a swarm of locusts, to strip Pharaoh’s fields. Pharaoh doesn’t get it, but his advisors do. They say, “Let the people go, so they can worship their God!”
LOCUSTS: A POWERFUL COMMUNITY
Locusts visit the Israelites in the time of the prophet Joel. Years of abundant harvest have destroyed Joel’s community. Agribusiness has created huge divisions between exploitive landowners and desperate day laborers. Rich and poor alike have forgotten that their number one religious responsibility is to look out for the welfare of others. So, God sends a giant community, a swarm of locusts, to remind them. When the locusts consume the fields, the prophet Joel sees the power of their community. And he calls his people into community to start over together (Joel 1-4).
And now you see, that Isaiah’s little reference to the grasshopper is not little at all. Isaiah hints at the locusts. He hints at Pharaoh, at Joel, at the power of inclusive community. After mentioning the grasshopper, Isaiah continues. “God brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, when God blows upon them, and they wither. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? The One who brings out their host and counts them, calling them all by name. Because God is great in strength, mighty in power, not one fails to show up.” (Isaiah 40:23-26)
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ISAIAH’S GRASSHOPPERS?
Isaiah just about says that we are the grasshoppers. We’re tiny, in the grand scheme of creation. Sometimes we get lost in our solitary concerns. But when times get tough, we glimpse a different spiritual possibility. We gather into community to support one another. In community, we become strong, we find a political voice, and we inspire other communities.
Isaiah speaks to the community of Judeans returning from exile in 530 BCE. Today, our communities include synagogues, mosques, churches and temples. They can include networks of spiritual groups across traditions. When our connections are strong, no one can divide us for political gain.
From JTS
Miracles of Biblical and Everyday Proportions
BO
BY RABBI JOEL ALTER
Last week, God pummeled Egypt unprecedentedly with hail:
The LORD sent thunder and hail, and fire streamed down to the ground, as the LORD rained down hail upon the land of Egypt. The hail was very heavy—fire flashing in the midst of the hail—such as had not fallen on the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. (Exod. 9:23–24)
On the combination of fire and ice, Ibn Ezra comments that this was “a wonder within a wonder.”
As this week’s portion opens, Moses and Aaron announce:
If you refuse to let My people go, tomorrow I will bring locusts on your territory. They shall cover the surface of the land, so that no one will be able to see the land . . . something that neither your fathers nor fathers’ fathers have seen from the day they appeared on earth to this day. (Exod. 10:4–6)
And so it was. “Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again” (10:14).
The Torah emphasizes the unprecedented nature of these two plagues. Neither hail nor locusts are miraculous. Naturally, some bouts are more severe than others. But the unique severity of these assaults, and their onset and cessation at God’s directive, places them beyond the natural order.
Hail and locusts are followed by impenetrable darkness upon Egypt while light shone upon the Israelites. The plagues culminate with the horror of the selective deaths of the firstborn, in which the Israelites shield themselves from danger by smearing blood upon their door posts.
And finally, following the Israelites’ release, the great coda of the splitting of the sea. These, the Torah practically shouts, are miracles. Signs of God’s power and unbounded sovereignty. Instructive events down through the ages both to Pharaoh (Exod. 7:17) and the Israelites (e.g. Exod. 11:7 and 13:14): to Pharaoh, who sees himself as god and sovereign, and to the Israelites, who through the Exodus are meant to grow out of degradation in servitude to their slave master and into redemptive and sacred service to God.
These cataclysms are what we have in mind when we talk about events on a biblical scale. I’m thinking of historic weather events like Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey. Such storms’ enormous scale, destructive force, and fatefulness feel “biblical.”
However, absent the biblical antecedents’ will and purpose, catastrophic weather in our day is not miraculous. Fearsome winds or waters are neither orchestrated nor deliberately unleashed. Harvey and other megastorms last summer are, indeed, telling us something, and they feel biblical in scale, but the Torah is after something else when relating its miracles.
As a rabbinical student, I had the privilege to study Bible with Moshe Greenberg, one of the great scholars of Bible of the last century. By the second semester I got up the courage to meet with him privately to ask some questions. “I have no problem,” I began, “that the Torah as written is a human document and I am untroubled that its events are neither historical nor scientific reports. But I don’t know what to do with the miracles. Why does the Torah need them? Why does it relate them that way?”
“When one experiences a transformational event in one’s life, it takes on enormous scale,” Greenberg replied. He related that once he was invited to the Johnson White House to sit on a panel of religious scholars. He recalled the awe he felt waiting in the Cabinet Room, overwhelmed by his august surroundings. All of a sudden, in walked President Johnson, a very tall man. Greenberg saw Johnson that day as a giant. Larger than life.
And he recalled, too, watching TV reports of the Freedom Riders in 1961. Greenberg was so moved by the righteousness of their cause and the courage of their journey that the young activists on the screen were, he was sure, the most beautiful men and women he had ever seen.
Whatever the (unknowable) events of the Exodus, Greenberg taught that that Torah’s miracles are animated by a transformational, lived experience of redemption.
I came to understand that the Torah seeks to bestir in me, and in every listener or reader, the Israelites’ leap to faith and fealty that is an explicit aim of the Exodus, but which so famously fails in the desert. “And when, in time to come, your child asks you, saying, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘It was with a mighty hand that the LORD brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage” (13:14). It astounds how much weight the Torah places on the telling. What alternative is there? Miracles don’t happen every day.
Or do they? Just before the morning Shema, the Siddur proclaims: “With kindness, You illumine the earth and all who dwell on it; in Your goodness, You renew creation day after day.” Embedded in Birkhot Hashahar, we extensively recount the crossing of the sea, and recall it yet again in preparation for the Amidah. By reciting Mi Kamokha, “Who is like you, God?” as the Israelites sang out on the far shore of the sea, we embody them. The Siddur challenges us to regard each sunrise as the recreation of the world. And to feel that being awake another morning is no less than the crossing of the sea.
The Torah’s telling of the Exodus is gripping. I experience a chill each time I read, “And Pharaoh rose at night, he and all his servants and all Egypt—and there was a great outcry in Egypt; for there was no household in which there was no dead” (12:30). Those miracles pulse with every telling.
But upon the first wakeful breath of every morning, to inhale hope from God’s love, and to exhale with wonder over renewed creation? Every day? To feel the exhilaration of redemption daily? These are the challenges of the religious life. Breaking through to gratitude is miraculous. Plain and simple.
From the Hebrew College
By Jordan Schuster Rabbinical Student
On Approaching the Tyrannical Heart
There is this scene from a tale by Rabbi Nakhman of Breslov that’s been hounding me lately. In it, the world has fallen under the sway of a handful of tyrants. Each tyrant claims a different moral truth. Each truth-claim begets a different moralizing discourse. As these discourses proliferate, the world divides, polarizes, rends itself apart. Mountains quake. The earth comes undone.
Into the midst of this trembling, tyrannical world, Nakhman places the figure of a zaken – an elder – bearded, pious, frail – who draws a circle of protection around himself and his family. One day, Nakhman tells us, one of the world’s royal tyrants approaches this elder and begs him for healing. A healer by trade, the elder welcomes the tyrant into his circle, then restores his vitality. In thanks, the tyrant yields to the elder a weighty tome: “This book contains a list of all the demons known to rage in the heart of the human-being,” the tyrant says. “By identifying which demon is active in which individual’s heart, you will be able to seize control over that individual.”
The elder smiles, thanks the tyrant, but refuses the book. “My power does not come through naming the demons that possess the human heart,” the elder replies. “My power comes from the faith I have in the human heart’s divine potential, from my ability to see that potential in each individual, then raise it up to the supernal root from which it was hewn.”[1]
Nakhman never describes the process by which the zaken of his tale develops this capacity to unearth from the tyrannical heart a sense of buried divinity. For this, one needs to turn away from Nakhman’s tales and towards Nakhman’s torot – Nakhman’s teachings. The following teaching Nakhman bases upon the first two verses of this week’s Torah Portion, Parashat Bo:
And God said to Moses: Approach Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart…in order that I might place My signs in his midst [be-qirbo]…that you might know: I am God…(Exod. 10:1-2)
When read within the context of the Exodus narrative, the “signs” God intends to “place in [Pharaoh’s] midst” refer to the plagues God intends to inflict upon Pharaoh’s kingdom. As a result of witnessing the execution of these plagues, Moses will come to “know…God.” This seems to be the basic, contextual reading of the above passage. When Nakhman confronts these verses, however, he replaces their contextual meaning with a kind of hyper-literalism. Indeed, in Nakhman’s hands, “the signs” God “places in [Pharaoh’s] midst” allude not to plagues placed within the midst of Pharaoh’s land, but rather to slivers of divine potential placed within the literal “midst” of Pharaoh himself [be-qirbo].[2] In relocating God’s divine signs from the external sphere of Egypt to the internal sphere of Pharaoh’s psyche, Nakhman effectively redefines the phenomenon by which Moses will come to “know…God” as well. Instead of “knowing God” through the physical experience of witnessing a series of supernatural plagues, Moses will now come to “know…God” through the spiritual revelation of how – even in the darkest and most tyrannical of hearts – traces of God still exist.
There is something beautiful to Nakhman’s claim that there dwells within all existence a constant, underlying capacity for transformation, growth, redemption, godliness. That said, Nakhman’s claim carries with it an extraordinarily problematic implication as well. It feels painful, if not entirely manipulative, to expect a victim to detect, then “lift up,” the “divine potential” of his or her oppressor. And yet, in the midst of our trembling and tyrannical world – where truth claims collide and moralizing discourses generate seemingly unbridgeable ideological chasms – there is something to Nakhman’s vision I can’t quite let go of. For while I deeply believe that we must continue to call out injustice and fight actively for the execution of what we deem is “just,” I also can’t help but linger – again and again – on this image of an elder refusing to exploit the demonic in others, on this depiction of an ancient leader gazing into the hardened heart of a tyrant to find – buried “within its midst” – something human, something divine, something infinitely worth approaching.
Jordan Schuster is in his final year at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, where he will be co-teaching a course on the tales of Rabbi Nakhman of Breslov this spring with Rabbi Arthur Green.
[1] Adapted from my reading of Sippurey Mayses, A Mayse Vegn a Higer (#3).
[2] See Nakhman’s Likkutei Moharan 1:64.
From Rabbi David Ingber
People of the Door
https://soundcloud.com/romemu/people-of-the-door-bo
From Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
Exile and expansiveness – a d’varling for parashat Bo
Right now in our cycle of Torah readings (parashat Bo) we’re reading about the plagues and the start of the Exodus. Looking for inspiration on this week’s parsha, I turned to the Hasidic master known as the Me’or Eynayim, “The Light of the Eyes.” (His given name was Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl.) He writes about Egypt as a place of existential exile, and about what happens to us spiritually when we are brought forth from there.
Slavery in Egypt is our tradition’s ultimate example of גלות / galut, existential alienation from God. It’s the paradigmatic example of constriction. When we talk about being slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt, we’re also always talking about experiences of constriction in the narrow places of our lives now.
For the Me’or Eynayim, galut is a state of not-knowing God. It’s a state of having fallen so far from unity that we don’t even realize we’ve fallen. This, he says, is what we experienced in the Narrow Place. And Pharaoh is the exemplar of exile. He saw himself as a god, and had no awareness of a Source greater than himself.
When one is in this kind of galut, it’s hard to know the difference between what will give life and what will deaden us. Torah instructs us to “choose life,” but it’s hard to know what will enliven us when we’re in a place of alienation from our Source. What the Exodus offers us is the opportunity to leave existential exile, and in that leaving, to regain the capacity for moral choice.
In the state of galut that we experience when we’re in life’s Narrow Places, there’s only katnut-consciousness, small mind. It’s a vicious cycle, because exile creates small mind, and small mind makes it hard to imagine breaking free from exile.
Emerging from the Narrow Place means being reborn from katnut into gadlut, from small mind into expansive consciousness. The words גלות / galut and גדלות / gadlut are similar, but there’s one letter of difference between them: the letter ד / daled, which — as I was powerfully reminded by Rabbi David Ingber in his extraordinary sermon on doorways and welcoming the stranger last night — is a delet, a door. Galut is exile; gadlut is greatness, or expanded-mind. We begin in exile. We go through a door, a transformation, a state-change. And then we reach gadlut, “big mind.” And once we’ve reached expansive consciousness, we can seek to know God wholly. That’s why we were brought forth from Egypt, says the Me’or Eynayim: in order to know God wholly.
We were brought forth from Egypt in order to see beyond the binaries of our own constriction. Once we begin to glimpse gadlut, the constrictions of exile fall away.
Exile can be self-perpetuating, because when we’re in it, it’s hard to see a way out. Depression is like that. Despair is like that. Overwhelm is like that. Sometimes if I look at everything that’s wrong with the world, exile rushes in and washes me away. But if we can open our minds even for an instant to glimpse the prospect of a better life, the fact of glimpsing a redemptive possibility makes that redemption possible.
Shabbat is our chance to glimpse the world redeemed — to live for one day a week not in grief at the world as it is, but in celebration of the world as it should be. May we emerge from Shabbat ready to roll up our sleeves, to combat small-mindedness wherever we find it, and to choose to bring more life everywhere we go.
From Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
With what we are to serve – a dvar Torah for WCJA 2017
In this week’s Torah portion, Moses argues with Pharaoh about letting the people go.
It’s framed as “let the people go so they may worship Adonai.” Torah doesn’t speak in terms of freedom for its own sake. Moshe seeks his people’s freedom from servitude and oppression and hard labor — and, it’s not just about being freed from, it’s also about being freed toward.
Pharaoh suggests he might let them go, but only the men, which Moses rejects: no, we’re not leaving women and children behind. Then Pharaoh suggests he might let them go, but says they can’t take herds or flocks with them. And Moshe says no, because:
וַאֲנַ֣חְנוּ לֹֽא־נֵדַ֗ע מַֽה־נַּעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־ה׳ עַד־בֹּאֵ֖נוּ שָֽׁמָּה / “We shall not know with what we are to serve until we get there.”
On the surface, he’s making a practical point. The request was to let our people go so that we could worship God in the wilderness, and the way we did that back then was through animal sacrifice. In the physical world, when he says “we shall not know with what we are to serve” he’s talking about goats and sheep. But in the worlds of emotion and spirit, Moshe’s highlighting a fundamental truth of every new undertaking: we never know what a journey will ask of us.
Going from slavery to freedom, from servitude to Pharaoh to service to the One, from narrow straits to liberation: it’s the core story of Jewish peoplehood. We retell it every year at the Passover seder. We remind ourselves of it every Shabbat when we sing Mi Chamocha, and when we make the kiddush over wine. Those of us who have the practice of daily Jewish liturgical prayer remind ourselves of it every day.
It’s also a core story of our lives. We move from constriction to expansion, from unconsciousness to consciousness, from calcified habits to transformation, over and over again. As we grow up and leave a childhood home for college, or leave the Purple Valley for the wide world outside. As we outgrow old circumstances and start over. As we discover that we can be more than we have been, and then pursue that becoming.
Hold that thought, because I want to pause and look at what it means to serve. I said earlier that Moshe’s request is to free the people, but not so they can be accountable to no one. He seeks to free them from Pharaoh so they can serve God instead. That may sound like trading one master for another. But I think it’s not, and here’s why.
Pharaoh dehumanized us. He signed an executive order to have our baby boys murdered. Pharaoh believed that we were inferior to “regular” Egyptian citizens. Pharaoh saw us as teeming masses of foreigners, people who prayed differently and dressed differently and therefore deserved a lifetime of slavery in the pyramid-industrial complex. When describing how Pharaoh saw us, Torah says “the Israelites were fruitful and they swarmed” — swarmed, like bugs. Being enslaved to Pharaoh meant working for the betterment of someone who saw us as equivalent to cockroaches.
Service to God is the opposite of that. To Pharaoh we were indistinguishable insects, but in God’s eyes each of us is infinitely precious. Torah teaches that every human being is made in the image and the likeness of the One — regardless of race or religion, shape or skin tone. To serve God means to serve the source of love and liberation. It means to choose to align ourselves with the force that brought us out of slavery, and to seek to break the shackles of those who are still enslaved.
But maybe you don’t believe in God, not even the one I just described. That’s okay. We can talk another time about why I’m more interested in engaging with — talking to, wrestling with, demanding things of — than believing in. No matter what you “believe in,” there is service that awaits you, if you’re willing to hear the call. Leave the world a better place than you found it. Work toward justice and human rights for all. Feed the hungry, protect the powerless, speak up for those who are victimized by structures of power and domination. That’s the calling to which Judaism summons us.
And you won’t know what resources you’ll need for that work until you get there. You can learn. You can study. You can prepare with all your might. But the work of making the world a better place will require all of who you are, and you’ll have to reach for strength and courage and conviction that you didn’t know you had. Not once, but over and over again.
Every new chapter requires us to grow and deepen what we can offer to the world. It’s true of a new semester. It’s true of a new relationship, or a new job, or a new Presidential administration. We won’t know with what we are called to serve until we get there. We won’t know what this new adventure demands of us, what internal qualities of kindness or strength, courage or resolve we’re going to need — until we get there.
And “getting there” may be a misnomer. Because every moment asks us to dig deep and draw on the best of who we are. I know what resources I needed for yesterday, but yesterday’s over. I know what resources I needed an hour ago, but that’s then, and this is now. וַאֲנַ֣חְנוּ לֹֽא־נֵדַ֗ע מַֽה־נַּעֲבֹד֙ אֶת–ה׳ עַד־בֹּאֵ֖נוּ שָֽׁמָּה — We won’t know what this new moment asks of us until we reach it. And then there will be another new moment, and another after that.
Right now it’s Shabbes, a deep dive into holy time. This is the time to soak up what nourishes us, to set aside the pressures of the week. This is the time to remember who we truly are — not when we’re defining ourselves through what we do, or what we’ve accomplished, or what’s on our to-do list, but through who our hearts and souls yearn to be.
And when we emerge from this Shabbat, life will ask things of us. The new week will make demands on us. Our professors, or bosses, or families, will make demands on us. The world at large will make demands on us. May you be blessed with the ability to dig deep and find the reserves you need for whatever liberation, whatever new adventure, whatever challenges lie ahead. Shabbat shalom.
From Rabbi Simon Jacobson
The Anatomy of Fear
What Are We Afraid Of?
And G-d said to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh…” – Exodus 10:1
Said Rabbi Shimeon: Now it is time to reveal secrets that are bound above and below. Why does it say, “Come to Pharaoh”? It should have said, “Go to Pharaoh” …. But G-d brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the… supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve…which Moses feared to approach himself because he saw that he was rooted in supernal roots…
Zohar, part II, 34a
Fear is perhaps our greatest enemy. Not because it is loud and aggressive, but because it is invisible. Is there a person alive that does not suffer from some fear, known or (even worse) unknown? And what effects do our fears have on our lives – what impact does it have on our choices and ambitions, on our behavior, pride, jealousy, anger and so many other emotions? Can it even be measured?
Is our drive for success a way to mask or compensate for some of our fears? What critical mass effect does fear have on society?
Above all, what are we exactly afraid of and what is the root of fear? Without getting to the core of our fears we can hardly expect to alleviate them.
This question is more compelling today than ever as we face fears of all sorts, as Muslim radicals wage war, now not just against Israel, but against the entire free world, unleashing our underlying emotions in this climate of global uncertainty.
Though our fears today have obvious roots (fear of attack, fear of death), yet we see that there are individuals – as has always been the case in history – that do not get paralyzed by fear and have the ability to grow through it. What is their secret?
This week’s Torah portion, parshat Bo, teaches us the secret to both the root of fear and to its antidote.
The chapter opens with the following words: And G-d said to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh…” The Zohar [classical mystical text] asks the question: Why does it say, “Come to Pharaoh”? It should have said, “Go to Pharaoh” … But G-d brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the… supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve…which Moses feared to approach himself because he saw that he was rooted in supernal roots…”
Moses had already visited Pharaoh many times before this commandment, “Come to Pharaoh.” What suddenly frightened Moses this time around? And how did G-d’s response “Come to Pharaoh” assuage his fear?
Up till this point Moses dealt with Pharaoh in his various manifestations, not his essence. But now he is told to enter into the core essence of Pharaoh’s evil, the ‘great serpent.’ This terrified Moses. To which G-d responds: “Come to Pharaoh,” Come with me. G-d is saying that you don’t go alone. I come with you and help you eradicate the evil at its source.
And here we see the true nature of fear.
Fear’s true power is in the loneliness that it imposes upon us. We feel we are alone in our predicament. We feel that no one can understand our pain and suffering. And even if someone can empathize, we still feel that they are not with us, not one with us and therefore ultimately we remain isolated.
Life inherently has a built in existential insecurity. Upon birth, the Talmud tells us, we are made to forget the teachings ingrained into our very psyches and souls. Existence, the mystics teach us, is an effect of a cosmic detachment. As a result of the ‘great tzimtzum’ we feel all alone; we feel we are on our own – isolated in a desolate universe, disconnected from any source of sustenance.
This existential loneliness is the root of fear. And this is what Moses – even the great Moses – was so terrified of as he prepared to confront the core evil of Pharaoh, the ‘supernal serpent.’ He was afraid and felt that he was going alone.
Obviously, Moses’ fear is relative to him and to the unprecedented challenge he was facing: Encountering and purging the root essence of evil. Fear is relative to each person and his/her situation, the difficulties each of us faces and the strengths each of us has. What frightens one person may not even stir another. Yet, the common denominator between all of us is – and this is the relevant lesson we derive from Moses – that fear (on the level relative to us) results from our sense of isolation.
And therefore G-d’s response to Moses’ terror is, “Come with Me,” I go with you.
This is the powerful message that each of us must take from parshat Bo – “Come with Me.” No matter how lonely we may feel, especially in our loss and pain, we are not alone.
The only answer to the invisible power of fear – the fear of being alone – is to recognize that you are not alone.
You are never alone.
From Rabbi David Ingber
Don’t Jump
https://soundcloud.com/romemu/dont-jump-bo
From JTS Community Learning
Rabbi Lisa Gelber
Lighting the Darkness
Bo 5768
It’s difficult not to notice darkness at this time of year; so many of us set out for work in the dark and leave our places of business long after the sun has set. In these cold and potentially dreary winter months, the dark may feel heavy, and we long for a few rays of light.
But darkness is a part of the natural order of things. Our Torah tells us we emerged from darkness: “the earth was unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep . . . (ve-ha’aretz hayta tohu va-vohu, ve-hoshekh al p’nai t’hom . . . )” (Gen. 1:2); “and God separated the light from the darkness (va-yavdayl Eloheem bayn ha’or u-vayn ha’hoshekh)” (Gen. 1:4). Notice, God does not destroy the darkness; rather, it is pulled back, separated to expose the light and the dark, each in its own time and place.
The absence of light, in its literal sense, may designate a time for rest. Dark is a time to be—without the glare of computer screens, television sets, the Wii. We close our eyes, notice our breath, and bring things down a notch (or more). In these moments, darkness may bring awareness, even comfort. Yet almost all of us can think of a time when we were afraid of the dark. We imagined monsters under our beds and in our closets, we heard noises and footsteps in the house. Whatever grounded us, whatever made us feel safe, secure, and protected, disappeared within the dark. Darkness signaled fear, uncertainty, and a loss of control, not a way in which we wanted to live.
Parashat Bo introduces darkness, the penultimate plague to afflict the Egyptians before the Israelites are freed from slavery, as something that could not be mitigated. This hoshekh, an extreme darkness, not only highlights the potentially terrifying nature of the dark but also demonstrates the capacity for darkness to become a plague, affecting physical and spiritual well-being.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Hold out your arm toward the sky that there may be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched.” Moses held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings. (Exod. 10:21-23)
The darkness for the Egyptians in Egypt is not merely an absence of light; it has substance that remains for an extended period of time. In his commentary, Ramban (1194-1270) suggests that the darkness was composed of such a thick, foglike substance that it extinguished all of the lamps; there was no fire at all. No light. No way to see up or down; no means of telling day from night. No opportunity to see oneself in relation to others.
The Torah reminds us that the Israelites were afflicted with hard labor and spiritual strain. The Egyptians did not see the despair of the people of Israel. They could not look into the eyes of their fellow human beings and acknowledge their pain. They stumbled about in the darkness, tripping over the core institutions of respect and freedom. “No one could see the other. And no one could rise from his or her place for three days (Lo ra’u ish et ahiv. V’lo kamu ish mitachtav shloshet yamim)” (Exod. 10:23). These were a people blind and rooted to the ground, a people engulfed by spiritual and emotional darkness. How does darkness become a plague? By blocking the light, turning off our awareness, shutting down relationships, and preventing us from becoming agents of change.
Think back, for a moment, to those times when you were truly afraid of the dark. What brought you back to the safety of your surroundings? Calling out for a loved one, turning on a light, checking under the bed and in the closet, thinking outside of yourself, finding the spiritual and intellectual proof that you were not alone. What prevents our own experiences of the dark from filling us with terror and cutting us off from one another? Honesty, about how and where we are. Ongoing awareness of God. Commitment as a people to remain in relationship with one another and our Creator.
Honesty with self: We remain mindful of our vulnerability in the dark each evening when we recite the second blessing after the Shema’. Hashkeeveinu (Siddur Sim Shalom, 292) offers the space and context in which to articulate our fears, both personal and communal, and to call upon God’s presence in our lives as companion and protector. We need not do this alone. God may help mitigate our fears and our demons.
Ongoing awareness of God: In his negotiations with Pharaoh, Moses insists, in verses twenty-five and twenty-six, not only that the people go up to worship the Lord, but that the flocks and herds accompany the men, women, and children as well. He maintains that “not a hoof shall remain behind; for we must select from it for the worship of the Lord our God.” Why must they take the animals as well? “We will not know with what we are to worship the Lord until we arrive there (va-anachnu lo-nayda mah na’avod et Adonai ad boaynu sha’mah).”
Rashi, our eleventh-century commentator, suggests we understand these words in a literal manner—we don’t know how many animals we will need. Thinking more broadly and, for our purposes, somewhat anachronistically, one might say there is no way to know if their service to God will be different or not when they get to where they are going. The Etz Hayyim Humash notes that we cannot know what God wants of us until we encounter God in each new stage of our lives. More than that, we don’t know with what we will serve God until we are in that placecalls on us to be mindful, as a people and as individuals, of how God resides in our world (whether that be a communal or a personal space), so that moment to moment, as our journey unfolds, we may have the wisdom and the energy to engage.
Commitment to relationship: How do we end Shabbat each week? We light a braided candle to illuminate the night. The torchlike flame helps us to see through the dark, to identify the people who fill our celebrations with life, and to help guide us into another week, another opportunity to elevate ourselves and our world through acts that express kindness and motivate justice. In order to survive, in order to move forward and grow, one must see the other not as other but as an-other: another being critical to our society and our world.
In the book of Proverbs we learn, “ner Adonai nishmat adam”—”the lamp of God is the soul of the individual” (20:27). Each of us carries God’s spark. May we have the courage and the wisdom to illuminate the dark, shining light on the blessings we have to offer the world.
From Brian Yosef Schachter-Brooks
Ignoring Ignorance- Parshat Bo
Sometimes you might be fooled into thinking that spiritual freedom is a delusion, that in order to have it you would need to ignore your real problems. Actually, the opposite is true. When you lose your happiness and freedom because you are thinking about your problems, isn’t that the delusion? Is it not delusion to think that by making yourself miserable you are somehow addressing or improving your situation? In reality, you now have two problems- the difficult situation and the inner tension and negative energy generated by your thoughts.
In this week’s reading, Parshat Bo, Moses has been presenting plague after plague to Pharaoh, but Pharaoh just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t realize that his refusal to let the Israelites go free is bringing plagues upon himself. What does he think he is accomplishing? But that is exactly what the ego does: it brings suffering upon itself, rather than allowing liberation to happen.
The remedy is in the opening lines in which G-d says to Moses, “Bo el Paro- come to Pharaoh.” G-d doesn’t say, “go to Pharaoh” but “come to Pharaoh”, indicating that G-d is there with Pharaoh, telling Moses to “come”. In other words, the Divine is found in the suffering itself, not in trying to avoid it.
Bring your awareness into your suffering. Don’t look out into the future from your suffering, imagining that things will be better once you get what you want. The end of suffering and the beginning of liberation is the un-knotting of the Pharaoh, and that begins with bringing your attention into the Pharaoh, becoming conscious of the energetic knot of resistance within. Once that knot is broken, liberation is immediate; it is a leap. Don’t try to be too prepared. When it’s time to go, just go. Unleavened bread and all. There is only one chance, and that chance is now… and yet “now” never ends!
There is a hint of this in the word “bo” which means “come”. It is composed of two letters- bet and aleph. The bet has the numerical value of two, and can mean “house”. The aleph as the value of one, and among its many meanings are “chief” and “ox”. In the movement of consciousness toward any contraction that is arising within your body, the contraction can release and the duality between consciousness and contraction of consciousness can shift into unity. Rather than there being suffering on one hand, and resistance to suffering on the other, there is just presence with Being as it is unfolding. To do this, you have to be like a bayit- a welcoming home for whatever arises within. Then, you can evolve into an aluf- a “chief” of self mastery, unified within, strong and rooted like an ox.
May this Shabbat see the un-knotting of all contracted separateness and may we come close to the Divine Presence in sweet intimacy for healing, peace and wisdom. Amein.
From Rabbi David Ingber
Borrowing Gold Vessels: The Gifts we Take (Make) from Suffering
https://soundcloud.com/romemu/borrowing-gold-vessels-the
From Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
All of us, bringing our all: a d’var Torah for Bo
Posted: 03 Jan 2014 07:34 AM
Last week we read about Moses and Aaron going to Pharaoh, asking for permission to take their people into the wilderness to make offerings to Adonai. Pharaoh, not surprisingly, said no. God’s response was the first several plagues.
In this week’s Torah portion, the plagues continue. And for a moment, Pharaoh relents. “Go worship your God,” he snaps to Moses and Aaron. “Who’s going with you?”
Moses replies, “We will all go, with our youths and elders; we will go with our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds.” The phrase “youths and elders” is a rhetorical figure of speech which uses two extremes to convey a totality. The text says “young and old,” and we’re meant to fill in “and everyone in between.”
The Eskenazi and Weiss translation reads “We will all go, regardless of social station.” Rich and poor and everyone in between. Those who had assimilated into Egyptian ways, and those who had retained strong Hebrew practices, and everyone in between. Those who had power, and those who were powerless, and everyone in between.
How powerful that in this moment, as Moses has first taken on the mantle of leading our people out of slavery, he insists that making offerings to Adonai is something which all the people must do.
The Hebrew word עבודה (avodah) means service, as in the service of sacrifices we once offered, now replaced by the service of the heart which is prayer. We will read soon in Torah about how the priestly system of sacrifice began in the wilderness, and then about the priestly apparatus which existed once the Temple is built. But here in this moment before the Exodus, Moses offers a glimpse of a radically egalitarian future in which all of us are called to be servants of the Most High.
Not just the priests. Not just the men. Not just those with social standing. All of us.
Unsurprisingly, Pharaoh balks. “May God be with you the same as I mean to let your descendants go with you,” he sneers. He knows that it’s not possible to serve two masters, and that if he lets us be in relationship with God, we will no longer be completely under his thumb.
The Hebrew words for slavery and for service come from the same root, ע / ב/ ד. This root is a recurring motif in this week’s Torah portion; it appears, in various forms, 21 times (an average of once every three verses!)* In the haggadah we read avadim hayyinu, “we were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt…” And once we enter into covenant with God at Sinai we become avdei Adonai, servants of the Most High. The word denoting service is the same…but who or what are we serving? That’s what makes all the difference.
In the Jewish understanding, we don’t shrug off Pharaoh’s chains in order to be completely unfettered, free of responsibility to anyone or anything. The truest freedom comes in choosing to serve: to serve the greater good, to serve creation, to serve the source of love in the universe. Either our lives belong to Pharaoh — to overwork, to empire, to power-over, to that force which seeks to dominate and to own us — or they belong to the Source of all, the Wellspring of creation, the One Who speaks and the world comes into being.
The gift of Shabbat is that it removes us from Pharaoh’s domain every week. No matter what our obligations — to our jobs, to the bank which holds the mortgage, to social pressures or unrealistic expectations — on one day each week, we let all of that go. We stop serving our bosses and instead remember that we are truly servants of God, blessed and enlivened by that enduring relationship with something greater than ourselves.
And that is true no matter who we are. Young and old, righteous and wicked, rich and poor, all of these binarisms and everyone in between — all of us are called to offer our hearts and our hands.
After two more plagues, Pharaoh changes his mind again. “Fine,” he says, “all of your people can go, but leave behind your flocks and herds.” And Moses says no, we need to take everyone and everything. “We shall not know with what we are to worship God until we get there.” The simplest understanding of that line is that he’s talking about animals for sacrificing. In those days we offered praise and thanksgiving through animal sacrifice; the Hebrews needed all of their livestock in case God asked for more sheep or goats. But I think this line from Torah has a deeper truth which is clear to us today in our post-sacrificial world: when it comes to divine service, we have to bring all that we are.
We never know which parts of ourselves will be needed, which talents or skills or ideas or yearnings will fit the bill. We won’t know, we can’t know, how we will serve God until we reach each new moment, each new challenge. That’s why we have to bring all of us: not only the whole community, but also all of each individual person’s body, mind, heart, and soul.
If we leave any person behind — if we leave any part of ourselves behind — we won’t be able to serve wholly (or to serve the Holy.) When it comes to serving God, all of us have to bring our all.
*The source for the citation on 21 appearances of עבד is this My Jewish Learning commentary
The Maqam Project
http://themaqamproject.com/boelparo/
From Chaya Kaplan-Lester
Embracing Pharodox
http://www.havayah.com/1/post/2012/01/post-title-click-and-type-to-edit15.html
From Melissa Carpenter
Bo: The Dog in the Night
January 14, 2013 at 10:14 pm | Posted in Bo, Passover/Pesach | Leave a comment
To me, dogs are pets. Most dogs have appealing personalities, and the love between dog and human is real. I rarely cry, but I cried when our dog died.
In the Torah, dogs are bad news. The ancient Israelites did not domesticate dogs until late in the First Temple period, even though their neighbors had long been training dogs for hunting, herding, and guarding. So most of the 24 references to dogs in the Hebrew Bible view them as disgusting feral scavengers. Calling a man a dog (or worse, a dead dog) means that he is the lowest of the low.
The first appearance of the Hebrew word for dog, kelev, is in this week’s Torah portion, Bo (“Come”).
Moses said: Thus said God: In the middle of the night, I Myself will go out in the midst of Egypt. And every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne, to the firstborn of the slave-woman who is behind the millstones, and every firstborn beast. Then there will be loud wailing in all the land of Egypt, the like of which has never happened, and the like of which will not happen again. But as for all the children of Israel, not a dog yecheratz its tongue against man or beast; in order that you shall know that God makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. (Exodus/Shemot 11:4-7)
yecheratz = will cut, will use a sharp instrument, will decide
On the night of the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, not a dog will use its tongue as a sharp instrument against the Israelites. In other words, while God is killing Egyptians, not even a dog will growl or bark to threaten the Israelites.
The verses translated above include two contrasts between the highest and the lowest. First, God says all the firstborn of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne, to the firstborn of the slave-woman who is behind the millstones. The phrase “slave-woman behind the millstones” is a translation of a phrase that an Egyptian document uses to indicate someone of the lowest possible social class. In other words, God will make no exceptions; everyone belonging to Egypt will suffer, regardless of social position, and regardless of guilt or innocence.
Next, the Torah says that everyone belonging to Israel will be safe from all threats: from the highest power possible–God Itself–to the lowest danger–dogs. In the middle of the night, while God is killing the Egyptian firstborn, and the Israelites are eating their Passover lamb, roaming dogs will not bite any Israelite humans or beasts. They will not even bark.
This reminds me of the dog that did not bark in the night in “Silver Blaze”, a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle. Inspector Gregory asks Holmes, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.”
Sherlock Holmes has deduced that the guard-dog was silent in the middle of the night because the intruder was not a stranger, but the dog’s owner.
The passage in Exodus/Shemot contrasts the loud wailing of the Egyptians with the silence of the dogs. Dogs get agitated when their owners start screaming and wailing, and they respond by whimpering and barking. The dogs who will not growl or bark during the night of the death of the firstborn clearly do not have Egyptian owners. The Israelites who wrote down the Torah thought of dogs as ownerless wanderers, so the silent dogs do not belong to the children of Israel, either. Whose dogs are they?
And it was at midnight when God struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on this throne, to the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon, and every firstborn beast. (Exodus 12:29)
God goes from house to house in Egypt that night, skipping over only the houses of the Israelites. But the dogs roaming in the streets are silent, like the dog in “Silver Blaze”–because they recognize their owner.
I want to be like a dog. I don’t want to be the lowest of the low. But I do want to recognize my owner.
I have often wondered why the scout in the book of Numbers/Bamidbar who argues that the Israelites should go ahead and enter Canaan, and trust God to give them the land, is named Caleb, Kaleiv in Hebrew. His name comes from the same root as kelev, “dog”. Yet Caleb’s actions are all virtuous, not base and low, the way most dogs in the Torah behave. Perhaps Caleb is named after the dogs in Egypt—because he, too, recognized God.
From Rabbi Jill Hammer
Three Darknesses
http://soundcloud.com/romemu/bo5772
This is a link to a sound file of a sermon at Congregation Romemu
From Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
This was written for Rabbi Rachel’s ordination this week from Aleph.
READY 2011
“So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders.” —Exodus 12:34
You’ll need to travel light.
Take what you can carry: a book, a poem,
a battered tin cup, your child strapped
to your chest, clutching your necklace
in one hot possessive fist.
So the dough isn’t ready. So your heart
isn’t ready. You haven’t said goodbye
to the places where you hid as a child,
to the friends who aren’t interested in the journey,
to the graves you’ve tended.
But if you wait until you feel fully ready
you may never take the leap at all
and Infinity is calling you forth
out of this birth canal
and into the future’s wide expanse.
Learn to improvise flat cakes without yeast.
Learn to read new alphabets.
Wear God like a cloak
and stride forth with confidence.
You won’t know where you’re going
but you have the words of our sages,
the songs of our mothers, the inspiration
wrapped in your kneading bowl. Trust
that what you carry will sustain you
and take the first step out the door.
From Rav DovBer Pinson
Energy of the Week: Parshas Bo |
B”H
Creative Visualization
In this weeks Torah reading the people of Israel, still tightly bound in the constraints of their Egyptian bondage, receive the first Mitzvah, or invitation to connect.
“This month shall be to you the head of the months; to you it shall be the first of the months of the year.” (12:2)
This introduces the Mitzvah of sanctifying the new moon and the beginning of counting time through Lunar patterns.
There is a profound distinction between Solar and Lunar time. Sun-time is rigid. There is a set pattern of movement. The sun rises and sets day in and day out.
In the book of Kohelet it is written “There is nothing new under the sun.” In a rigid predictable universe there is no newness.
The ancient Egyptians worshipped the pagan deity RA – the ‘Sun deity.’ In this reality there was no possibility of breaking out of the natural order of things.
A person who was born a slave would remain a slave forever.
The Zohar adds, that while under the sun there is nothing new the moon does contain newness.
The moon waxes and wanes and is ever changing and renewing itself. The word Chodesh – month, is from the root word ‘Chadash’ – new.
The children of Israel believed and then envisioned themselves free and were therefore able to become free people and break out of their slave reality.
This is the third stage in freedom. First is the need to reject your negative story, not accepting your situation as permanent. Secondly, you need to believe in the possibility of change, accept the possibility of the miraculous. The third and final stage is actually visualizing this new reality and creatively imagining yourself already in that new state of being.
THE WEEK’S ENERGY
Creative VisualizationThis week’s Torah reading imbues us with the energy to creatively visualize ourselves in a better reality and in that way offers us a direct link to that reality.
Whatever reality you wish for yourself is within your reach.
Visualize yourself with clear imagination living in the reality which you desire.
When you place yourself in the picture of that place you begin to create that reality.
By fully imagining ourselves into this new reality we can truly be liberated from all constrictions and limitations.
From Rabbi Simon Jacobson
Bo: The New Moon
This new moon (Ha’chodesh Hazeh) shall be to you the head of months (This week’s Torah portion – 12:2).
Moses found difficulty with the renewal of the moon…G-d therefore showed him with His finger the moon in the sky and said to him, “You will see a moon like this and you will then sanctify [the month].” Now how did G-d show it to Moses? Did He not speak to him only by day? …Rather, this chapter was said to Moses just before sunset, and He showed him [the moon] when it became dark (Rashi, from Midrash Mechilta. Talmud Menachot 29a)
Why did Moses have a problem with the moon’s renewal?
And what did G-d show him? If there was a moon in the sky, Moses could have looked up and seen it on his own. And if there was no moon yet – which is more likely because the new moon was just being born – what exactly did G-d show him? How can a new moon be seen with the naked eye?
Various reasons for Moses’ difficulty are posited by the sages. Some explain that Moses was unclear as to the exact criteria necessary to determine when we must sanctify the new moon. Others suggest that Moses was unsure how to determine whether he was actually seeing the new moon or perhaps the final stages of the old moon. But all these explanations seem inadequate for several reasons: Moses, who was quite an educated man, could have figured out, like any astronomer, the factors that constitute a new moon. Why did he need G-d to show it to him? Clearly, Moses was disturbed by something that only G-d could resolve. Additionally, as mentioned, the new moon does not yet have any shape and form, so what exactly did Moses see?
The mystics explain that Moses was struggling with some of the fundamental dilemmas of existence as they are reflected in the birth of the new moon (see Ohr HaTorah on this chapter, vol. 8 pp. 2902). Here we will focus on the psychological and personal application of this strange episode – which illuminates one of the most profound challenges in life: How to deal with pain and loss.
But first, another practical question. Why is the mitzvah of sanctifying the new moon told to Moses as a prelude to the redemption of the Jews from Egyptian bondage? What connection is there between the moon’s renewal and the Egyptian Exodus?
The waxing and waning moon reflects the ups and downs of life and history. The waning moon represents difficult times; periods that get darker and darker, like the fading moon. But just as the moon disappears, when all seems bleak and lost, we experience rebirth, newfound life – a new moon has been born.
The long Egyptian exile was the first documented instance of institutionalized oppression perpetrated by one nation against another. Multitudes of Jews were killed, tortured or worked to death in forced labor. The moon was dark indeed.
By commanding Moses to sanctify the new moon G-d was in effect imparting to Moses the power of renewal: Just as the moon is reborn right after its disappears, so too will the Jewish people experience a renaissance following their darkest moments.
Moses, however, was disturbed. He was happy to hear that the time of redemption – the birth of the new moon – had arrived. But he was bothered by the fact that when things get so dark, to the point that the moon emits no light at all, how can mortal man hold on? How do we gather strength when we don’t see any glimmer of hope? If we don’t have the energy to see it through, we can be consumed and destroyed by the darkness, and then never reach the new light…
Philosophically, Moses understood that a mortal human being will never fully fathom the mystery of pain and suffering. He also understood and believed that the “end story” was that we will endure and prevail over all our adversaries. Indeed, the Egyptian oppression forged a nation with enormous power, an eternal nation. The more they were oppressed, the more they proliferated and grew.
But Moses was disturbed because he knew that this was not enough. Moses in effect was saying: “If you want man to grow through the dark challenges, You, G-d, must give us the power of hope – the strength to see it through and forge ahead despite the inability to see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.”
G-d agreed. In response, G-d “pointed His finger” and showed Moses something that is otherwise impossible to see: The birthing itself. The point when the darkness turns into light, the exact moment when the seeds of suffering yield the fruits of greatness
When we cry over a disappointment or loss we feel pain and sorrow. We (and others) may understand that “those that sow in tears will reap in joy” (Psalms 126:5). But while we weep and taste our bitter tears, we cannot at the same time see the joy that will come. The seed by its very nature conceals its future fruit.
G-d therefore divulged to Moses the mystery of transformation, how darkness turns into light. And He revealed it as the sun was setting. Usually G-d spoke to Moses during the day. But in this instance G-d wanted to show Moses that even darkness yields light. He therefore spoke to him just before sunset, and He showed him the moon as darkness was falling.
This vision of Moses has a perpetual effect for all generations to come – to give us the power to make it through any challenge, no matter how difficult.
All birth in this world comes only after a moment of darkness. Growth is always preceded by a void. Creativity is a child of frustration. But when things seem bleak we get demoralized, and that in turn makes things far worse. If only we were able to see the birthing to come we would be able to endure the hardest times. The problem is that we cannot see from beneath the rubble the light ahead.
So once in history a man was shown the moment of rebirth. Once in history the invisible became visible.
That one vision has given us strength throughout history, as our lives have waxed and waned like the moon, to see it through. Even as we have stood at the abyss, at the brink of extinction, something deep inside us reminded us that all is not lost.
Where does such conviction come from? How does a mother have strength to fight for her child even when all doctors have given up hope? What power did the Jews have when they were herded into the gas chambers to sing “Ani Maamin” (“I believe”)? How is it possible that against all odds, in situations that were absolutely hopeless, a nation has not just survived but thrived?
This enormous, superhuman, power is rooted in Moses’ vision one lonely night in Egypt. As he looked up into the skies Moses saw nothing. The moon had completely disappeared. But then G-d pointed his finger and directed Moses to look closer: Hachodesh hazeh – here, look at the secret of rebirth, here I show you the moment that no man has ever seen and no man will ever see – the moment of transition, when one state is about to end only to open up a new state. Here is the invisible intersection where dark meets light, pain meets joy and exile meets redemption.
Birth means something new. We therefore can never actually see the exact moment when the old becomes new. But Moses did see – once for all times. G-d showed Moses the new moon at its moment of rebirth, and said to him: “When the moon is reborn, mark the beginning of a new month.”
As we now read the story of Exodus, the “book in which Israel goes from darkness to light” – the story of process, the process of loss and renewal, of suffering and growth, the process of death and birth – we can gather in our own lives much fortitude from the events that took place 3319 year ago.
When the next new moon arrives, go outside and look up into the sky. If we look hard enough perhaps we may get a glimpse of what Moses saw. But even if we can’t, our very gaze into the dark heavens, looking, searching, yearning, for the sliver of the new moon’s birthing, carries immense power – strength that can help us though any challenge.
From Rabbi James Stone Goodman
Why We Had To Leave Pharaoh
Open with the eighth plague
locusts
brought by an east wind [Ex.10:3]
carried away by a west wind. [10:19]
East wind
the silent heart of wisdom
before language
Aha *
the heart’s deep wisdom.
West wind
self conscious
inquisitive
conceptual
East wind
intuitive
lateral
mystical
West wind
conscious
linear
rational
Both winds blow through our camp
Now the integrating dream
every blessing a prayer of concentric unity
Set against this is Par’oh
Par’oh — to rend to split
the separator the dis-integrator
Every blessing a union
the power of the upper root descends
and that is why we had to leave Pharaoh
to become one with ourselves.
jsg, usa
From AJR/CA
Parshat Bo
Torah Reading for Week of January 17 – 23, 2010
“Come to the Winter of Our Content”
by Lori Schneider
AJR,CA, Fifth Year Rabbinical Student
Last month Santa Monica, CA witnessed “autumn for a block” – a line of trees awash in vivid maroons and yellows. The leaves lingered for a few weeks until, one at a time, they fell onto the sidewalk, crunching under school children’s feet. Today, these trees stand naked, a visible reminder that seasons do change, even in Los Angeles. If we look closely, we can discern the changing of seasons – a barren tree, a cold shot of wind from the north; here in Los Angeles, seasons can be subtle. But, with every winter, our Torah brings us Parshat Bo. And with the coming of Bo, I know winter has arrived.
Winter asks of us to go inward – the dormancy of the natural world redirecting our attention to our interior landscape. And like a molecule in the cold, we are forced to slow down as well. When reading this week’s Torah portion, we experience the entropy of the natural world with the fait accompli of the final plagues: locusts — the devastation of sustenance; darkness – the blindness that comes with being unable to recognize the world before oneself; and finally, the killing of the firstborn – the undoing of natural order. These three plagues mirror our interior experience of winter: we are hungry for the succulence of summer fruits, cloaked in long, dark nights, and long for the rebirth of spring. It’s as if this cycle of un-life is the biblical narrative’s mirror of the season engulfing us.
And, indeed, we have fallen through our “Biblical Looking Glass”, as even the Biblical voices seem confused. G-d commands us to “Come to Pharaoh”; Pharaoh commands us to “Go out…” and even implores that we grant him a blessing. With the gestation period of 10 plagues complete, we go into ‘un-creation labor’, as Pharaoh commands the Israelite slaves to “…Go worship Yah.” From the one who sought to destroy us, our nation is born.
But what does it mean that Pharaoh, our oppressor, commands us to not only worship G-d, but grant the source of our barrenness a blessing?
In response to the charge of our oppressor, Rashbam teaches “May you also bring a blessing upon me” meaning: our enemy is requesting that we bless only him. Rashi explains “Pray for me that I shall not die, even though I am a firstborn!” Both portray the selfish interests of Pharaoh. However, from within the barrenness of devastation and darkness, we are given the eyes to see beyond Pharaoh’s surface character flaw.
From the vulnerability of natural disasters, Pharaoh’s humanity is revealed. It is as if the stripping away of the natural world ripens a circumcision of the heart; and just as Pharaoh transforms through the undoing of creation in his midst, and commands the Israelites to go, so, too does the un-creation of New Orleans or Haiti reveal the supple and tender truth of our global community that lies within every beating of the lev – to be alive is to be just a heartbeat away from not. Perhaps Pharaoh, whose name derives from the word “to unbind or remove restraint,” is the character of winter itself, teaching us that our enemies or “anti-selves” possess dormant wisdom which draws forth our humanity, our vulnerability, our truest selves.
However, it is not easy to recognize our enemies as a life-breeding source. And so, our parasha also teaches us through subtle signs – the symbol of tefillin, or the coming of spring with the harbinger of the Pesach festival; or even the creation of Rosh Hodesh – a marking of women’s time, another reminder of creation. Winter is a time of hidden messages; but, it is only through the surrender of will to something larger than ourselves that we understand the wisdom of its stillness. Its challenges – whether literal and physical or metaphoric and psycho-spiritual – ask each of us to dwell in a deep, dark, interior space until the time of rebirth is upon us.
From Rabbi Arthur Waskow
In this week’s Torah reading, when God sends Moses to face Pharaoh, God says, “Bo el Pharaoh.” Most English translations say, “Go to Pharaoh.” But “Bo” means “come,” not “go.”
“Come to Pharaoh!”
How could God be saying “Come!” unless God was already there? — already within Pharaoh!
“Come toward Me.”
And God’s call to Moses continued: “Hikhbad’ti libo.” That is usually translated, “I have made his [Pharaoh’s] heart heavy, hard.”
But the Hebrew root KVD can mean heavy, bearing gravitas, or glorious, or honorable, or radiant. When a leader is said to possess “gravitas,” it means he is a “heavy dude,” worthy of honor, radiating forth his own glory to faraway places.
So the phrase can be read as: “I, God, have put my radiance in his, Pharaoh’s, heart.”
In other words: “Come to Me — the Me who lives hidden inside Pharaoh. Don’t be afraid of Pharaoh: what looks like HIS radiance, HIS glory, HIS power, is really just a mask for MY radiance, MY glory, MY power.”
From seeing God hidden within Pharaoh, Moses could learn both courage and compassion.
Courage as he realized that Pharaoh’s seeming power was not his, but just a part of the enormous power of the flow of life, the Unity of universe. If Pharaoh tried to grasp that power as his own, the river and the locusts, the frogs and the first-borns, would overflow his rigid boundaries and sweep away his power. No one need fear it.
Compassion as Moses recalled that even within Pharaoh was the Tzelem Elohim, the spark of God. So he could resist the Pharaoh’s tyranny while yet remembering the KaVoD — honor — due his spark of divinity.
From Chabad.org
Kehot Chumash
Chassidic Insights for Parshah Bo
From the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Chapter 10
[1] Come to Pharaoh: As stated in the Overview, the Torah’s use of the expression “Come to Pharaoh” rather than “Go to Pharaoh” is striking. One way of explaining this is that the Exodus is predicated on approaching life as “coming” rather than “going.”
“Going” implies that the home base is where one already is presently located; one is simply visiting the place he is “going to.” “Coming,” on the other hand, implies that one is moving his home base, that he is going where he is going with his whole being.
So when we commune with God in Torah study or prayer, we should be sure to “come” into the words and ideas, rather than just “go” there for a visit. This way, our study and prayer can affect us and change us; it can take us out of our personal Egypt.
Going out of our personal Egypt hastens the collective redemption of the Jewish people and all humanity, as well.1
Chapter 11
[4] Exactly at midnight: Night is divided into two halves: from dusk until midnight, the sun sinks deeper below the horizon and the sky becomes progressively darker; from midnight until dawn, the sun begins its ascent to the opposite horizon and the sky becomes progressively lighter. The first half of the night is therefore associated with God’s attribute of severity and judgment (gevurah), while the second half is associated with God’s attribute of kindness (chesed).
Midnight, however, being the exact midpoint between the beginning and end of the night, is associated with neither attribute. In fact, midnight is just a theoretical construct rather than an actual span of time—for the moment immediately before midnight is part of the first half of the night and the moment immediately after it is part of the second half. Although midnight defines a specific time, it itself “takes up” no time, similar to how the corner where two walls intersect defines a location in space but itself takes up no space.
Midnight is thus beyond time, and it is by virtue of this transcendence that it can connect the two opposite halves of the night and negotiate the transition from the first to the second. Although we take for granted the “transition” from pre-midnight to post-midnight (as well as the “transition” from one direction to another), it in fact takes a time-transcending input to switch from one type of time to another (and a space-transcending input to change from one direction to another), since nature, by its own inertia, always tends to continue in the direction in which it is already going.
Hence the great significance of midnight: it is a “moment” when God’s transcendence is revealed. The slaying of the firstborn therefore had to occur exactly at midnight, since it was the final stroke of the Exodus, and in order for the Exodus to occur God had to reveal His transcendence beyond the laws of nature. Naturally, the Exodus could never have occurred, since it was entirely “natural” for Egypt to be the world’s superpower and enslave the Jews, etc. Nature had to be overruled, and this is the essence of midnight.17
From Rav Kook
Bo: The Exodus and Tefillin
The Torah commands us to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt by wearing tefillin (phylacteries) on the arm and head.
“It will be for you a sign on your arm and a reminder between your eyes, so that God’s Torah will be in your mouth; for God brought you out of Egypt with a strong arm.” [Ex. 13:9]
What is the connection between tefillin and the Exodus? How does wearing tefillin ensure that the Torah will be ‘in our mouths’?
An Outstretched Arm
Superficially, the redemption from Egypt was a one-time, historical event, forging a potent memory in the collective consciousness of the Jewish people and all of humanity. But if we listen to our inner soul, we will recognize that the Exodus is truly a continuous, ongoing act. The Divine miracles and signs that took place in Egypt launched the continual revelation of the hand of God, publicly and visibly, on the stage of world history. The Exodus was an outburst of Divine light, potent and vibrant, in all realms of the universe. Its inner resonance continues to make its impact throughout the ages.
Before wrapping tefillin on the arm, we reflect that this mitzvah commemorates God’s “zero’a netuya”, His “outstretched arm.” What does this metaphor mean?
The word zero’a (‘arm’) comes from the root zera, meaning ‘seed’. The redemption of Israel in Egypt was a holy seed, planted at that point in time. That wondrous event prepared the way for the spread of its message, unhindered and uninterrupted, stretching out across the generations. As we bind the tefillin to our arms, we are reminded of God’s “outstretched arm,” the inner godliness that constantly develops and perfects worlds, elevating their treasures of life to the pinnacle of divine fulfillment.
A Strong Arm
Yet, there is a deeper connection between the mitzvah of tefillin and the Exodus.
The purpose of the liberation from Egyptian bondage was to combat the debasement of life, which threatened to drown humanity in the depths of its crassness and vulgarity. Since the materialistic side of life is so compelling, so overwhelming, it was necessary for God to reveal a “strong arm” to overcome our base nature, and allow the light of our inner holiness to shine from within. The holy act of fastening the tefillin to the arm and head helps us transform the coarse and profane aspects of life into strength and vitality for a life beautiful in its holiness.
To triumph over humanity’s coarseness – then at its peak in the contaminated culture of Egypt – required God’s “strong arm.” We similarly need to make a strong effort so that the Torah will be in our minds and hearts. Tefillin are called a sign and a reminder, for they evoke the wondrous signs and powerful miracles of our release from Egyptian slavery. We must engrave the legacy of those miracles on our faculties of action, emotion, and thought. By binding these memories to our hand, heart, and mind, we can transform our coarse nature to a holy one. Then the Torah will naturally “be in your mouth,” in the thoughts of our hearts.
Through this powerful mitzvah, engaging both the arm (our actions) and the eye (our outlook and thoughts), we continue the Divine process that God initiated in Egypt with a “strong arm.”
[adapted from Olat Re’iyah vol. I, pp. 26-7,39]
Copyright © 2006 by Chanan Morrison
From Rabbi Shefa Gold Torah Journeys
Rabbi Shefa Gold’s Torah Journeys
Bo
(Come On In!)
Exodus 10:1 – 13:16
The story of the Exodus from Egypt continues.
THE BLESSING
THE BLESSING OF BO IS OUR FREEDOM. We finally take that first step out of the narrow spaces of Mitzrayim and become conscious journeyers touched by the dream of awakening.
Freedom in our tradition is not merely “freedom from,” freedom from oppression, suffering, or servitude. It is “freedom to,” freedom to be in direct relationship with God our liberator. Being in that relationship means serving the One, the Whole, the Holy. Our freedom depends on this servitude.
At the beginning of the portion God speaks to Moses, the prophet within us, and says, ” Bo! Come on in! I am waiting for you inside the heart of Pharaoh. The heart of Pharaoh is inside you. It is the place that has grown heavy with the weight of life’s experience. It is the place that has hardened – its outer shell cynical, and its inner layers made of fear and unhealed grief. Through this heart of Pharaoh you must come if you are to know Me, if you are to find your freedom.”
THERE IS A STORY about some jealous angels who are asked to hide the spark of the Divine in the world.
“Let’s put it atop the highest mountain,” offers one.
“No,” says another, “The Human is very ambitious; he will find it there.”
“Well then, let’s bury it beneath the deepest sea.”
“That won’t work either,” another chimes in. “The Human is very resourceful. She will even find it there.”
After a moment’s thought the wisest angel says, “I know. Put it inside the Human heart. They will never look there.”
And so the spark of God is hidden in the heart of Pharaoh where we are kept out by the heaviness that has accumulated, by the hardness that we meant for our protection. Sometimes that spark will speak to us from within, and say, “Bo! Come on in. I have been waiting for you for so very long.”
WHEN WE COME THROUGH the heart of Pharaoh and enter in to those depths within, the blessing we receive is freedom and protection from the Angel of Death, whose only realm is the surface of things.
We are called into consciousness during a “night of watching,” a night of vigilance.
We are blessed with a ritual of celebration and renewal so that we can re-experience the miracle of freedom with a feast of Matzah, unleavened bread. Matzah represents our essential self before it is “leavened” with ego.
THE SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE
THIS WORLD IS FOREVER CALLING US to the surface of things with its drama, seduction, humor, and entertaining dilemmas. Constantly bombarded with stimulation, we begin to rely on that stimulation to keep us from boredom, and dreaded emptiness. The spiritual challenge of Bo lies in the cultivation of a rich inner life. The obstacles to inner-ness, and depth, are represented by the heart of Pharaoh, the obstruction through which we must pass on our way to freedom.
How do we address the weight of our burdens? How do we acknowledge the hard shell of a self-image that has become too small? There are moments when the burden is lifted, when the hard surface softens, and the heart of freedom is revealed in its glory. Even as those moments fade I lift them up with my awareness and my gratefulness. I keep the memory of that inner vastness and hold it as witness against a world that pretends to reflect the whole truth.
ONE OF THE KEYS to freedom lies in Moses’ insistence that the whole of the people must be freed together. When Pharaoh offers freedom if the feminine and child parts are left behind in bondage, Moses refuses, for he understands that to be free is to be whole and integrated. When Pharaoh offers freedom to the people if they will leave their animal selves behind, again Moses refuses, knowing that without the acknowledgment of all aspects of our selves, we cannot serve God.
The challenge before us is to accept and honor all parts of the self as the pre-requisite to freedom. In answering the call of Bo, we are led onto the path of healing and wholeness.
For Guidelines for Practice please click the link to the website:
http://www.rabbishefagold.com/bo/
This teaching from Rabbi Shefa Gold was included here since the sentence from this
parsha, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months.” has been used as the basis for the celebration of Rosh Chodesh.
Yom Kippur Katan As Preparation For Rosh Chodesh
by Rabbi Shefa Gold
In any spiritual practice, preparation and intention make all the difference. When the preparation for Rosh Chodesh can occur in all four realms of my being – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual – then my receptivity to its transformative effects is maximized. The Kabbalists of 16th century S’fat understood this essential truth, and they had the creativity and the courage (some might say audacity) to respond by developing a holy-day that would address the spiritual challenges of renewal that Rosh Chodesh brings. That holy-day came each month on the day preceding Rosh Chodesh and was called Yom Kippur Katan. The custom was to fast from sunrise to sunset and to recite certain prayers which had the flavor of Yom Kippur and would facilitate the process of self-examination and purificatiion and preparation for receiving the new moon.1
Those kabbalists were moon watchers. The lenses through which they gazed were intensely focused on issues of exile and redemption. And so as the moon waned, the exile of the Shechina (the divine presence), was noted and mourned. With the moon’s return came the celebration of the miracle of redemption, a redemption which could be tasted and known but briefly before the cycle of exile continued. They based their custom on a legend that was recorded in the Babylonian Talmud in which God Says to Israel, “Bring atonement upon me for making the moon smaller.” 2
They understood “making the moon smaller” as referring to a contraction of divine essence, which in human terms could be experienced as exile. There is another legend that at the time of Messiah, the moon will again be as bright as the sun.3 The moon’s return to glory will mark our redemption. The Kabbalists based their reading of these myths on a Lurianic Kabbalistic conception of Creation, which says that it was the divine act of tzimtzum (God’s self-contraction) which made room for the existence of our world. Yet it was this very act of tzimtzum which set into play the dramatic cycle of exile and redemption which has become the vehicle for the the soul’s evolution and the self-realization of every aspect of Creation.
As Gershom Scholem explains it, “..the act of tzimtzum itself, in which God limits Himself, requires the establishment of the power of Din (judgment), which is a force of limitation and restriction. Thus the root of evil ultimately lies in the very nature of Creation itself, in which the harmony of the Infinite cannot, by definition persist; because of its nature as Creation – i.e., as other than Godhead – an element of imbalance, defectiveness, and darkness must enter into every restricted existence, however sublime it may be.” 4
With the exile of the Shechina, darkness enters into our existence and with that darkness comes a longing for her return. Yom Kippur Katan comes at a point in the cycle when that longing is at its peak. Inner reality reflects the absence of moon and manifests as a longing for fullness that claws at the dark empty pause. It is a call to re-create ourselves in God’s image.
At the same time, it feels as if God might be doing tshuvah (turning, repentance), taking another look at us and reconsidering the relationship. On Yom Kippur Katan we feel those all-seeing eyes on us and we do what must be done to make ourselves beautiful to God. The dark moon night allows for the visibility of stars and planets that would ordinarily go unnoticed. On Yom Kippur Katan we do an examination of the inward skies as well – the constellations of our being that in the busy light of our lives might remain hidden from view. It is the time for correcting our aim, seeing the ways that we have been pulled off course. It is the time for paying attention to the subtle details, a time to feel the internal striving after righteousness, that is born of love.
The symbol of the moon and its cycles representing our experience of God’s presence is significant because it is multi-layered. As the moon waxes and wanes, there is a part of me that experiences the shrinking and swelling of light in the night sky. There is another part of me that knows and experiences the moon as a whole sphere which happens to reflect different amounts of the sun’s light. I can often even see the dark part of the moon when there is only a sliver of light. It is the same with the experience of exile. There are times when I feel so very far from God, and yet another part of me knows that it is only a “seeming” distance. God has never left my orbit. Yet I live my life in the drama of these cycles – the waxing and waning of God’s presence in my life. Another part of me stands back and understands these cycles as the contractions of labor that birth the soul into wholeness. Though all these layers exist simultaneously, I know that I must give myself fully to the experience of this drama, even to the pain of it.
The challenge of renewal requires us to look hard and honestly at the aspects of our personalities, habits, beliefs and patterns that need renewing- whatever it is that we have outgrown, whatever it is that holds us back, distorts our vision, prevents our love from flowing freely. If we do this work of examination, purification and realignment each month, then on Rosh Chodesh we will indeed have something to celebrate.
In a class with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in which we studied the liturgy of Yom Kippur Katan, he said that to really know and celebrate the essence of lunar energy, we must experience the “dark rays of the moon.” 5 When we notice and pay attention to the particular power of this time, those “dark rays” will aid us as we meet the challenge of renewal.
As our celebrations of Rosh Chodesh evolve in ways that express our deepest joys and concerns, so must our preparations, both inner and outer, effectively address our present needs. Although I can appreciate the beauty of the liturgy of those 16th century kabbalists, I have also felt a need to express the process of Yom Kippur Katan in a more personal way. And so I offer the following song. The chorus is in Aramaic and comes from the traditional liturgy of Yom Kippur Katan. It says, “Compassionate One, who answers broken hearts, answer us, answer us.”
May we all have the courage and strength to let our hearts break, and may the light of renewal, healing and wisdom stream in to those broken places so that in our wholeness we may shine.
The Dark Rays of the Moon6
My flaws are showing all too clear, In the dark rays of the moon, All my certainties will disappear, In the dark rays of the moon, I surrender to the shadow’s glare, In the dark rays of the moon, I am strengthened by the truth I bare, In the dark rays of the moon, Rachamana d’oney litvirey liba, aneyna, aneyna. (Compassionate One who answers broken hearts, answer us, answer us.)
When the tide is low I search the beach, In the dark rays of the moon, Broken dreams wash up within my reach, In the dark rays of the moon, I will hold the shell up to my ear, In the dark rays of the moon, Till the voice of God is all I hear, In the dark rays of the moon, Rachamana d’oney litvirey liba, aneyna, aneyna.
In exile I am forced to roam, In the dark rays of the moon, Till my prayerful longing brings me home, In the dark rays of the moon, Though I see my life in shades of dark, In the dark rays of the moon, In the deepest depths there glows a spark, In the dark rays of the moon, Rachamana d’oney litvirey liba, aneyna, aneyna.
1 Yom Kippur Katan is not observed for the following months’ Rosh Chodesh: Cheshvan, because Yom Kippur has just passed; Tevet because it would fall during Chanukah when fasting and penitential prayers are not permitted; Iyar, because it would fall during Nissan which doesn’t allow fasting; and Tishrei because it would fall on the day of Erev Rosh Hashana which doesn’t permit penitential prayers. If Rosh Chodesh falls on Shabbat, Yom Kippur Katan is observed on the preceding Thursday. (Klein, Isaac. A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1979 pages 262-3.)
2 Hullin 60b
3 Based on Isaiah 30:26
4 Scholem, Gershom. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead. New York: Shocken Books, 1991. p. 83.
5 The phrase “Dark Rays of the Moon” appears to have been coined during a conversation between Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Eric Neumann in Jerusalem. Discussing whether the moon gives off its own light or only reflects the sun’s light, Eric Neumann said, the moon has its own rays, they are the dark rays of the moon.
6 Copyright © Shefa Gold. 1989
Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum
THE REAL START OF THE TORAH
In Rashi’s opening comment on the Torah (Gen. 1:1), he indicates that the real “beginning” of the Torah is in our present parshah of BO. “Rabbi Yitzchak said: the Torah should have started from ‘This month will be for you the head of the months’ (Ex. 12:2) since this is the first commandment that the Children of Israel were commanded.” [See Rashi on Gen. 1:1, where he explains that the account of the Creation and the ensuing history recounted in Genesis are proof of the Children of Israel’s G-d-given right to the Land of Israel.]
In other words, the “real” start of the Torah is when we read it first and foremost as a message about our obligations rather than one about our rights. Having been passively freed by G-d from servitude to man, we have obligations to the “hero”, the only true Savior. If anyone lays claim to any lien on us, G-d’s lien always has priority.
The first mitzvah of the Torah to the Children of Israel is that of “sanctifying the month” (KIDDUSH HACHODESH). This involves counting the months of the year from Nissan, the month of redemption, and, when the Sanhedrin sits in the Land of Israel, taking testimony from witnesses who have sighted the new moon in order to declare the start of the new month. Marking time from the point at which the moon, having briefly disappeared from sight, begins to wax and grow, is a sign of constant regeneration and vitality. The sign of the crescent was taken over by Islam, but the unique power of the crescent of the new moon as a symbol of renewal is known only to the Children of Israel, who observe the commandment of Sanctifying the Month. Alone among the nations, the Children of Israel possess the Secret of IBBUR (literally “pregnancy”). This involves the method of reconciling the Lunar year (of 354 days) with the Solar year (of 365 days) through the insertion of an extra month in certain “leap” years (= SHANAH ME-UBERET, a “pregnant” year of 13 instead of only 12 months). It is to this and the related astronomical and mystical wisdom of the Children of Israel that Moses alluded when he said: “For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations” (Deut. 4:6, see Shabbos 75a).