God approached Moshe at the beginning of this week’s parsha, declaring God’s intention to bring the Israelites out of Mitzrayim. God says to Moshe that now, God is coming specifically as the name “Adonai,” but this name was not known to previous generations; specifically “Adonai” was not known to Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. All we have to do as readers is look previously in the Torah and see that in fact, God did appear to these ancestors with the specific name “Adonai,” so what does it mean that God tells Moshe that only now this name will be known?
Rashi teaches that God means that while, yes, God approached them using the name of “Adonai,” they didn’t know the attribute that is most associated with that name, which is the attribute of God fulfilling God’s promises. God had told them that their descendants would go to Egypt and would eventually be brought out, but God did not fulfill that promise of redemption during their lifetimes. They may have heard the name Adonai, but they didn’t know that name. They didn’t experience it, and yet somehow, they still had faith. It wasn’t until many generations later that God lived up to that attribute, fulfilling the promise of liberation and removing the Israelites’ shackles.
And yet, the name of God most frequently used in the Torah is Adonai. It is the promise-keeping God that we are meant to encounter over and over again. It’s the name that we are meant to keep in our minds, believing that deliverance is possible, that it can be fulfilled even if we don’t feel it yet.
Our tradition is full of many names of God. For me, part of the beauty of this is that we can use the name of God that we need in that moment. We have the power to name the God that we need to bring into existence. For so many of us, this is the particular attribute of God’s that we need this coming year. To believe that even if we haven’t yet experienced that promise fulfilled, it is possible. It’s always possible. We live in a world where we can never have too much hope, we can never have too much belief in the promise of redemption.
I pray that the coming year is one where we experience Adonai, this name of God, in its fullest form. I pray that we experience liberation and redemption, that the shackles of whatever we feel from 2021 are released.
Wishing all of you a safe and healthy new year.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
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