Rabbi's Derasha

A young man visited the community this week.  He is a candidate for conversion in another city.  He grew up in the area and visits EB when he is in town to see his family.  He commented at the beginning of the week about how contemporary the Chumash seems.  Here we are beginning Shemot, he said, and what do we have?  Nothing but the experience of Galut, of exile,  the precarious nature of life, then the movement toward redemption.  I told him, yes, sometimes it’s like reading the paper. 

The Chumash can only feel like that because the themes are perennial.  More precisely, the patterns are perennial.  The overarching pattern of history as the chaos of exile being overcome by redemption repeats again and again. .  

That is of course why we come back to the same books all of the time.  In all of their ancient vintage, we believe them to be contemporary.  Last week, I sent out a remarkable clip of the widow Hadas Levenshtern speaking about her husband, Elisha, hy’d, who was killed in Gaza.  I received two responses almost immediately.  One was from Yaakov Tuchman, who lives now in the same neighborhood in Harish as the Levenshterns and wanted me to know that everything she describes in that video is absolutely true. This is a remarkable family.  

The other response was from Mrs. Felsen, who sent me a clip from Mrs. Michal Horowitz, whom we hosted a few months ago (and whom we will host again in several weeks, via Zoom, speaking about Tefilla).  Mrs Horowitz also mentioned the moving talk from Hadas Levenshtern in her class on Tehillim for the 10th of Tevet.  

Mrs Horowitz’s class also featured a detail from Psalm 79 which again shows how contemporary the ancient books can be.  One of the reasons we turn to Tehillim in such tough times is because it can intensify our Tefilla.  Tehillim is also Tefilla, but its vivid images often capture our hearts in a way that triggers more passion.  Mrs Horowitz gave such an example in Psalm 79, which many communities are saying these days.  It begins with an image of the non-Jews defiling Hashem’s Nachala, his heritage, meaning Eretz Yisrael.  The chapter then describes how the attack left Hashem’s servants as “Ma’achal l’of hashamayim,” as food for the birds of the heavens.  Mrs Horowitz pointed out that the attack on October 7 left victims spread out over football fields.  The victims at the Rave ran in all directions trying to flee.  There was no way to recover the bodies in a systematic way.  We seek out all of the bodies because we bury everything but the task was too big.  So the units charged with recovery watched the birds.  They followed the Of HaShamayim, the birds looking for carrion, and that’s how they recovered more.  Like I said, the books can read like the newspaper.

It’s important to note that Tehillim does not replace the Amida.  We say Tehillim every day here in the morning and the evening.  The enthusiasm is palpable and I sometimes worry that Tehillim have more passion than regular Tefilla.  We need to remind ourselves that Tefilla also capturest moments like these.  

There is a blessing that in the Amida that is aimed directly at what’s happening today.  The seventh blessing of the Amida is about Geula, redemption.  The Gemora in Megilla discusses this blessing in terms of the final Geula, so one might think that it’s only about the ultimate Geula.  But that doesn’t fit into the pattern of the Amida.  The first six requests are for more personal assistance while the second half of our requests are for national redemption.  Plus Rashi points out that the ultimate Geula is the subject in other, later blessings -- in the ingathering of the exiles, in the sprouting of the redemption.  Rashi says that this blessing is about our redemption from the catastrophes which befall us all of the time.  (Rashi adds that the use of the word “Geula” here is simply borrowed from the sense of the word in terms of the ultimate Geula.)  

This is not an easy blessing for us.  We are not used to being under siege in a way that fits.  We live a coddled existence in the 21st century.  We are out of practice when it comes to this blessing.  No one in California thinks about the “troubles which come upon us all of the time.”  We look forward to the blessings for the sick, or for our livelihood.  But now is the time to recover this blessing’s meaning.  And it’s good to realize that it was always there.

What is the role of names, of Shemot, in this perennial process of Geula?  There is a phenomenon in Lashon Hakodesh, in Biblical Hebrew, which we’ve pointed out before.  It is how some words mean both one thing and its opposite.  The word “Ikar” is one of these, as it means both a settled “root” and also “to uproot.”  The word “Poked” means to count something and to be absent, and thus not countable. The word “Shem” is also like this.  It means “name,” the ultimate verbal act of giving something relatable meaning.  And, in the form of “Shomema,” it means a desolate place which does not yield to meaning.  As a stative verb, “L’hishtomem” means to be dumbfounded, flummoxed.  It describes someone who cannot articulate any reaction at all to what they see.  

The experience of exile is the experience of not being able to articulate.  It is chaos. The antidote to this is to regain speech, to the meaning imbedded in “names.”  Names dominate the Parasha, not just in the first few verses.  But even in those first few verses, the Midrash wants to know why we have to be told the names of Yaakov’s children again.  It then re-interprets each of the names in light of redemption.  The act of naming, of pushing back on the chaos of exile, will make redemption possible.  

Of all of the names in the Parasha, the most famous exchange is about Hashem’s name.  Getting that name right is surely connected to the redemption.  As R’ Asher Weiss in Israel has said over and over in the last few months, “It is very true that one cannot win this war without an army.  But no one should forget that we also cannot win the war without Hashem.”  The redemption story in Egypt is the model for all redemption, for all the instances of overcoming chaos.  It was by fastening on to Hashem’s name that it came once, and that is what can do it again.  “B’yachad Ninatzeach,” together we will win, also means together with Hashem.