This week’s parashah, Vaera, begins with: “And God spoke to Moses, saying to him, I am יְהוָה YHVH.” He reminds Moses that there was a land that He had “covenanted” to give to his people, but that Promise had become a distant memory generations after Jacob had left Canaan. They forgot this covenant long after the people had prospered in Egypt, where they were now enslaved. This theme has happened to us time and again over the centuries, everywhere we have lived, but the Promise remains.
God told Moses what He was going to do: “I will free you …. I will deliver you …. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great wonders. I will take you to be My people, and I will be your GOD. Then you shall know that I, יְהוָה YHVH, am your God who freed you.” But they couldn’t believe Him because “their spirits were crushed.” Isn’t it like that today? Our spirits are still reeling from the Spanish Inquisition, the Pogroms of the late 1800’s, the Holocaust, the constant wars after Israel was granted statehood in 1948, and especially since October 7th, 2023. But instead of remembering the Covenant, most of our people have turned their backs on God, crying out, “Where were You when all these things happened?” rather than asking ourselves, “Where were we?” But the Promise remains.
Exodus 6:13 says: “יְהוָה ADONAI spoke to Moshe and to Aharon, and commanded the Israelites and the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that the Israelites proceed out of the land of Egypt.” Why would God have to command the Israelites to leave Egypt? We would think that they would jump at the chance to be set free. Why do people who live in abject misery refuse to do anything to change? They had forgotten the Promise.
The Israelites, however, were not the only ones who were being introduced to the Almighty. Exodus 7:5 tells us that “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Almighty (YHVH) when I stretch out My hand over Egypt and bring the Israelites out from their midst.” God wants everyone to know who He is and that they can trust Him to keep His Promises. When we are first introduced to God, as Moses was, we have a decision to make: either we trust Him, or we harden our hearts, as Pharaoh did. We may not realize at the time that we are doing this because we have become so accustomed to soothing our pain with “false gods” that we can no longer see the road to freedom.
The gods of Egypt looked awesome – huge golden temples, promises of whatever the heart desired. Instead of the Creator, they trusted in nature, the sun, the moon, the earth, and the Nile for sustenance. Their gods offered protection and a way to the afterlife. They maintained cosmic harmony through rituals of appeasement, told our fortunes, influenced our futures, promised fertility and happiness, and even misfortune if they were displeased. Their gods were made in the image of man. The plagues represented the Creator’s way of showing us that they held no power over us.
This was a spiritual war, exactly what is happening in the world today. It cannot be won with human weapons, with our pride, our knowledge expressed by brilliant rhetoric or even the massive strength of our armies or threat of our nuclear weapons. Our prophet Zechariah in 4:6 told us, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of the armies.” So how do we fight this type of war? We remember His Promise.
In chapter 6:14, Moses names only a few of the leaders from the offspring of the 12 tribes. He mentions the sons of Shimon, a violent man, yet his progeny succumb to becoming slaves in Egypt without fighting back. We often see that children whose parents have prospered after years of hard work rarely follow in their footsteps. One of Shimon’s sons – Shaul, the son of a Canaanite woman, was mentioned. Why? Was it to draw our attention to the many offspring of the ancient Israelites today who have married people whose beliefs were foreign to the God of Israel? They eventually assimilated into foreign cultures and their gods; they have forgotten the Promise, at the risk of eradicating God’s name, YHVH and the name Israel. This is what allows the Pharaohs of the world to succeed.
Then Moses does something that might easily escape our attention: he names the offspring of Levi who will later serve as priests, cohanim, to reestablish the link between the Israelites and their God. The Promise will once again call the people.
Chapter 6 ends with Moses appealing to God: “Who am I to speak to Pharaoh, I who am tongue-tied.” I can only imagine what Moses experienced during his 40 years living as a Hebrew in Pharaoh’s court, inside the lair of his enemy. Remember, Pharaoh wanted to annihilate the Jews, to remove every trace of them from history, like Hitler tried to do, not so very long ago. I just watched a video about David Miller, a Jewish teenager in Poland whose entire family was murdered by the Nazis. He became a spy for the Polish resistance, working undercover as a Hitler Youth. He was trained and privy to the Nazi’s diabolical plans for his people. He struggled within because he had to become the person he hated. For so long, he had lived this lie that at times, his psyche became confused about who he really was. How could Moses suddenly speak to the great Pharaoh when he had spent years hiding who he was, with perhaps the exception of a few sworn to secrecy by the woman who saved him, Bithiah, Pharaoh’s daughter? Did she hear from God? Was she among those who left Egypt? But instead of arguing with Moses, God said, “See, I am making you a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron will be your prophet.” Again, a spiritual yet practical and merciful solution.
God would continue to harden Pharaoh’s stubborn heart in order to break his pride, another major theme in the Torah. But after the seventh plague, in chapter 9:27, Pharaoh finally acknowledged, “Chataati, YHVH hatzaddik v’ani v’ami harshaim” חָטָ֣אתִי הַפָּ֑עַם יְהֹוָה֙ הַצַּדִּ֔יק וַאֲנִ֥י וְעַמִּ֖י הָרְשָׁעִֽים. “I am guilty; YHVH is righteous; I and my people are wicked.” He sounds authentic, but we know that Pharaoh’s words were empty. Pagan gods were used to battling each other and believing that at some point, they would be victorious. His gods could make promises, but they were fickle and could change their minds at any time. We don’t serve a god we can appease with money or flattery. Our God allows us to suffer the consequences of our actions, as He did with Pharaoh. Then He steps in and helps us start again. The Torah teaches us that acknowledging our guilt is just the first step toward healing; unless we take the next steps toward restitution, nothing will change. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and sometimes it may take ten plagues to get us to listen.
In Ex. 9:13, Moses told Pharaoh, “Koh amar YHVH Elohei haIvrm, Shalach et ami v’yaavduni.”כֹּֽה־אָמַ֤ר יְהֹוָה֙ אֱלֹהֵ֣י הָֽעִבְרִ֔ים שַׁלַּ֥ח אֶת־עַמִּ֖י וְיַֽעַבְדֻֽנִי . “This is what YHVH, the God of the Hebrews, says: Send my people to worship (avodah) Me. Avodah means to serve. For Pharaoh, it meant enslavement for his purposes. For God, it meant working together with Him to fulfil our purpose in the world, as revealed in verse 16: “But for this purpose, I raised you…to show you My power and that My Name, (i.e., my reputation) may be proclaimed in all the earth.” There is only one Name, YHVH, who is the Creator of the universe and when we take His Name in vain, there are consequences.
Just as the nation of Israel would be set apart from the other nations, after the second plague, Goshen was set apart from the rest of the land of Egypt… And God tells us why…“So that you may know that I, YHVH, am in the midst of the land.” In the midst of what land? It wasn’t the Promised Land; they were still in the land of Egypt. This raises so many questions. What does Goshen represent to us today? Is it that God would be in our midst wherever we live outside the land? And who, then, are God’s Chosen People?
Perhaps a hint lies in Exodus 9:20, which says: “Those among Pharaoh’s courtiers who feared the word of יהוה brought their slaves and livestock indoors to safety.” And verse 26 says: “There was no hail, only in the region of Goshen, where the Israelites were.” The Hebrews were protected in Goshen, together with the Egyptians who obeyed wherever they lived, while the rest of Egypt’s crops and animals were being devastated. Were these some of the people who would later leave with the Israelites?
We know that the Promise of Land was made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not to Ishmael and Esau, even though they were blood brothers. So, it’s not a matter of bloodline. None of these men were native born Israelites because that lay in the future. It was always a matter of God’s choice.
Orthodox Jews living in Israel today are calling for every Jew in the diaspora to return to the land of Israel; it has been a core theme of Judaism for centuries, long before the modern State of Israel. But this raises many questions for me. I question Orthodox Judaism’s desire to rebuild the Temple, to reinstate the sacrificial system, but especially to build bridges between Christians and Jews. Isn’t that like saying that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is just for the Jews, while the Gentiles can have their god, and that they only have to observe the seven fabricated Noahide laws.
Is this what the Torah is teaching us? Didn’t Caleb, the Kenezzite, a Gentile, become a leader of the tribe of Judah? Wasn’t he given land? Wasn’t he held to the same standard as Joshua, a native-born Israelite? Was Ruth, who left her gods behind, prevented from becoming the great-great-grandmother of King David because she was a Moabite? And I don’t buy the argument that they converted. There was nothing to convert to. All they could do was remain with their gods or choose the God of Israel.
Like the ancient Israelites who had multiplied and were scattered throughout Egypt, God’s people are scattered everywhere on earth. Their separation in Goshen, the original shtetl, represents the Spiritual Goshen for those of us still in the diaspora.
The Pharaohs of the world are not necessarily the heads of nations; they may be heads of systems such as atheism, democracies, fascism, monarchies, and everything in between that have raised themselves above God’s system, theocracy. Pharaoh represents the power-hungry regime, the dictatorship that cannot be questioned. We don’t have to look far to see these in the world today. They pretend to care about their people, while in truth, they enslave their subjects and only care about themselves. I believe that we are safe in the arms of our God, wherever we live, and called to be a light in the place in which we dwell. Yes, the Promise remains, and the Covenant will be fulfilled in the future. And if we wonder why all these disasters are happening in the world and in our lives today, as the plagues happened in Egypt, let us consider that perhaps our behaviour is dishonouring the Name YHVH, preventing it from being proclaimed through all the earth; do we, like Pharaoh, expect no response from Him?
Shabbat Shalom
Peggy Pardo