Parashat Shemot, 5772, Vivian Clayton
Parashat Shemot
January 14, 2012 / 19 Tevet 5772
Vivian Clayton
I want to dedicate this drash to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today’s parasha reintroduces us to our ancestors several hundred years after Jacob and Josephs’ deaths. We meet them now as oppressed slaves in a land to which they had once been welcomed and in which they had become numerous and flourished; this parasha is also our introduction to our leader, Moses, whose own birth, dislocation from his family of origin and appointment by G_d as our leader serves as the beginning of a long and transformative journey called the exodus.
It would be hard to overlook the contiguity of this week’s parasha with the commemoration of another exodus from slavery right here on our own shores. That exodus, like our own, took a long time, and like our own, met with many obstacles long after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The civil rights movement helped Black Americans take a big leap forward from the injustices of discrimination and segregation, moving them many steps ahead in securing G_d given rights and liberties guaranteed in our constitution. Their cause was aided by the power of their leader, Martin Luther King, a man of deep religious belief and spiritual insight. Unlike Moses, Dr. King had the gift of speech, and the civil rights movement, the gift of song. Long after his own death, in which he, like Moses, realized he was not to see the promised land, his phrase, “I have a DREAM” and the song, “We shall overcome” have defined both the hopes and determination of his people to step out of one place into another.
Moses was chosen to lead our people out of one place, to another land, referred to in this parasha as the land of milk and honey. Yet, how could a man whose is noted three times in this parasha to be slow of speech, be selected as a leader? Did not Moses try, in a human and wholly convincing series of questions and pleadings to G_d, to have G_d reconsider his appointment? Yet, G_d respects Moses’ right to doubt, to question, to even refuse. Finally, G_d actually gets angry (Chapter 4, v 14), but does not let Moses off the hook. He just gives him an assistant, Aaron, to be the spokesman. But it is clear from the text, that G_d will speak through Moses. Moses is his man. Period. Right here, we are introduced to a value in our religion that places deeds above words. G_d, who created Moses, was aware of Moses’ intolerance for injustice. He knows Moses has killed the Egyptian who was mistreating the Hebrew worker, despite being made homeless by this act. Moses flees, and is sitting by a well, and yet again, witnesses another injustice when shepherds chase Ruel’s/Jethro’s daughter’s away from the well. We are taught here that man cannot alter the overriding purpose of divine power. As Victor Frankel said, “You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it”.
To me, an interesting and often overlooked part of this parasha can be found in Chapter 3, verses 2 – 5. In knowing that Moses is not a man of words, G_d does not first speak to him as he does to the other Patriarchs, but rather grabs Moses’ attention through vision, in the form of the burning bush that is not consumed by fire. After then calling out Moses’ name, he says to Moses, “Do not come closer. Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground”. Is it just the ground that is sacred? Is it just the feet that need to be free of cover? Or, is it the relationship between the ground and the feet that induces and nurtures the sense of spirituality that G_d seeks to engender in Moses?
The idea of explicitly sacred space is encountered here for the first time. No such explicit concept exists in Genesis, although in the Jacob dream text it is hinted that the land of Israel is holy. In Genesis, however, we are introduced to the feature of sacred time – the Sabbath. However, the pagan mythological notion that certain areas are inherently holy does not exist in the Tenach. It is solely the manifestation of G_d that temporarily imparts sanctity to a site, which then renders it inaccessible to man temporarily. Man and G_d can be in the same general place, but not stand in the same exact spot.
This practice, - of removing one’s shoes in a place deemed to be a sacred – continues with Karaite Jews, whose national center is based in Daly City. The Muslim faith continues this practice. In the ancient near East, removal of footwear was a sign of respect and display of an attitude of humility. Priests officiated barefoot in the sanctuary, and to this day Kohanim remove their footwear before pronouncing the priestly benediction publicly during the synagogue service.
Yet, except for symbolically not wearing leather on our feet at Yom Kippur and Tisha Be’av, we sit today in our sanctuary with our shoes on our feet. By creating this separation, we are turning away from another implicit message given to us in this
parasha , namely that there is no separation between ourselves and that which G_d created for us on this very ground upon which we stand. G_d twice reminds Moses that he will be with him on this journey. In Chapter 3, v 8 he says, “I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians”, and in verse 12, he says, “Now go, and I will be with you as you speak and will instruct you what to say”. How comforting – and reassuring- these words would or could be to a person who lacks confidence in themselves and the challenges that lie ahead.
Lastly, let us never forget and that when we say, “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh” it is only through the efforts of our feet, that we are able to reach for the heavens.
But, one must let bygone practices be: bygone. G_d also gave and chose to guide us by light. In Genesis, in the Convenant between the Pieces (Gen 15:17) G_d is represented by a flaming torch. In this parasha, light is introduced, in the form of fire, in the bush that was not consumed. It is the fire to which Moses’ attention is drawn. G_d stays with us through our journey in the desert, a journey we do not take by car or bus, but by foot. He guides us as in a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, to give light “so that we could travel by day or night”.
The tenach holds many of our dreams, but we are not led out of bondage by a dream, we are led by G_d, by his light. And it was a light that did not fail us on our journey and remained inextinguishable, burning bright, then, as now, right above my head (the ner tamid).
We don’t sing our song until we cross the shores of the Red Sea – that lays ahead in Chapter 15: 1- 21. And we can’t really claim, at the end of this parasha, that, in Dr. King’s words, we are FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST; but we can be grateful to our brothers and sisters across The Way, our Black Americans brothers and sisters, for their spiritual that resonates this Shabbat, in this parahsa, and that is: LET MY PEOPLE GO!