Parsha Shemos: God Knows
Dedicated to a refuah shelaima for Chana Zelda bat Gittel
Yita, Batya Dina bas Chava Tzivia, Chaya Sarah bas Esther Leah, Moshe Aaron ben
Necha Itta, Binyamin ben Simcha, and Yaakov ben Esther Malka.
In the first parsha of the Torah, we learn how Hashem made
man in His image…and, alas, ever since then it seems that man has been trying
to do the reverse – make God in man’s image. Ok, it’s a bit of a pithy thing to
say, but, in many ways, not so far from the truth. Even today when Western
society has moved far away from statuesque idolatry or that Greek pantheon,
most people tend to have an understanding of Hashem that reflects God as they
want or expect Him to be. Sometimes that is the all-loving, all-forgiving, “if
I’m just a good person God will accept me” deity, and sometimes it’s the fire
and brimstone deity who will punish those who cross a person’s moral line.
Hashem is all-knowing, of course. And Hashem does reward the
righteous and punish those who deserve to be punished. The calculations for all
of that, however, are well beyond our means of understanding…and understanding
that is critical criteria for this week’s parsha, Parshas Shemos. Parshas Shemos – well, indeed, sefer Shemos
and, in truth everything thereafter – is a testament to the difference in how
we mortals view the world and Hashem’s comprehension of all the moving pieces
and His understanding of what, ultimately, needs to happen and is thus “good.”
The parsha opens with a recounting of the names of the 70
who came down with Yaakov to Egypt, and here we must remember that when Yaakov
hesitated to come, Hashem told him it was what he should do. But was it good?
We see quite quickly into the parsha that it really wasn’t what one would say
is for the good because the Egyptians turned on Bnei Yisrael rather quicky once
Yosef’s generation had passed.
One of the primary factors of the events in Mitzrayim
(beyond, of course, the foretelling of the oppression by Hashem and it being
the means of forging the nation) was Pharoah’s belief that he could shape his
world. He wished to kill Jewish boys because an astrologer gave him a
foretelling, and he believed that he had ability to thwart it. He believed that
he could remove himself from infanticide by trying to recruit the Jewish
midwives to do it, but their better nature could not be turned. He believed
that he could ignore Moshe because, as he himself declared: He did not know
Hashem.
In contrast, however, there is Moshe. The Torah tells us
that when Moshe was born, his mother saw that he was “good” (Shemos 2:2). Of
course there are lots of interpretations of what that means, but perhaps it is
an allusion to his innate connection to the Divine. Think about the fact that only his youngest
years were spent in an environment of kedusha, when he was nursed in his
mother’s house. The Torah only first records him interacting with any
Israelites is when he stops the taskmaster from killing a slave, and he stops
him by striking him with, as the Midrash tells us, the actual name of Hashem.
This is an incredible level of connection for someone who had no one to teach
him the ways of Israel, which makes it even more perplexing that Moshe does not
immediately agree when Hashem instructs him to go back to Mitzrayim.
When Moshe asks Hashem what he should tell the Israelites
when they ask for Hashem’s name, the response is more than just a message for Bnei
Yisrael. It is a message for every person… “And God said to Moses,
“Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh,” continuing, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh
sent me to you.’” Ehyeh-asher-Ehyah – I am that I am or I will be what I will
be…
Moshe, with his inborn special connection to Hashem, cannot alter
the path that Hashem wants to occur. None of us can. We can judge the world all
that we want. We can look at individuals or whole groups of people or
situations and declare that they are wrong, that they need to be different, but
we are mere mortals. To be frank, we know nothing except what we see and what
we feel, but Hashem… Hashem doesn’t just know everything, Hashem IS everything.
And while for the moment you may nod your head and say of
course, it’s an incredibly difficult idea to hold in one’s mind.
I wish you all a beautiful Shabbas, and let us all come to
truly accept that it is all Hashem.
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