Simple Lessons
The book of Shemot (Exodus) begins the story proper of the Jewish people whose roots were traced in Bereshit (Genesis). And immediately, we are thrust into a realm of strange inclinations. The enslaved Israelites seem to resist redemption at every step; the supposed hero, Moses, keeps rejecting the call to leadership; and the obvious antagonist, Pharaoh, is ultimately maneuvered into that role by God’s own will. The first lesson to learn is that there are no simple lessons here! Perhaps the second lesson is that - if we are to see ourselves in these characters - we can recognize our own swirl of capacities and resistances, freedoms and limitations.
My heart aches this week for all those impacted by the fires in southern California. And as I write, there is hope but not full confidence that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will be in place by Sunday. A new presidential administration will be in place by the start of next week. How do we act? How do we hope? How best to engage with this world of sweetness and sorrow? How do we wisely engage our capacities and resistances? There are no simple lessons here. But let’s turn to a significant moment in Moses’s story for a few suggestions…
Moses is out shepherding when he notices the burning bush. This act of noticing somehow merits God commissioning him to lead the Israelites to freedom. “Moses said: I must turn (asura) to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn’t the bush burn up?” (Exodus 3:3)
Ibn Ezra (12th century) wonders about the verb asura, to turn. It usually appears with the preposition “from” and means to turn aside and distancefrom something, or it appears with the preposition “to” and naturally means toturn towards something. Here it has neither preposition, and so Ibn Ezra gifts us a grammar lesson, suggesting that both are implied. “Moses wanted to turn aside from where he was and to then draw near to the bush.” In other words, what Moses does right is lean in (one midrash says he merely turned his neck to see the bush better). That small gesture of attention and engagement is enough to change the fate of an entire people.
Kli Yakar (16th century) takes exactly the opposite approach. “The matter of turning is to distance oneself from that place because the eye can better grasp it from a distance. Go and learn from the light of the sun, that as long as you get too close to it you can’t see it, but when the sun is in the east or in the west (sunrise and sunset), everyone looks at it from a great distance. So too the light of this bush. Moses couldn’t look at it or comprehend what it was because of how great the light was.”
For Kli Yakar, then, what Moses does right is get a critical distance so he can understand the bigger picture. This is a necessary attribute of wise leadership.
Midrash Shemot Rabbah adds a third ingredient: “Rabbi Yitzchak said: What is “that he had turned [sar] to see?” The Holy One of Blessing said: This one is sorrowful and upset [sar veza’ef] over seeing Israel’s suffering in Egypt; therefore, he is suitable to be their shepherd.”
What makes Moses the right leader is that he empathizes with his people.
May each of us lean on one or more of these practices as we move through the weeks ahead:
to get a little closer and pay attention to what might be overlooked;
to step back and get a bigger perspective;
and to allow ourselves to be moved by suffering.
May all of these practices support the work of liberation and the pursuit of justice and peace.
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
