Parashat Va-era

Exodus 6:2–9:35


This week’s commentary was written by Chancellor Arnold Eisen, JTS.

This week’s parashah abounds in venerable theological problems, beginning with its name and opening verses. How could it be that God “appeared” to the ancestors but that some aspect of God—or some truth articulated in God’s name—was not “made known” to them and will be revealed only now, to Moses? The answer that seems most persuasive to me bears a lesson that, like so many others in the Torah, is not so much theological as ethical; it teaches far less about the nature of God than it does about human responsibility. This God, we learn in this parashah, cares greatly about justice in the world and will—at least on this occasion—enter into history to bring it about. God will do battle on the world’s greatest stage with the world’s most powerful ruler—all this to let the whole world know that God is concerned with human beings and human history. The Torah commands us to be no less concerned. We cannot count on divine intervention to improve things. The world will be redeemed only if we act to help make it so.

This question facing us, then, is what we shall do to further God’s pursuit of justice? How are we to know what action to take in response to the Torah’s demand? Prophecy is a scary business. In our day, too many men and women urge murder and much else in God’s name. We dare not follow them. The rabbis declared two thousand years ago that the age of prophecy has passed. It is up to us to interpret and apply the divine commands revealed in scripture as best we can, using all the faculties at our command—reason and experience first of all. “We pay no heed to any heavenly voices.” What voices then shall we heed? How shall we know what to do? Where shall we find the wisdom to do it well? Heschel put the problem this way: “Infinite responsibility without infinite wisdom and infinite power; is our ultimate embarrassment” (God in Search of Man, 285).

One thing is clear, from this parashah and those that follow: we must take action in pursuit of righteousness and cannot use human frailty as a paralyzing excuse for doing nothing. The text works hard to make sure that we identify with its protagonists, never more so than in the story of Moses who, after trying hard to escape the task, leads the Israelites’ struggle to be free of the Pharaoh’s genocidal tyranny. We cheer him on when he slays that Egyptian slave-driver—but then pause to worry, if we are like the sages, that people less attuned than Moses to God’s wishes will take matters into their own hands in a way that promotes injustice rather than fighting it. The Torah shows us case after case of less than perfect Israelites who care more for their own well-being than for the world’s well-being. Even Moses acts rashly on occasion and issues commands that may be at variance with God’s wishes. How then are we latter-day children of Israel meant to puzzle out the rights and wrongs, avoid self-deception and self-righteousness, and still act resolutely to apply prophetic principles in unprecedented situations?

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