#shemot
Last week, I had the honor of giving the D’var Torah at my synagogue’s Saturday morning services. Here is the speech I gave!
Welcome to the Book of Exodus! We begin with Parshat Shemot, and everything that happens in this week’s Torah portion will sound familiar to anyone who has ever been to a Passover seder or seen movies like The Prince of Egypt orThe Ten Commandments. This parsha shows the Children of Israel becoming slaves in Egypt, the birth of Moses, the burning bush, all the way up to Moses’s first attempt to get Pharaoh to “let my people go.”
As I read through Shemot, it occurred to me that this parsha keeps going back and forth. It’s full of twists – reversals of fortune – moments where the characters circumstances suddenly change direction.
The Children of Israel begin this parsha “fruitful and filling the land,” happy members of Egyptian society – and then a new king rises over Egypt, and this Pharaoh fears the Children of Israel, and he makes them his slaves. This is the first reversal – a change from a prosperous time, to a time of suffering.
Then Pharaoh commands that every son born to the Children of Israel shall be cast into the Nile River. But one mother puts her baby in a basket in the Nile. And instead of drowning, this baby is adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter! Another reversal, this time from death to the literal lap of luxury.
Pharaoh’s daughter names the baby Moses. And we would expect at this point for Moses to be raised as an Egyptian prince. That’s how the Dreamworks movie explains it. But then the baby’s sister – she doesn’t get named here yet, but we know it’s Moses’s sister, Miriam – Miriam offers to bring a wet nurse for the baby. And she brings Moses’s birth mother to the palace! Another reversal – Moses is raised by his Hebrew mother!
So Moses grows up, and one day, he sees an Egyptian man beating a Hebrew man. Moses kills the Egyptian, and he realizes that he has to flee from Egypt to avoid being punished. If anyone’s keeping track, we’re now up to four reversals of fortune. Moses was a Prince of Egypt, and now he’s on the run in the desert.
And Moses might have died out there in the desert, except that along the way, he helped the daughters of a Midian chief protect their flocks! And suddenly, Moses is a welcome member of this community in Midian, with a wife and a baby, and a flock of sheep to herd. A fifth reversal of fortune.
And then the Torah says, “God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” And God decides that it’s time to call to Moses, through a burning bush, and tell him to go back to Egypt and free his people from slavery.
And Moses says – “NO WAY.”
I am obviously paraphrasing here. Moses gives a lot of excuses. “Who am I to do this? What if the Children of Israel don’t believe me? I’m a really bad public speaker!”
God has an answer to each of Moses’s excuses. When Moses says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” God says, “Don’t worry; I will be with you.” When Moses says, “What if the Children of Israel don’t believe me?” God says, “Here are some miracles you can show them, so they will believe you. When Moses says, “I’m a really bad public speaker!” God says, “You can have your brother Aaron help you.”
And only then does Moses finally agree to return to Egypt.
Why does Moses argue so much with God about this? Why doesn’t he want to go back to Egypt and free his people? I don’t think it’s as simple as Moses not thinking he’s the right man for the job. We know that Moses cares deeply about the Children of Israel and is willing to take action to protect them – he already killed someone to protect a Hebrew slave! And it should be clear to Moses that with God and God’s miracles on his side, he would be a formidable force in Egypt. So why does Moses resist God’s call?
I think that we should keep in mind that, by this point, Moses has been through a lot. [count on fingers] Hispeople were made slaves, he narrowly avoided being drowned in the Nile, he unexpectedly found himself with his Hebrew mother again, he had to go on the run in the desert, and he became a family man. Moses’s life has been completely uprooted five times – sometimes in objectively good ways, sometimes in objectively bad ways, but each of these five times in an unpredictable way, with factors outside of his control – and now God wants to make it six times. And Moses is afraid of this change.
I empathize with Moses! Now, my circumstances are nowhere near as extreme as his. But I understand the fear that comes from having to uproot your life too many times due to factors outside of your control.
I graduated from college four years ago, and in that time frame, just four years, I have packed all my belongings into moving boxes six separate times. I have driven three different cars. I have fallen in love and gone through break-ups twice. I have had four different jobs, I was accepted to a fifth job that was canceled because of the pandemic, and my current job, which I really like, at first only promised me work until the beginning of January, and they just recently surprised me by promising me work until the end of January. And I have no idea what’s going to happen after that. These changes are outside of my control.
Uncertainty is my least favorite thing in the whole world. When I find a piece of solid ground, I cling to it. So I feel that if someone came to me right now and said, “Pack your bags; we’ve got a job for you in California!” …I would be hesitant!
Even if they were offering me an amazing opportunity to change the world, to put my skills to work, to tell stories that would make a real difference in people’s lives, I would be scared! I would make excuses! I would be like, “I just signed a lease! I just built a desk and a bed, I just found some really good roommates, and I’m making friends at work, and I’m a member of a wonderful congregation… Why can’t I just stay where I am?”
In case my parents are listening in on Zoom – IF SOMEONE OFFERS ME A REALLY COOL WRITING JOB IN CALIFORNIA, I WILL TAKE THE JOB. I WILL MAKE SMART CAREER CHOICES.
The point is, I would be scared. I’m already scared, a lot of the time. Because change is scary. Not knowing what the outcomes of your actions will be, or what the world is going to throw at you next, is scary. Stability, staying where you are, is much more appealing.
In Parshat Shemot, the Torah shows us a very human response to change. Moses resists. He makes excuses. But God has an answer for every excuse that Moses makes. The Torah encourages us to not resist change, even though it is scary. But the Torah also promises us that we will not face change alone.
Moses finally agrees to return to Egypt because God promises him that he will have allies there to help him. And Moses has allies through every change in his life. He has his mother – both his Hebrew mother who put him in the river, and his adoptive Egyptian mother who drew him out of it. He has his sister, who kept watch over him and spoke up on his behalf, and he has his brother, who will speak for him in Egypt. He has his wife Zipporah who goes with him to Egypt. He has the Children of Israel, waiting for him there. And he has God – God who believes in Moses and who won’t take no for an answer.
And all of us here today, reading this parsha, we have allies, too – our family, our friends, our coworkers, our congregation, and God. So whether the next big scary reversal of fortune in our lives brings us to something good, or something bad, or something unpredictable, we will be able to face it together. Shabbat shalom.
