✨🔍 Vaeira 2021
If the Creator wants something and you say you're not familiar with His work, you're probably gonna have a bad time
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Choreographed Futility
5 minute read | Intermediate
Towards the beginning of the Exodus story, God gives Moshe his great mission.
Moshe initially resists and says that the Jewish People will not listen to him. Although our sages criticize him for this, he demonstrates that he is highly attuned to his environment because, sure enough, that’s precisely what happens:
וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה כֵּן אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה – But when Moshe told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moshe, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage. (6:9)
This expresses a broader motif in this story, and the entire Torah as well, filled as it is with so many aborted attempts, failed efforts, and wasted opportunities.
While we can generally say that it is always worth trying for lots of them, it’s particularly difficult to see the point here.
Moshe knew it wasn’t going to work; God knew too and sent Moshe anyway. This unnecessary theatre only caused aggravation, disappointment, and frustration for everyone – both Moshe and his exhausted audience. So it’s hard to see this as anything other than choreographed futility – a colossal waste of time, energy, and effort on all counts.
Moshe knew they wouldn’t listen. God knew they wouldn’t listen. So why did God bother sending Moshe on an exercise in futility?
The Sfas Emes teaches that there is no such thing as futility when it comes to trying to help people. This particular stage of the story serves to teach that it’s not one specific speech that has an effect all at once, and that the helper must persist. Words can take root even if they don’t immediately blossom and yield fruit; the lack of immediate and apparent results doesn’t mean the efforts are futile.
The Netziv highlights how the Torah is replete with expressions of phases and stages that indicate gradual transformation; for example, there are five expressions of redemptions, ten plagues, and ten works of Creation, among others.
Time and again, we expect ultimate salvation, a moment everything changes and turns around, and we get disappointed because the world doesn’t work like that.
Let’s remember that we are reading the Exodus story, the grandest redemption story in history to date, and it starts like this! Moshe is frustrated, his people are hurting and spent, and he can’t get them to entertain the belief or dream that things could possibly change for the better. Not even the most legendary redemption story has an instant turning point and watershed moment; it starts like this – boring and painfully slow. Nothing happens! On Seder night, we celebrate the great miracles, but maybe we should read these few lines as well and remember what change actually looks like, not only in our daily lived experience but as attested to in the Torah’s own words!
God commands Moshe to go anyway because humble beginnings and failed efforts are not futile.
While there’s plenty to say about why the Jewish People would not listen, but that stands apart from why they wouldn’t listen; our focus is on why Moshe had to go through the motions if they were bound to fail.
The Chizkuni suggests that it’s not that they wouldn’t listen, but that they couldn’t; they were structurally and systemically too traumatized to have the mental or physical capacity to hold on to hope. And even so, God sends Moshe to them with words that are not futile. Even if they can’t internalize the message, it is objectively important that they see Moshe trying to help them, that they hear the words.
This may help explain an anomaly in this story.
Right after this unsuccessful effort to encourage his people, Moshe reports back to God, and a nonchalant God tells them straightforwardly that their mission is going ahead on schedule and as planned:
וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה לֵאמֹר הֵן בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא־שָׁמְעוּ אֵלַי וְאֵיךְ יִשְׁמָעֵנִי פַרְעֹה וַאֲנִי עֲרַל שְׂפָתָיִם. וַיְדַבֵּר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וְאֶל־אַהֲרֹן וַיְצַוֵּם אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאֶל־פַּרְעֹה מֶלֶךְ מִצְרָיִם לְהוֹצִיא אֶת־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם – But Moses appealed to the LORD, saying, “The Israelites would not listen to me; how then should Pharaoh heed me, a man of impeded speech!” So the LORD spoke to both Moses and Aaron in regard to the Israelites and Pharaoh king of Egypt, instructing them to deliver the Israelites from the land of Egypt. (6:12,13)
But what follows this powerful reaffirmation of the mission isn’t a renewal or redoubling of efforts. The Torah interrupts this story mid-paragraph with a tangential breakdown of the heritage and lineage of the Jewish families in Egypt in exhaustive detail.
It’s not clear what this breakdown is doing in this story, but perhaps it ties into the notion of efforts not being futile.
The Ishbitzer teaches that in the instant we choose to pray, before uttering a word, God is poised to listen, which is to say, God responds before we have reached out. In the physical world, Moshe tried to encourage the Jewish People, but they couldn’t hear him. But the Torah tells us who they were, where they came from, that they were descendants of Yisrael because perhaps something intangible and subconscious would be the hook Moshe’s words would latch on to.
His words aren’t futile because they don’t exist in isolation; they pool into a more extensive relationship full of interactions, and this is just one of many. They aren’t futile because change happens gradually, incrementally, and slowly. They aren’t futile because they still register on a subconscious level. They aren’t futile because they need to see someone caring and making an effort to reach out. The words might not register, but they aren’t futile because they are the Children of Israel, and he is going to save them and bring them to Sinai.
Moreover, Moshe, and in truth, God Himself, speaks to them, and through them, to us, in this dialogue. We read these words, we see this failed interaction, and it’s blindly obvious that these efforts aren’t futile or wasted, even if they didn’t have the desired result.
Nothing ever happens in a day. In the words of Steve Jobs, most overnight successes take a really long time.
God sent Moshe to talk to people when everyone knew it wouldn’t change a thing, but it’s not futile because that failed interaction goes on to form a part of a foundation that all future growth and progress can be built on. It’s not wasted breath; it’s an investment in posterity.
If you’ve ever had difficulties in a relationship that matters, you know that you can’t save anyone with an idea. No magic word or thought will make them suddenly understand, no light bulb that turns on, and then everything changes. Reality is far more modest than that; each kind word is a deposit into an account balance that barely seems to grow at the start. It’s painfully slow, frustrating, and it doesn’t look like progress, perhaps even the opposite.
God very deliberately sends Moshe on a mission he already knows he cannot possibly succeed at, highlighting to Moshe and us that apparent failure and setbacks are not futile.
If you’re stuck in trouble and can’t hear a kind word, hold on. If you’re trying to help someone who won’t hear or see it, keep it up.
It wasn’t futile then, and it’s not futile now.
The Universal and the Particular
2 minute read | Straightforward
The Exodus story is long and complex, with many different stages. The Ten Plagues took place over the course of a year or so, but it wouldn’t have been any less cool or impressive to rescue the Jewish People in the space of a day. The theatre of a long and drawn-out Ten Plagues is deliberate then, rather than miraculously magic the Jewish People out or flatten Egypt instantly.
Why did God take His time saving the Jewish People?
If the goal is to save the Jewish People, then the question is a great question; God should have done it as quickly and efficiently as possible!
But the story is plain on its face that God has other goals in this story; that as much as the Jewish People must understand there is a God, it is essential that Egypt also come to understand this as well – וְיָדְעוּ מִצְרַיִם כִּי-אֲנִי ה – that beyond simple comeuppance, karma, or punishment for centuries of oppression, God deems it independently necessary and of standalone significance for Egypt to recognize the One God.
When the defeated Egyptian army drifted in the waves of the Red Sea and the Jews celebrated, and the Midrash imagines how the angels in Heaven applauded their salvation, but God would not – “Shall angels sing while My creations drown?!”
The conclusion of the book of Jonah carries a similar sentiment, where God admonishes Jonah for caring about his narrow corner of the world without caring for a metropolis full of people and animals simply because they aren’t his countrymen:
וַאֲנִי לֹא אָחוּס עַל־נִינְוֵה הָעִיר הַגְּדוֹלָה אֲשֶׁר יֶשׁ־בָּהּ הַרְבֵּה מִשְׁתֵּים־עֶשְׂרֵה רִבּוֹ אָדָם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדַע בֵּין־יְמִינוֹ לִשְׂמֹאלוֹ וּבְהֵמָה רַבָּה – “Should not I care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who don’t yet know their right hand from their left, and many animals as well?!”
The Lubavitcher Rebbe notes that one of our liturgy’s sharpest prayers about Gentiles, the request at the Seder for God to pour out His wrath on them over our exile – שְׁפֹךְ חֲמָתְךָ אֶל־הַגּוֹיִם – is qualified with the caveat of those who do not recognize God – אֲשֶׁר לֹא יְדָעוּךָ.
From its earliest moments and consistently throughout, God’s goal has never exclusively been to save the Jewish People. The Torah’s utopian vision for the world has consistently been a universal one where all humans recognize God – בֵיתִי בֵּית־תְּפִלָּה יִקָּרֵא לְכָל־הָעַמִּים / וְכָל בְּנֵי בָשָׂר יִקְרְאוּ בִשְׁמֶךָ / וִיקַבְּלוּ כֻלָּם אֶת עֹל מַלְכוּתֶךָ.
While the Lubavitcher Rebbe and his followers have certainly taken outreach to its furthest conceivable limits, it is worth dwelling on the principle. The Torah is not a pathway to personal joy and reward just for Jews; the Gemara and the Rambam emphatically affirm that Gentiles go to the same places we do when we die.
When the Torah is properly lived, it is supposed to influence and impact the people and world around us, and it’s a good litmus test for your own spiritual journey.
Are you lifting others with you as you go?
You are Worthy
3 minute read | Straightforward
The Exodus is an orienting event for the Jewish People, a founding moment in our history, with a daily duty to recall it. It’s the first thing God has to say to humans at Sinai; God introduces Himself as the God who took us out of Egypt.
Remembering the Exodus is a perpetual mitzvah, and an astounding amount of our daily blessings, mitzvos, and prayers commemorate the Exodus – זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם. It is ubiquitous to the extent we could miss the point entirely.
What do we mean when we say that we remember that God took the Jews out of Egypt?
It is essential to understand first principles because they are the foundational concepts that govern the systems built upon them.
If we unpack the story, the Jews in Egypt didn’t deserve to be saved because they were so good or so special; in fact, quite the opposite.
The Zohar imagines the angels arguing whether or not God should save the Jews, and the argument was that “this lot are just a bunch of idol-worshippers, and so are those!” The Haggadah admits as much – מִתְּחִלָּה עוֹבְדֵי עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה הָיוּ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ.
When Moshe told the Jews to set aside and take one sheep per family, the Midrash says that “set aside” meant setting aside their idols before taking the sheep for the mitzvah!
When even Moshe, already well on his way to greatness, saw Yisro’s daughters getting bullied and got involved in the dispute to protect them, the onlookers mistook him for just another Egyptian!
The Midrash famously states that the enslaved Jews retained their names, clothing, and language. This is often framed as a point of pride, but the point would seem to be that apart from these narrow and limited practices, they were otherwise indistinguishable from Egyptians in every other conceivable way!
Moreover, the generation that left Egypt and stood at Sinai fought Moshe the rest of their lives, begging to go back to Egypt, and was ultimately doomed to wander and die in the wilderness.
The Zohar goes so far as to say that the Jews were on the 49th level of spiritual malaise, just one notch off rock bottom, the point of no return. Rav Kook notes that this adds a particular dimension to the imagery of God’s outstretched arm – it was a forceful intervention, an emergency rescue of a nation that had stumbled and was about fall off a cliff – בְּיָד חֲזָקָה וּבִזְרֹעַ נְטוּיָה.
That is to say that on a fundamental level, the Jews didn’t deserve rescuing at all.
And yet crucially, as R’ Chaim Kanievsky notes, God responded to their cries all the same – וַנִּצְעַק אֶל־ה’ אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֵינוּ, וַיִּשְׁמַע ה’ אֶת־קֹלֵנוּ.
The Divrei Chaim notes that the very first Commandment is no command at all; God “introduces” himself as the God who took us out of Egypt – אָנֹכִי ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִים. It’s not a command – it is just a simple statement of fact. We might not deserve redemption, yet God redeems us all the same.
R’ Tzadok haKohen writes that to remember Egypt is to remember God’s first declarative sentence; our God rescues people from Egypt, whoever they are.
The Ropshitzer quipped that תְּחִלָּה לְמִקְרָאֵי קדֶשׁ זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם – the first step towards holiness is remembering that the same Exodus that rescued people from the abyss once before could be just a moment away.
So when we remind ourselves about Egypt, it’s not just that it happened once, but that, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe put it, God’s redemption is not contingent on our worthiness.
You don’t need to remember the simple historical events of the Exodus; you have to remind yourself that every single last human is worthy of God’s unconditional love.
Pharaoh’s Responsibility
2 minute read | Straightforward
One of the foundations of religion and morality is free will.
With good reason, Maimonides identifies free will as a foundational principle underpinning the entire Torah. If humans can’t deliberately choose between right and wrong, there can be no reward or punishment. If we can’t choose, our actions have no value as we don’t control them; if you are bad, it’s not your fault because being good is impossible.
The Exodus story poses a problem to this, however.
Throughout the story, God tells Moshe that He has hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and so Pharaoh refuses to free the Jews. But if God had hardened his heart, Pharaoh’s free will was hopelessly compromised; how was punishing Pharaoh deserved or fair?
Maimonides’s exposition of free will explains that it is possible to do something so bad egregious that the path of making amends and repentance is foreclosed, and the person can no longer turn back to where they once were.
We understand this; there is an old folk saying that the axe forgets; but the tree remembers, meaning that the person who hurts another forgets but the person who gets hurt will not. Someone abusive can reform themselves, regret their actions, and resolve never to hurt another person again, and they should do all those things! But the point is, they can only hope to find a new path; they can never return to their old one, and that’s what happened to Pharaoh.
Pharaoh’s government enslaved, tortured, and murdered people, particularly children; justice itself required that he be prevented from making amends.
Pharaoh was so far down his path of madness and violence that he could not see or hear his people suffering, and his adviser’s pleas fell on deaf ears:
הֲטֶרֶם תֵּדַע כִּי אָבְדָה מִצְרָיִם – “Do you not see that Egypt is already lost?” (10:7)
Contemporary psychology might call this a form of cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable feeling you experience when two of your beliefs are in conflict. When confronted with challenging new information, people may seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information, or convincing themselves that no conflict really exists. We can lie to ourselves to justify bad decisions and hypocrisy.
Pharoah was determined to hold onto his power over his Jewish subjects, but this was at odds with his duties to the Egyptian people who were suffering. These beliefs were incompatible, but Pharoah would not address the systemic issue and let the Jewish People go; he would only ever ask Moshe to remove the symptoms of the plague at hand.
If we question where Pharaoh’s free will was, we should consider inverting the question and asking it of ourselves, because cognitive dissonance is very common.
R’ Shimshon Pinkus suggests that this is the definition of the Rosh Hashana blessing to be the head, and not the tail – שֶׁנִּהְיֶה לְרֹאשׁ וְלֹא לְזָנָב. It’s a wish for an intentional year, with conscious and constant course corrections, because if today’s actions are based on yesterday’s decisions, you end up being your own tail!
The Midrash warns us that sin is like a passing visitor, then a houseguest who overstays their welcome, and before long, it’s master of the house. R’ Jonathan Sacks suggests that we can all too easily become prisoners to our own pride on a microcosmic level.
It’s not so difficult to imagine becoming so entrenched in a worldview that you get tunnel vision and can’t change course.
As much as we celebrate the prospect of freedom, you must consciously choose it daily.
Thought of the Week
