January 24th: Va-era
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
Though the Torah text describes Moses’ responses to God at the Burning Bush (Exodus 3.11) as awe and reluctance (“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?”), the Midrash also has Moses questioning the Divine plan. As God sketches the plan for Yetziat Mitzrayim, Moses realizes that, with all the plagues and all the repeated negotiations with Pharaoh, the Exodus will take a year. Why, he questions God, can You not free them immediately? During this year, the Israelites will continue to suffer, and many may not even survive to see freedom. God’s first inclination is to destroy Moses for his impudence, but that impulse is checked by God’s sense of compassion. Moses is not arguing for his sake but rather for the sake of the suffering Israelites.
We know that the story of the Exodus has a glorious ending: God bears us “on eagles’ wings” out of Egypt and chooses us as a “treasured possession among all the peoples.” (Exodus 19.4) However, before this wonderful ending, the Israelites endure some 400 years of slavery. We thank and appreciate God for the Exodus, but we also wonder where God was during all those horrible years of suffering.
In addressing this perplexing and tear-stained question, our Tradition speaks not only about the suffering in Egypt but also about all human suffering. Where is God when people are in pain? Why does God allow the innocent to suffer?
The initial answer, based on Deuteronomy, is that people deserve what they get. Good things are not just good luck; they are rewards for following God’s commandments. Bad things are not just random or bad luck; they are punishments for disobeying God’s commandments. Though the particular sins may not be known, God knows, and suffering people are bidden to search for their hidden sins—in the hope that repentance will nullify the harsh decree.
The problem with this explanation is in human experience and observation. All too often, we see justice turned upside down for too many good suffer and too many evil prosper. In the Book of Job, the Narrator says this directly: though Job is entirely blameless, he and his family suffer nonetheless. Where is God’s justice? The answer in Job is that God’s justice is beyond our understanding. We should trust in God’s justice though we do not understand it.
This answer works for some people, but it does not for others. Though we are assured that God is ultimately just, the evidence is just not supportive, and we search for other and better explanations. The term for this question is theodicy: how can an all-good and all-powerful God can allow or cause evil? Some suggest that there is no God. Some suggest that God is not a conscious intervener, but rather a non-conscious force in the universe that holds everything together and induces us to goodness. Some suggest that God’s justice is not limited to this world—that the scales will be righted in the Afterlife. Lurianic Kabbalah suggests that, while God is all-good, God is not all-powerful. Though extremely powerful, God cannot deal with everything, and, in this absence of Divine power, evil and imperfection arise and do great harm. This idea—called the Limited God—teaches that God needs our help and urges us to tikkun olam, where we combine our godliness with the power of the Divine to repair or perfect the world.
A few Midrashim anticipate this Limited God understanding of the Deity, though they preceded Lurianic Kabbalah by many centuries. In one, the commentator focuses on a mysterious passage in Exodus 24. When Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders of Israel ascend Mount Sinai to seal the covenant, “They saw the God of Israel: under His feet there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity.” A pavement of sapphires!? The Midrashic answer is that this building project is what God built when God was a slave alongside us in Egypt. Though God did not rescue us in those first 400 years of slavery, God was not absent. Indeed, God was with us, laboring with us and suffering with us.
Another Midrash compares God to a mother whose daughter is in labor. The mother cannot solve the problem: the labor is in process and the daughter must go through it. However, the mother can be present with the daughter, comforting her, encouraging her, and helping her through the difficult process. God was like that with us in Egypt: suffering with us, comforting us, and giving us strength to get through the impossible.
A final consideration for this thorny theological question also suggests that God was not absent. God was aware of our plight in Egypt, but God was hoping that we would free ourselves. The clue comes from Exodus 6.6-9 where Moses goes to the Israelite slaves and gives them God’s message: “I am the Lord. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God.” However this hopeful message falls flat: “But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.”
Perhaps God was parenting Israel as a parent supervises a child learning to walk or learning to handle things on his/her own. If a parent intervenes every time there is a problem, the child does not learn self-reliance. Similarly, God watched Israel, aware of the suffering but hoping that they would extricate themselves from slavery. As long as was a chance, God waited. However, when the hope died—“their spirits crushed by cruel bondage,” God realized that it was time to intervene.
The long and short of it is that Tradition cannot imagine a God Who does not care or Who is not paying attention—or Who is not present for us in our most difficult moments. We celebrate the Exodus and the incredible miracles when God rescued us, but we should also look for signs of God’s Presence in the midst of our difficulties. God is always with us—watching us, feeling our pride or our pain, encouraging us or comforting us, and always hoping that we will bring forth the Divine energy that we carry within.