January 12, 2024
2 Shevat 5784
In the moments before the plagues begin, just before the process of communal liberation begins, God introduces Godself in a particular way. God tells Moshe that yes, God appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, but now, God is different. Now, God will go by the name of Adonai, which wasn’t known to the forefathers. The commentators teach here that even if those ancestors knew the name of Adonai, there was an attribute of God that they did not know. There was a component of God’s identity that they couldn’t have known as individuals.
The book of Bereshit (Genesis) was about the individual, and therefore the relationship between God and those ancestors operated on that plane. But here, in the book of Shemot (Exodus), when we are turning into a nation, the relationship with God shifts. The relationship with God plays out through the community. Here, God is reaching out to the people as a collective, knowing that they, as a People, will get to know God in a way that our ancestors as individuals never could.
Many of us have probably known this to be true, in that we have felt spiritual connections in groups of people even when it has been harder to do so in private moments. And I think this teaching from Parshat Vaera reminds of that in a powerful way. Our ancestors, the Torah teaches, enslaved and oppressed, called out - collectively - to God, and God remembered them, as a whole unit.
It might seem counterintuitive, but I believe there is a certain type of spiritual intimacy that we can create with God when we are together as a whole. Even our forefathers, no matter their trailblazing of spiritual paths, weren’t granted that type of relationship with God. But Israel as a whole, as a unit, can achieve that. And it’s this relationship with God that moves us up a notch in our development of community and who we are as People.
It makes me wonder what we can achieve, seeking something, working towards something, together. When we realize that there is power in our larger understanding of who we are as the People Israel than what we can achieve individually. I think it has the ability to change our relationship with God, of course, but also our relationships with each other, with the broader understanding of Jewish community and Jewish Peoplehood.
God stated that there will be an attribute, a component of Godself, that we can only know when we are together. And so I want to go; I want to be together. My heart has felt pulled to be in Israel, to be with our people who are suffering. Earlier this week Jewish Community Partners announced a Memphis Mission to Israel from February 26-29. It will be a short 4 days, but it will be 4 days for us to achieve something that we can’t when we are alone. I will be there, and I hope you’ll join me. (You can sign up here to receive more info.)
So many of us have people there - my old roommate who made aliya, my countless cousins, my teachers - reminding us that we are connected on a personal level. But I am reminded by this week’s Torah that we all can be drawn because of the collective. Because we can achieve something greater when we act as a community. Like our ancestors, we have the power to cry out to God as a people, to feel God’s presence as a people, and to hopefully be redeemed, as a people.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Sarit
