A Rerun

I know that I posted this previously, but I rewrote it to be printed in local shuls. So here is the new, improved, and ending with a mussar vort version.

Parshat Va’era : Moshe Rabbeinu gets a new job

The Torah is not supposed to repeat itself or waste words, right? If not, then why do Moshe and Hashem's conversations in the beginning of Sefer Shmot seem like deja vu? Last week and this week’s parshiot seem to have the same material. It has actually been my observation that people tend to tune the conversations out, as the get the gist of it, and are waiting for the plot to move on. There must be more to it.

The first of these coversations takes place at the burning bush, (in chapters 3 & 4) and the second in Egypt. (in chapters 6 & 7) Let's note the similarities before we examine the differences. You can check for yourself, but I will simply list the common elements.

In both prophetic conversations:

1) Hashem identifies Himself
2) He explains that He has noticed Israel's suffering
3) He explains His plan to fulfill his promises to the Forefathers, rescue the people and take them to Israel
4) Tells Moshe he must go to Pharaoh and ask for time off for His people.
5) Hashem shows Moshe a wonder to perform to ensure belief
6) Moshe complains about his difficulties as a communicator *
7) Hashem assigns Aaron to help Moshe.

Two questions come to mind. First of all, why does Moshe need this much repetition? Didn't he get it the first time? Secondly, there must have been a shorthand way to say that these elements recurred. "And the Lord told Moses all the things that had been said in Midian", or something to that effect, leap to mind. One could answer the first question by saying that Moshe had faced his first setback, (Pharoah rejected the request and took away the Israelites straw) and needed a pep talk. But this does not answer the second question.

There are also, of course, differences. Professor Nehama Leibowitz always argued that when you run into any of these biblical “repetitive” passages, the differences are what deserve our attention. In this case it is these differences that show that the second round is much more than a “pep talk”. What then are the differences?

In the middle of this second version of the conversation, (at the point when Moshe complains about his speech) Moshe and Aharon are reintroduced through a long family tree. There is a key, tell-tale statement at the beginning. In chapter 6, verse 11, Hashem says,

“Go in, speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of his land.' 12 And Moses spoke before the LORD, saying: 'Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips?'”

Moshe had already spoken to Pharaoh. Pharaoh had not hearkened unto him. Why is Moshe expressing this in the future tense? I would argue that Hashem is not repeating his demand in verse 11. He is changing Moshe's job. This is the key that unlocks all of the problems.

Let me explain what I mean. In chapters 3 & 4, Hashem has appointed Moshe to be the leader of b'nei Yisrael. When this did not lead to their immediate release, they let him know at the end of chapter 5 that he was fired as their leader for making things worse. As it says in chapter 6, verse 9, “And Moses spoke so unto the children of Israel; but they hearkened not unto Moses for impatience of spirit, and for cruel bondage”

So in chapter 6, Hashem is sending Moshe no longer as the leader of the Jews, but as His ambassador to Pharaoh. This is a very new role for Moshe, and he balks at being Hashem's ambassador just as he balked at becoming the leader of b'nei Yisrael.

This is also why Moshe first shows a sign and wonder to Pharaoh in chapter 7. As leader of the Jews he had no need to turn a staff into a serpent. He only had to do that for the elders of the Jews. But now in chapter 7 he has to prove his bona fides as a Divine messenger to Pharaoh.

Hence all of the repetition. Moshe needs to be reassured again and told that Aharon will help him, etc., etc. for a new position.

There are other pieces of evidence to support this hypothesis. But the bottom line is that originally Hashem wanted the Israelites to send Moshe to demand their freedom. When they backed out, He became our advocate and sent Moshe to free us. Perhaps in our generation, we can learn from the mistake of our forefathers in that first redemption and work tirelessly to be the agents of Hashem’s will in bringing the final redemption. At its essence, Zionism is activism. And perhaps that is Hashem’s first choice for us.

Shabbat Shalom,
MNUnterberg

* I tend to assume that "heavy tongue" and "uncircumsized lips" do not refer to physical disabilities, any more than modern idioms like "tongue tied", "forked tongue" or "big mouth" do. They refer to difficulties with certain types of communication. In Moshe's case, it probably means a difficulty with diplomatic niceties. We are all familiar with the story of Moshe and the hot coals. I think that is designed less to explain the language of "heavy tongue", and more to explain elements of Moshe's childhood within the Rabbinic narrative of warning in Pharaoh's court.

Thanks through Haiku

Blogger now has a new "stats" feature that shows all sorts of information about who is looking at your blog. I found out some cool stuff! One of those things is that the number one referring website to mine is from my friend Neil Fleischmann's blog.

Neil and I share may traits, tastes and interests, and I appreciate that shout outs. (Shouts out?) I would like to thank Neil through his poetry form of choice, the Haiku.

Neil Fleichmann is cool

Life is felt by him deeply

Expresses it well

Thanks, man.

NY's Funniest Rabbi

Postings From An Eclectic Soul

The Role of Rabbis

Israel's latest tempest in a teapot is the controversy over a public Rabbinic decree banning the renting of homes to Arabs. You can catch up simply by doing a Google news search for the words "renting to Arabs". That's what I did, and you can see the results for yourself.

Many have complained about the edict. The issues of racism, and oversimplification of a complex halachic issue, have been written about extensively. Rightly so. I would like to emphasize another problematic aspect of the decree, that was alluded to in Rav Aharon Lichtenstein's response. 

He complains, "...almost the entire unfolding of events that resulted from the dissemination of this letter was foreseeable and, to a large extent, obvious. The public furor, both social and ideological, the rift that has opened among the citizens of the state—between camps and within camps, the op-eds in the various media outlets, the various positions, often impassioned and overheated, the attack on the religious-Zionist rabbinate from the right and from the left, even from Torah giants—it was all foreseeable. One reads it and wonders what happened to the wisdom of those who are enjoined to consider future ramifications?" (the emphasis is mine) 

In Talmud study we often ask to find the essential point of contention between two perspectives. In this case, I would argue that Rav Aharon believes that the role of Rabbis is to bring Jews together on areas of consensus, and the authors of the ban see their role as defending particular ideological positions within society. 

Assuming that this is  correct, I would simply like to point out that Rav Aharon is speaking in the voice of Rav Kook, whereas the other camp has apparently abandoned Rav Kook's approach. This breaks my heart. Rather than belabor the point, I will simply quote the relevant piece from Rav Kook. Please read his words carefully, and ask yourself if 21st century Rabbis, including Religious Zionist Rabbis, follow his guidance. 

The Rabbinate

The rabbinate is that great spiritual force, that crucial force which always shaped public opinion in the Jewish world… In our era, however, it has been greatly damaged, and its influence has waned. This development has had a detrimental affect on every aspect of our collective lives… 

Now that we desire to reestablish and thoroughly repair our national lives, we must also implement deep and penetrating reforms into the rabbinate of Eretz Yisrael, to breathe new life into this essential, spiritual force… [into] a significant force that will influence every aspect of our national revival…

Rabbis must play a prominent role in Israel’s revival. They must work with the people in every facet of the building and the national restoration… A continuous, mutual connection must exist between the rabbinate and every productive force in the land.

[Rabbis must] constantly strive to bring people closer to each other and introduce a spirit of peace between all factions and parties, by way of the holy sentiments that are equally shared in every Jewish soul. 

Rabbis must stay far away from all factional disputes and differences, they must view everything in a positive light, focusing only on the side of every faction and every event. This way, they will be able to infuse a spirit of sanctity, faith and pure Jewish awareness into the nation’s entire collective existence, materially and spiritually.

HaRabbanut, Ma’amarei HaRe’iyah, pp. 52-54

Rav Kook

Introversion and You?

Last week, standing in a packed crowd at a general admission Ben Folds' concert, my daughter had an epiphany.

"You look uncomfortable, Abba," Avigayil said, "maybe we should move to a less crowded spot. Boy, now I see why you say you're introverted. I'm so charged up by being in this massive crowd, and you just look miserable."

Bingo.

It's one of those classic catch-22s in life. It is difficult to explain what its like feeling safer in your own space, when by definition you are talking to someone outside it. As Tom Lehrer said about alienated people writing literature, "If you have trouble communicating with others, the very least you can do is to shut up."

So it is always a relief to find someone who expresses it well. I recently heard that Emily Dickenson once took herniece into her bedroom, locked the door with an imaginary key, and said, "Ah, Mattie, here's freedom!"

Gut gezukt.

She found the freedom she sought in her own mind, in her own thoughts, in her own creativity. This was expressed by her poetry and in her poetry.

I dwell in Possibility-- 
A fairer House than Prose-- 
More numerous of Windows-- 
Superior--for Doors -
Of Chambers as the Cedars-- 
Impregnable of Eye-- 
And for an Everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky-- 
Of Visitors--the fairest-- 
For Occupation--This-- 
The spreading wide my narrow Hands 
To gather Paradise--

Rav Kook described a very similar existence. As in most things, I find his words to be beyond comfort. Rav Soloveitchik teaches me new ways of looking at things, that deepen and change forever my religious inner life. Rav Kook speaks out of my own soul, telling me things I feel and neve knew that I felt. I don't know how I could be me without him. 

I've been having a few crazy, busy weeks. It is hard to recharge without the time for quiet inner-space.  Reading the quote below gives me strength. 

Orot Hakodesh III – The Ascent to Inner Greatness

There are great righteous persons who are imbued with higher dispositions, who feel oppressed in their inner soul, because they do not penetrate into the inner greatness of their spirit. They do not believe with full faith in the holiness of their aspirations, and therefore they do not recognize sufficiently the enlightenment represented by the wide embrace of their thoughts. They go about bowed because of the secular burden of the world’s folly, the anger of fools, which presses on them. 


For this reason they find themselves in a sea of spiritual afflictions. The narrow thoughts of the masses oppress their spirits, and they lack the strength to raise themselves to think their own thoughts, to affirm the firmness of their own will. 

But they must finally awaken from their slumber. With all their attitude of peace and respect for the behavior of the masses, they will return to God, who always reveals Himself to them through their special windows and lattices. 

If you aspire for the Torah, raise yourself and gird yourself to meet that higher sensibility which stirs inside your spirit. With all your movements, with all your speech, with all your burdens physical and spiritual, that are placed on you, be brave and look straight toward the light that is revealed to you through the lattice.

Emily Dickenson

Soft Atheism III

Frans de Waal keeps it up: 

In reading the nearly 700 reader responses to my Oct. 17 essay for The Stone, (“Morals Without God?“) I notice how many readers are relieved to see that there are shades of gray when it comes to the question whether morality requires God. I believe that such a discussion needs to revolve around both the distant past, in which religion likely played little or no role if we go back far enough, and modern times, in which it is hard to disentangle morality and religion. The latter point seemed obvious to me, yet proved controversial. Even though 90 percent of my text questions the religious origins of human morality, and wonders if we need a God to be good, it is the other 10 percent — in which I tentatively assign a role to religion — that drew most ire. Atheists, it seems (at least those who responded here) don’t like any less than 100 percent agreement with their position...

...Those who wish to remove religion and define morality as the pursuit of scientifically defined well-being (à la Sam Harris) should read up on earlier attempts in this regard, such as the Utopian novel “Walden Two” by B. F. Skinner, who thought that humans could achieve greater happiness and productivity if they just paid better attention to the science of reward and punishment. Skinner’s colleague John Watson even envisioned “baby factories” that would dispense with the “mawkish” emotions humans are prone to, an idea applied with disastrous consequences in Romanian orphanages. And talking of Romania, was not the entire Communist experiment an attempt at a society without God? Apart from the question of how moral these societies turned out to be, I find it intriguing that over time Communism began to look more and more like a religion itself. The singing, marching, reciting of poems and pledges and waving in the air of Little Red Books smacked of holy fervor, hence my remark that any movement that tries to promote a certain moral agenda — even while denying God — will soon look like any old religion. Since people look up to those perceived as more knowledgeable, anyone who wants to promote a certain social agenda, even one based on science, will inevitably come face to face with the human tendency to follow leaders and let them do the thinking.

What I would love to see is a debate among moderates. Perhaps it is an illusion that this can be achieved on the Internet, given how it magnifies disagreements, but I do think that most people will be open to a debate that respects both the beliefs held by many and the triumphs of science. There is no obligation for non-religious people to hate religion, and many believers are open to interrogating their own convictions. If the radicals on both ends are unable to talk with each other, this should not keep the rest of us from doing so.

My favorite home-made signs from the Rally to Restore Sanity