|
Candle lighting is at 4:30 pm on Friday, November 21. This week's Torah portion is Parashat Chayei Sara. Havdalah starts 60 minutes after sundown, at 5:47 pm on Saturday, November 22. Courtesy of hebcal.com |
This is My God and I will Praise Him (Ex 15:3)By Rabbi Alan Yuter Our sages teach that when the Israelites were being chased by the Egyptian military to the Reed Sea, the sea did not want to split. For the ancient pagans, the sea was a divnity. Indeed, Yamm was the name of the god of the sea. This Israelites encamped at Baal Tsafon, a Canaanite cult place, lulling the Egyptians to ignore the presence of ha-Shem, but to view Israel as one of many pagan Palestinian tribes. Both the Israelites and the Egyptians were pagans. As my teacher Rav Moshe D. Tendler put it, "you could not tell them, the Israelites and Egyptians, without a scorecard." But Israel was moving toward Sinai to receive the Torah. The first response to God's fighting for Israel, the exploitation of the sea, not a god but an agent of God, was to say "This is my God and I will praise Him." Rashi identifies the import of the definite article, the point of the finger to an event which has no analogue in human history and no description in human language, so the best we can say to the revelation experience is to say "this is It," here is God in action. In the middle three books of the Torah, when ha-Shem is acting on behalf of Israel the nation, there are miracles. In Genesis, which deals with the first families of our religious memonry, and Deuteronomy, the valedictory speech of Moses, there are not miracles. In Christian Scripture, people are supposed to believe in Jesus because he has the divine power to do miracles. Moses teaches that a miracle worker to commands that we disobey God's law is stoned for the sin/crime of sedition. The second part of our verse, "the God of my ancestors, and I will make Him my pasture," shows Moses as teacher, trying to wean the Israelites from the religion of fireworks and sight to the religion of hearing and insight. The God Who created the world is the God Who spoke to our ancestors, who transmitted through the tradition of telling. This God does not enter the eye, this God enteres the soul. The God Who enters the soul will not be disobeyed by doers of miracles, of claims to charisma, of the art of allusion and the deceit of delusion. This is a God Whose voice was heard at Sinai, Whose word was studied in the House of Study, the Beit Midrash, and Whose Presence will be restored to the House of Holiness, the Divine embassy on earth, the Beit Miqdash, the cornerstone of the Eternity to Come in this world. And we will, once again, be able to exclaim, "This is my God," Who animates who I am capable of becoming. |