Parshat Vaera  1 Shevat 5763, 4 January 2002

Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Vaera    Exodus: 6:2-9:35

By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - Our Torah portion opens with the great and ineffable name of G-d - JHVH - which had not been revealed to the patriarchs, as well as with the lofty promises of redemption about to be effectuated: "I am J-HVH; I shall extract you ..., I shall save you ... I shall redeem you ... I shall take you to Me as a nation... I shall bring you to the land which I have sworn to give... I shall give it to you as a heritage (morasha)" (Exodus 6:1-6).

Since this Biblical passage puts us all in a "Passover" frame-of-mind, I shall take the opportunity of asking "four questions". Firstly, if indeed the Divine promise guarantees complete freedom as these "four expressions of redemption" certainly convey, why does the Almighty suggest requesting from Pharoah a mere three-day celebration-vacation in the desert? (Exodus 3:18,.5:3). It is aliyah which G-d is promising, not a limited seventy-two hour long UJC mission! Secondly, the fact is that G-d doesn't fulfill His statement that He will "bring you to the land which I have sworn to give;" the Israelites who left Egypt are destined to die in the desert, with only their descendants entering the Promised Land. How can the Almighty renege on a prophecy? Thirdly, G-d refers to the land of Israel as a morasha, a heritage: why does He not call it the more usual yerusha, inheritance? Indeed, what is the difference - if any - between morasha and yerusha, heritage and inheritance? And finally, there are five expressions of redemption in the Biblical passage we have cited, not four. So why do we only drink four mandated cups of seder wine and not five?

I believe the answer to these questions is contained in the very response of the Israelites to the Divine promises: "And Moses spoke thusly (relayed the Divine words) to the children of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses because of (their) shortness of breath (or spirit) and their arduous labor." Isaac L. Peretz, one of the most profound and beloved of Yiddish - Hebrew writers of the last century, authored a magnificent tale called Bontche Schweig, or Bontche the Silent, which illuminates the significance of these words.

The story recounts a heavenly tribunal which judges Bonche, a newly arrived soul who had lived a poverty-stricken pogrom tortured life with never having uttered a word against G-d or a word against any human being. The defense-attorney angel catalogued his life of super-human piety with great pathos, and even the prosecuting-attorney angel could not express a negative note against this suffering, saintly soul. The Almighty Himself then summons Bontche, expressing His inability (as it were) to properly reward such an exemplary life and offering to grant whatever reward Bontche will choose. "Really?, asks Bontche, 'takeh?' 'Really, takeh!,' responds G-d. 'Then every morning please give me a fresh, hot roll and butter,' requests Bontche.

The last lines of the tale are the most poignant and instructive. "The defense-attorney angel hid his face in shame. The prosecuting-attorney angel smiled a bitterly mordant smile of triumph. And the Almighty G-d wept..." Obviously Peretz's message is that the greatest tragedy of suffering, the worst fall-out of an unjust world, is that it robs its victims of the ability to dream, it makes it impossible for them to have the breadth of vision to even contemplate the possibility of redemption. Poor Bontche. The evil world had so constricted his imagination that the best he could conjure up for himself and for humanity was a hot roll and butter each morning!

This is precisely the condition of the Israelites after two-hundred-ten years of Egyptian enslavement, persecution and infanticide. Their arduous labor and shortness of breath had led to a brevity of spirit (ruah can mean wind, breath and spirit), a constriction of the soul. They were mired in such a morass of misery, their self-image had been so debased and demeaned, that they could not even begin to envision a life in which they would be the masters of their fate, a situation of freedom and redemption.

Hence the Almighty must provide them with freedom in small doses, must begin by attempting a three-day respite from servitude which might at least begin to lift up their heads, their eyes, their spirits. JHVH is the G-d of historic becoming and redemption - but Hebrew slaves are not yet psychologically ready to accept His loving and uplifting message of freedom; they are only prepared at this time for El Shaddai, the G-d of power and laws, the G-d who sets limits and boundaries.

Although Pharoah does not agree to even a three day respite from their labor, Moses does succeed in taking the Israelites out of Egypt: but he does not succeed in taking Egypt out of the Israelites! Hence the sin of the scouts, the most grievous transgression of the desert generation, is their inability to believe in themselves and their G-d sufficiently to go for the conquest of Israel. That is why, explains Rabbenu Bahia, the land of Israel is called a morasha, a heritage and not a yerusha, an inheritance; morasha is the causative (hiphil) form, suggesting a transmission from generation to generation, an ideal to be talked about and taught about from parents to children rather than a reality to be achieved by the present generation, which is clearly not yet ready to take the plunge. And we are mandated to drink four cups of wine and five on the seder eve because the fifth promise did not come to pass for those who left Egypt- although many do drink a fifth cup, which is voluntary and not obligatory, especially after the miraculous establishment of the State of Israel in modern times.

A true leader must establish the ultimate goal and ideal vision - but at the same time must educate the people step by step to accept and achieve it. In Israel, after almost 2,000 years of exile, we must learn to express, in a unified voice, what it means to be a free and sovereign nation with our inalienable rights to a land. In the diaspora both total aliyah as well as partial aliyah must be encouraged: owning a second home in Israel, coming to Israel rather than Hawaii to celebrate Passover, joining missions to Israel, and sending our children to study in our eternal, sacred land. And Torah - which is also called morasha - must similarly be taught as a complete ideal as well as in stages, for Jews as well as Gentiles. Jews must be brought to Torah mitzvah by mitzvah, and sovereign nations must earn their right to sovereignty only after they demonstrate that they absolutely condemn and punish the murder of innocent individuals and they learn to conduct a free society for every one of their citizens. All of humanity must leave the darkness of Egyptian enslavement and emerge into the light of morality, freedom and democracy.

Shabbat Shalom.

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