Moshe, Moshe!

(Exodus 3:4)

Tevet 22, 5777/January 20, 2017

The book of Exodus (Shemot) begins and all the people we used to know, they are gone. Yosef and his brothers and their entire generation... gone. A new reality greets us, a darker reality. The shift in the fate of the children of Israel is swift and shocking. From welcomed VIPs in Egypt they have suddenly become personae non gratae. Worse than that, the male newborns are marked for death.

New heroes arise, people of faith and courage, willing to risk it all to save their people: Shifra and Puah the midwives, Miriam, Yocheved and Amram. The few words dedicated by Torah to them and their deeds fill us with gratitude and inspiration. And then we are introduced to one person in particular whose life story and character is different from anyone whom we have met before. That person, of course is Moshe. He is born into a world that wishes to do away with him. He is hidden beneath the floor boards from the day he opens his eyes and at three months when keeping him hidden away in darkness is no longer tenable he is placed in a basket of reeds and set adrift upon the Nile, the mightiest of rivers.

Moshe is plucked from the reeds by the daughter of Pharaoh, nursed by his own mother and raised in the palace of Pharaoh, the very man who decreed his death even before he was born. Moshe grows to manhood, ventures out one day from the comforts of the royal compound, and witnesses an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. Moshe, as we learn from what happens next, despite his cloistered, pampered upbringing, recognizes that he, too, is a Hebrew, a brother of the slave he sees being beaten, and, in what appears to be an instinctual sense of kinship and justice, strikes and kills the Egyptian.

The following day, Moshe, now actively seeking to comprehend and intercede in the harsh reality which exists outside the palace gates, attempts to intervene between two feuding Hebrews. They reject his advances, he retreats back to the palace, discovers that Pharaoh, his step-grandfather, has caught wind of his slaying of the Egyptian and seeks his death. Moshe, a marked man from day one, an exile in Pharaoh's own household, a stranger at Pharaoh's own table, flees for his life.

Moshe disappears completely from sight for forty years, and only then reappears at a well in the land of Midian, where, picking up right where he left off forty years prior, intervenes on behalf of seven shepherdesses. Moshe is invited by their father, Yitro, a high priest of idolatry to his table and given Tziporra, Yitro's daughter as a wife. Moshe tends to Yitro's flock and then, in the middle of a life that robbed him of home, of family, of identity, of any sense of belonging, he sees a flame burning within a bush, stops and turns to examine this strange phenomenon. At last, G-d has caught up with him.

Clearly, G-d had chosen Moshe to lead His people out of Egypt even before he was born. Clearly, G-d was, like Miriam, watching and waiting to see what would happen to Moshe, and clearly G-d, like Miriam, intervened behind the scenes to guarantee Moshe's survival. And clearly, G-d was observing Moshe's actions and motivations. Clearly, G-d was pleased with Moshe's kinship with his people and with Moshe's sense of right and wrong and his willingness, time after time, to place himself in danger in order to rescue the oppressed and punish the oppressor. And now, at the burning bush, G-d has caused only the slightest rustling of His own presence. The burning bush is nothing more than a ripple in the natural reality, and, whereas another man might rub his eyes and walk on by, Moshe, who, by his own nature, was incapable of walking away from a challenge, stopped and took note.

Nevertheless, Moshe seems the oddest of choices for G-d. Avraham, as we know, spent a lifetime searching for G-d. There is no evidence that Moshe ever sought G-d's help, despite the troubles he faced, or sought G-d's comfort, despite his life as a loner and outsider, or even sought from G-d an explanation for the tragic circumstances of his life. Avraham, once G-d has called him, does not question what G-d demands of him. He leaves his family, his homeland, his place of birth, at a moments notice. He is called upon by G-d to offer up his only son, Yitzchak, and rises at dawn the next morning to fulfill G-d's word. Not so, Moshe.

Moshe confronts G-d, almost as an equal, questions and equivocates, evinces doubt and skepticism. He questions his people's ability to trust in him, he questions his own ability to act or even speak on G-d's behalf, and if all that wasn't exasperating enough, Moshe seems to be questioning G-d's identity and the viability of G-d's plan to redeem His people. G-d could not have chosen a more reluctant partner, a more skeptical redeemer, or a more disinclined prophet. Eighty years of hardship, of solitude, of constant danger and uncertainty have made their mark on Moshe. G-d appears before Moshe in the bright light of day and Moshe unburdens himself of a lifetime of pain, challenging G-d every bit as much as G-d is challenging hm. And this is the man whom G-d has chosen to lead His people.

So begins a relationship that for the next forty years will be characterized by tremendous trials both for Moshe and for G-d. Moshe will not spare G-d all his frustrations and disappointments, yet, despite his world weariness and intimate knowledge of the dark side of man, he will never let G-d down. He will be with Israel in the depths of their despair and lead them to the heights of revelation. He will complain bitterly to G-d of his people's weaknesses and failings, yet stand united with them before G-d, demanding His forgiveness. G-d, too, will not spare Moshe His momentary frustrations with His people, nor will He keep from Moshe His love and aspirations for Israel, communicating sometimes in the roar of the thunder and sometimes in the silence of a whisper.

Yes, G-d picked a unlikely partner for the great adventure of liberation and revelation that will begin to unfold before us in the book of Exodus. But, nevertheless, Moshe was the most loyal, the most capable, and the most demanding, both of G-d and of Israel, of any man that lived, before him or after. He was the man, the only man, for the job. Years later, when Moshe was castigated by his own flesh and blood, over "the Cushite woman," G-d would reveal His complete and utter love for the man He chose to lead Israel, declaring him to be "My servant Moses; he is faithful throughout My house," (Numbers 12:7) and as Torah would testify, "the humblest man on the face of the earth." (ibid 12:3)

-The Temple Institute