Beshalach

The Children of Israel are not just allowed to go out of Egypt, they are ejected. Out of consideration for their morale, they are taken a roundabout route so as to avoid facing armed opposition on the short coastal journey to Israel. Their apparent confusion encourages Pharaoh to recover his arrogance and give chase. The Israelites are trapped with their backs to the sea as the enemy advances. Miraculously, Moses leads them through the Red Sea. The Egyptians are drowned. Safely on the other side, they break into song to celebrate.

You might have thought that having seen what happened to the Egyptians in Egypt, and again at the Red Sea, there would not be one dissenting voice and everyone would be absolutely convinced of the existence and the power of God--yet immediately afterwards the complaints begin.

Three days without water is perhaps reasonable grounds. But why gang up against Moses instead of a reasoned discussion of the problem? Moses sweetens water for them at Marah, and at Eilim there are wells and date palms. But then the moaners start again, complaining about the food. One might have had some sympathy were it not for the fact that they said how wonderful it had been in Egypt. Nevertheless, down comes the manna, and whatever one might think about a daily diet of neutral sesame wafers, at least they were not dying of hunger. Yet once again the complaints start up against Moses over water.

Some apologists want to suggest that the mixed multitude hangers-on who joined the exodus were to blame, but the text implies a much wider groundswell of discontent. Isn't it amazing? They experience the reality of God time after time and they still don't get it. Times haven't changed much for us Jews, have they? We are an ungrateful, moaning bunch of doubters who wouldn't face reality even if it came and tapped us on the shoulder.

Bo

The slow process of getting Pharaoh to change his mind and let the people go continues.

There are two overriding issues. Why does the process take so long, with so many false hopes and miracles that failed to have the desired impact, and why does it take so long for Pharaoh to change his mind?

Every process in the Torah takes time. God may make promises, humans may make resolutions, but the world of human interaction is one where immediate results are rarely achieved. Relationships take time to develop, good ones and bad ones.

God tries different ways of impressing Moses at the Burning Bush--fire, snakes, leprosy, and then rational argument. Similarly, Moses tries a series of ways of trying to persuade the greatest most powerful king on earth that a small, God-inspired nation should be taken seriously. It is a game of trial and error. At first Pharaoh is dismissive; then he begins to wonder. He half relents, but with conditions attached. His advisors wilt first and they try to persuade him to let the Israelites go. The campaign is waged against every level of Egyptian society with the aim of getting them to realize that there is something here to be taken seriously. And then it is too late. This is how we humans function. We think we can cope. We disregard the warning signs. And then wham.

And into this whole story of human reactions to disaster comes the legal instruction to keep the Pesach festival. The details of observance seem out of place. Yet it is through daily behavior that we train ourselves and we sensitize ourselves to be conscious of our actions in the hope that this will make us better people. The lesson to be drawn is that foresight, consideration, would have helped Pharaoh and his people. Similarly, they may help us, today, to lead more effective daily lives.

Vaeira

The opening sentence of this week's parshah is one of the most interesting, theologically speaking, in the whole of the Torah. God is trying to reassure Moshe after his initial attempt to get Pharaoh's attention fails. He says, "I appeared to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and my name, God, I had not made known to them." What does this mean? We have always assumed that Avraham had the ideal relationship with God. He was supposedly the first monotheist and the one for whom God engaged with mankind in general and the Jewish people specifically. There is no hint that there was something missing in Avraham's relationship.

But here the Torah is saying that hitherto there was something about God that they were not aware of. Traditionally, the explanation is that inherent in God's nature is the fact that he carries out His commitments. He had told Avraham that he would father vast numbers of children and that his children would be enslaved and then let free. But until that process had been completed, there was still an unfinished agenda. Now, says God, the promise would be kept.

However, the wording still implies that Avraham did not fully know God's name. The theological implication is that God is complex, and however close one gets there are still aspects that a human may be unaware of. Similarly, Moshe several times asks God for reassurance and clarification. So the way Avraham understood God was through his own experiences, and Yitzchak through his, Yaakov through his, and Moshe through his. And we through ours. God works through history, and it is through history that we see what happens to the Jewish people, for better or for worse. But parallel with that flow of history is our own personal history and it is this which defines our relationship with God.

Shemot

It seems strange that a new king came to the throne who was unaware of Yosef. After all, Yosef had been instrumental in saving the nation from disaster, and not only that, but he concentrated power in Pharaoh’s hands and consolidated the monarchy.

One traditional response is that he pretended not to know. Very often we feel embarrassed by the extent of our indebtedness and we try to escape an obligation by "forgetting". Although this is a view expressed in a Midrash that is two thousand years old, it is one of Freud’s important "discoveries" that we often forget that which is uncomfortable to remember.

Another suggestion is that this was indeed a new king. New dynasties often try to obliterate the memory of those who came before, particularly if they achieved power by revolution. Freud was fascinated by Moses; in his book Moses and Monotheism, he suggested that when Ahknaton overthrew the old dynasty he established a new monotheistic regime. Moses got the idea from him, so that when Moses was overthrown and was out of favor with the new regime, he took up with the Jews and became their leader.

Most Egyptologists reject the idea that Ahknaton was a monotheist. And Freud’s theory includes the strange but very Freudian notion that the Jews assassinated Moses (as sons want to remove their fathers so that they can have their mothers to themselves) and then "re-created" a new legend.

But the idea that Ahknaton's coup would explain the negative attitude to Yosef has some supporters. As indeed does the theory that the Hyksos who invaded Egypt were sympathetic to shepherds and thus to the sons of Yaakov, unlike the returning old dynasty who saw the sons of Yaakov as a Fifth Column.

From our point of view, the issue is not the past so much as the future, and oppression of the new regime is the painful catalyst to the emergence of a new nation. The message is relevant today.