In the opening weeks of reading from the book of Shemot, we come across Judaism’s three major ways of understanding how God works in our lives. The first two appear in last week’s parashah, the third in this week’s. First, Judaism defines God as the creator of all existence of which we are part; second, Judaism reasons that as aspects of the infinite, we can communicate on a certain level with it, and thirdly, we have responsibilities within this life. Traditionally, these three aspects of God are known as the one who Creates, Reveals and Redeems, and they have been adopted by Christianity and Islam as well.
Last week, standing at the burning bush, Moshe encounters God for the first time. When Moses ask God’s name, God responds: “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh”, which is virtually not translatable but essentially means “I Am that which I Am” or “I Am becoming that which I Am becoming”, or a permutation of those ideas. In other words, Judaism teaches that God is a verb, a form of “to be”, and thus God=Being. Like eastern traditions, Judaism posits that infinite consciousness, awareness, is the source of all from which everything else emanates. I am always puzzled when people say “I do not believe in God.” It is as if one says, “I do not believe in being”, which considering we are being is a hard position to hold. Either all that exists manifested out of nothing, or out of being, or consciousness, or awareness, however one wants to understand that. In humility, we must at least acknowledge the mystery of it all.
Assuming God is being, and we are part of that being since we exist, then it follows that on one level each of us draws down the smallest aspect of God’s being or consciousness. This is what we mean by God Reveals – as in the communications that happen between God and Moshe, or in a few weeks’ time, the communication that happens between God and the ancestors of the Jews, the children of Israel who stood at Sinai to receive the commandments. Most of us today question not so much God, or even the possibility that God can communicate with humanity, but the content of the revelation from God to humanity. Outside of Orthodox understandings of religion – no matter what the religion – practitioners choose to follow the received traditions as the valued ancestral attempt to draw down God’s consciousness. The Torah is our story of how we have understood and choose to live that life.
Each religion has its own story. The essence of the story of our ancestors, the path of redemption that we are called to walk, is told at the beginning of this week’s parashah, where God again reveals in a speech to Moses that famous passage that makes its way to our Haggadah and forms the basis of the four cups of wine plus the cup of Elijah. God tells Moshe (and the children of Israel), “I will free you…I will deliver you…I will redeem you…and I will take you … and I will bring you into the land. In other words, the crucial event of our past is the being freed from the slavery in Egypt in order to come to the land of Israel where we are to serve God as a model nation. We can always discuss the finer parts of the story, the details of what has been revealed, but we should understand that our conversation is not as much about God Itself, as to what it means to serve God. Each individual has his or her way; each people its. These crucial stories at the beginning of Exodus establish that the story of Israel is one that takes us from being in servitude to humans to being in service to God.
This is our story. Gratitude for creation itself. Awe for the ability to have conscious connection with that source of creation. Responsibility to care for that creation, all that was, is and will be – manifested in humanity and all sentient beings. This is our Torah.
Rabbi Jeffrey B Kamins OAM
Thank you. I really appreciate this sermon /reflection. I particularly love the idea that God creates, reveals and redeems. That’s exciting. Also the teaching that we all come from ‘infinite consciousness’ and that we all draw down the smallest aspect of God in our uniqueness. That’s quite beautiful.
I’m curious; how literally does one have to read Scripture? I wonder what it means to be “freed from slavery” To what have we been bound in our ordinary lives? For what are we liberated? And what might it mean – at a symbolic or metaphoric level – to ‘come to the land of Israel’? Do I have to hear such things as though they are literal instructions or are we drawn into a deeper consciousness of being who we most deeply are in ‘the land of Israel”? What is the ‘land of Israel’ ? Does it have to mean a country on the map? In a world suffocating under the blanket of religious fundamentalism , how do we understand what we read each week? Are we listening for literal instructions or for ancient spiritual truths being exposed? Both?What does it mean for one to be ‘freed from servitude to humanity’ and liberated into service to God?
I long for conversations that draw us together communally into a sense of conscious connection with God as we wrestle with how to understand the words we hear and read each week.
Forgive me….I’m very new to this and have so many questions.
I am struck by the “responsibility to care for all that , was is and will be. “ I knew it was my responsibility to care for what is. “ To care for” means to be able to nurture/ lend energy to/ enjoy/affect/ interact with/ impact/ . So if I can take care of what was and what will be, then I , in the moments that I am doing that caring, I am transcending time. In one way. I am in living relationship with what was therefore. Not just remembering it or honouring it or imagining it but effecting it , being changed by it. If I can impact the past and the future I am not bound by time. That is how each of us is a spark of God. I understand now that every moment that we praise God we are caring for all that was, is and will be. And in the doing of that ( a verb) we enter the transcendence.