Dvar Torah on Parshat Va'eira

Cos' I'm a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in old West Virginia,
Never seen New Orleans, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
Still I dream of the Black Hills
that I ain't never seen.

Cos' I'm a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in old West Virginia,
Though my hills are not green,
I have seen them in my dreams,
Take me back to those Black Hills
That I have never seen.

The Kinks, Muswell Hillbillies; Ray Davies.

God spoke to Moshe, He said to him: I am YHWH. I was seen by Avraham, by Yitzchak, and by Yaakov as El- Shadai, but by my name YHWH I was not known to them.  (Shemot, 6; 2-4)

This week's parsha, Va'era, begins with the verses above (not the ones by the Kinks, the other ones). Last week, God sent Moshe to tell Pharaoh, and the Jewish people, that He will free them and take them out of Egypt. The results were disastrous. Pharaoh angrily responded that, as punishment for Moshe's chutzpah, the Jewish slaves would not only not go free, they would also have to continue to produce the same number of bricks as always, without being supplied with the straw necessary to make them; they would now have to gather the straw themselves. This turn of events led the Jews to angrily confront Moshe and his brother Aharon and accuse them of  'putting a sword into their hand, to kill us.' Moshe, at the end of last week's parsha and his rope, then turned to God and asked: 'Why have you dealt so badly with this people? Why have you sent me?'

The opening verses of this week's parsha, quoted above, are part of God's response to Moshe. He goes on to assure Moshe that he and the Jewish people should not lose heart; the promised exodus really is about to happen. In these opening verses, God seems to be making some sort of theological distinction between how He was seen by the patriarchs and how he will be revealing Himself to the Israelites during the exodus. Rashi explains the difference in this way: The name of God YHWH indicates a God who promises and fulfills His promise; a God who delivers. This is the God whom Moshe and his generation will see, will know, as He fulfills His promise and take them out of Egypt and brings them to the Promised Land. The patriarchs, on the other hand, never saw a God who keeps His promises, because He didn't! He told them a lot of things: that they will inherit the Land of Israel, that their children will grow to be a great nation, but none of it came true in their lifetimes. They, therefore, really only saw God as 'El-Shadai', which Rashi explains as indicating a God who makes promises which have not yet been fulfilled. The God experienced by the patriarchs - El Shadai - is one of longing, of having faith, of planning for and being focused on an unknown, hoped-for future. The God of the generation of Moshe - the ineffable name of YHWH - is an imminent God of actualization, of lived history, of promises kept and hopes fulfilled.

According to this understanding, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov lived lives of deferred theological gratification. The Jewish people, the homeland of Israel, their very existence as a nation, were things which they never saw. Situated in the future, beyond their actual field of vision, they were goals which they had to hope for, believe in, and search for in their imaginations. Moshe and his generation, on the other hand, were about to experience God's hand in history; they were about to really see Him. This is what God goes on to tell Moshe: I will bring them out of Egypt, and I will save them from slavery, and bring them to the Promised Land; they will actually experience all these things, you, together with them, will actually see this.

Now, the question is, why does God give Moshe this little lesson in the history of theology? Why do His reassurances that the exodus really will take place, now, need to be accompanied by this walk through memory lane with the Patriarchs? The Rabbis of the Talmud understand it as an invidious comparison. God is lamenting the passing of the earlier generations of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, who were more faithful than the generation of Moshe. They were willing and able to believe in a God who was seen by them only from a distance, who was all about promises, hopes, and dreams, whereas the generation of Moshe, which is about to see a God who is much more in the foreground of their actual historical experience, is already complaining! God, with this explanation of the difference between the way He was seen by the patriarchs and the way He is now seen by Moshe's generation, is expressing His disappointment at the loss of such a faithful generation, and His unhappiness with the impatience of the nudgy one He now has to deal with.

I was thinking about this while I was in my living room, and I noticed a small print on the wall. It is a Turner; the subject is "The Valley of the Brook Kedron, Between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives". Turner was never in Israel, and the lithograph is based on a sketch by one C. Berry, Esq.

We are looking into a valley, which extends, away from us, to the horizon. In the foreground we see a small flock of grazing goats. Above them, on the left, rising out of the valley, is the ancient mausoleum known as the Tomb of Absalom. A man, his head in his hands, is seated in front of it. He is, it seems, a Jew, facing in the direction of the Temple Mount and weeping. In the center of the picture, almost on the horizon, way off in the distance, barely visible, are the buildings of the Village of Siloam (today Silwan). To the right of the goats, a bridge extends over the 'Brook Kedron' and out of the picture. Above and behind it rises a large outcrop of darkly shaded natural rock, topped by a tiny bit of crenellated wall, with the light of the late afternoon sun above it: Jerusalem.

Looking at the picture, I was struck by the power and presence of that which was missing, or barely there: the village of Silwan, just visible, a whitish, ghostly presence on the horizon, and the city of Jerusalem, only hinted at by a mass of rock, a bit of wall, and the light of the setting sun. (I remembered that when I bought the print, the presence of that tiny bit of Jerusalem wall made it much more attractive to me.) Turner often forces the viewer to look deep into the space of his paintings to discover an almost-hidden subject; he is doing that here, as well, with the inhabited areas of this landscape, Silwan and mostly missing Jerusalem.

God begins this week's parsha by looking back, longingly, into the distant past, at a lost, dead, missing generation, whose major theological accomplishment was to look forward, into a distant future, at a reality they could only imagine and hope for. The actual generation which God can see right in front of Him, the generation that is now enslaved and will soon experience the exodus, is a lot less impressive; their faith is not that of their ancestors. The God which this unimpressive generation sees, who is in the foreground, right in front of them, revealing Himself to them in history as the God of deliverance, doesn't seem to impress them that much either.

The beauty of absent things.

Shabbat Shalom,

Shimon Felix