Shemot
Exodus 1:1–6:1
Isaiah 27:6-28:13, 29:22-23
Got an opportunity for a better job? Take it. One of the lessons from the economic hardship of the last few years is how valuable it is to have productive work with a solvent employer. And if the work is meaningful, all the better. Why didn’t Moshe seem to grasp this lesson?
Chapter three of our Torah portion depicts a runaway, a man who had escaped Egypt and his people’s slavery. His father-in-law gave him a day job, herding sheep in the desert. And then the opportunity of a lifetime: He happens upon an unexpected meeting with God Almighty, who offers him the job of bringing redemption to the Children of Israel.
Moshe is being offered the chance to do something incredibly meaningful for people that matter to him, backed up by Divine assurances, and yet he is highly resistant to taking the job. Instead of rejoicing that HaShem will save his people, Moshe hesitates and tries to get out of it. Would he really rather guide sheep in the sand all day?
His objections are many: He isn’t a good speaker, he is not in a position to speak to Pharaoh and more. HaShem counters each of his claims, but there is one concern that Moshe voices repeatedly: that the Jews won’t believe him.
In Exodus 3:13-15, Moshe looks ahead to the response of his slave brethren, asking, “They will immediately ask me what [Your] name is. What shall I say to them?” HaShem instructs him to tell them that “I Will Be As I Will Be” sent him.
If I may be so bold, what kind of identification is that? And why in 3:13 does Moshe say that “the God of your fathers sent me?” Shouldn’t it be God of our fathers?
Sometimes, it is the question itself that holds the clue we need. Moshe cannot bring himself to call HaShem the God of “our” fathers, because Moshe is the consummate outsider. He never fit. He didn’t grow up among the Jews; he grew up in the palace. He briefly came in contact with his people, before fleeing the country. He married a Midianite woman who was the daughter of a man who, according to midrashic tradition, tried every type of idolatry in the world. His life has not been one with this people.
Moshe rightly expects that the people will test him and ask him the name of the God that sent him. They will prod and scrutinize this virtual stranger who claims to speak on behalf of God and their faith; does he even know anything about being a Jew?
This is what gives Moshe his greatest angst. Is he doomed to spend the rest of his years feeling that he doesn’t belong? Will he always feel alienated among them, alone and uncomfortable?
Just as no other being can truly understand the experience of the Divine, no human being can completely know the experience of another. Although we can understand elements and develop great empathy, ultimately we are alone in our experience of our own existence and share that aloneness with the One above whose existence is so qualitatively different than ours.
Thus, HaShem responds to Moshe’s concern about being isolated from the Jewish community by offering the Divine name “I Will Be As I Will Be.” He comforts Moshe with a promise of His own companionship in solitude.
Moshe receives another key lesson here. HaShem doesn’t make the Jewish people change their attitudes, but does send Moshe to join them anyway.
And even though they don’t do a good job of reaching out to welcome Moshe, it is his responsibility to put himself among them, to join the people and assume leadership. He needs to do his part to help himself become more integrated with the Jewish community. Instead of waiting for the Jewish people to rescue him from his desert solitude, it is up to Moshe to go join them in Egypt.
Moshe’s loneliness and the lesson he learns still ring true today in our post-modern world with its fractured sense of community.
Rabbi Judah Dardik is the spiritual leader at Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland. He can be reached at [email protected].