Hitzonim | Outsiders

Introduction: D’Var Torah

A D’var Torah, or “Word of Torah,” according to the Union for Reform Judaism:

May be offered in lieu of a sermon during a worship service, to set a tone and a context at the opening of a synagogue board or committee meeting, or to place personal reflection within a Jewish context. Especially at times of loneliness, distress, indecision or other personal difficulties, you may find it helpful to read and interpret the Torah portion with a particular focus on how the thoughts and actions of our foremothers and forefathers—intensely human characters—might help you deal with your own challenges.

Union for Reform Judaism

A D’Var, Each Thursday

Each Thursday (yes, I realize it’s Saturday), I’ll share a few words (no more than 800 or so; today is only a bit longer with the intro section above), remarking on that week’s Torah Portion, or parsha. The year is separated into 54 total portions that serve as a weekly touchpoint in the Jewish liturgical year. As Rabbi Sandra notes in The Social Justice Torah Commentary (page 89):

One of the things I love about Judaism is that we are all connected by the Torah portion of the week. We are simultaneously reading the same text, and our reading gets filtered through the experiences of the times we are currently living in.

Rabbi Sandra Lawson

Because it is helpful as a writer to have some sort of loose suggestion and for readers to know what to expect, sharing thoughts on the weekly Torah portion is something that I’d like to commit to. I thought to get us started, I’d share the first today, and we’ll have another for the next week on Thursday. I’ll save the preamble in future d’var posts. Let’s dive in!

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Bo: Liberation and Separation

Bo, meaning “come,” as in, “Come to Pharoah,” is today’s portion; Exodus 10.1-13.16. The Israelites are enslaved in Egypt and Gd commissioned Moses with his brother Aaron to serve as Gd’s emissaries to liberate the Israelites from enslavement.

The terrible plagues levied against Egypt continue as a result of Gd’s deliberate hardening of Pharaoh’s heart to allow Gd to continue displaying Gd’s power. These plagues culminate with Gd’s (or The Destroyer’s, working through Gd’s direction?) slaying of the first born of all Egyptians and their livestock. The Israelites complete a sacrifice for protection (pesach; where we find the origins of the Passover festival), to protect themselves, hence, evading the mass murder. Instructions for preparing the protection sacrifice are articulated, a cry is heard throughout Egypt, and Pharoah emancipates all the Israelites, where they are free to worship Gd in the wilderness. Gd instructs behavior toward non-Israelites who joined in the exodus, and special instruction is provided for how Israelites are to treat their own enslaved persons during this emancipation.

We must not lose sight of, what I take to be, three ideas that we find in tension with each other.

1. Gd is directly involved in a genocidal mass murder of Egyptians, even to the point of hardening Pharaoh’s heart toward the escalation of Gd’s acts of violence
2. Gd is directly involved in mass liberation from enslavement, and this includes anyone, “regardless of social station” and “a mixed multitude” of those who left Egypt (other liberated persons? Intermarried families? Other Egyptians?)
3. The Israelites, despite their liberation, they themselves, ostensibly, are enslavers, why else would such instruction be given for treating one’s enslaved people? (“But any householder’s purchased male slave may eat of it once he has been circumcised.”) Indeed, in the commentary already cited, Rabbi Sandra relays, “It’s as if the Torah cannot imagine a world without slavery” (page 90)

Notice that each of these ideas are in direct conflict with each other, and, importantly, they seem to depict competing characterizations of Gd. The Gd that liberates, the Gd that hardens hearts and sends death, the Gd that offers instruction for preparation of the sacrifice. Is this the same Gd?

On Encountering the Text

Whenever I read a passage from sacred literature, I try to always remain mindful of these four questions:

1. To what degree can we recover what the ancient authors meant by these texts (their history, cultic and cultural context, geopolitical context)?
2. What was the “reception history”; in short, what did the audience think these texts meant? How were they used?
3. What editorial decisions were made when these texts were transmitted, edited, redacted, and so forth?
4. What is a modern reader to do with these texts?

The story we read for today’s parsha is largely a narrative from the pre-Priestly traditions. These sources are earlier and feature a more anthropomorphic and emotional characterization of Gd. That is the majority of today’s reading, and we can notice that, can’t we?

What about the extensive instructions of the sacrifice preparation? Here we do see the insertion of Priestly source material, see, for example, most of chapter 12. And what of this hardening of Pharaoh’s heart? In each instance of tht formula we have reason to trace the material to the Redactor, called “R” on the Documentary Hypothesis. The Redactor is said to have stitched all the accounts together to produce the Torah’s near final form. Perhaps the R source found reason to make clear it was Gd who hardened Pharaoh’s heart to make a stronger theological or rhetorical statement that was not present in its pre-Priestly form.

So What About the Story?

The story of the Exodus is a story of liberation. Complications immediately present themselves: Atrocities in Egypt; Israelites as enslavers; ethnic cleansing and mass displacement at the end of the Exodus journey. In our own negotiation, we can choose to emphasize what the story speaks to us today: It is that a “mixed multitude” “regardless of social station” forced their liberation from an imperial power and fled in haste to worship according to their practices. Some modern readers will find a text that allows for enslavement in the first place is too antiquated to be dealt with today.

I would suggest that plenty of people today seem to have little urgency for making reparation for the chattel enslavement in our history. Maybe confronting these stories, finding their core, understanding what is to be done with them is something we need more of, not less. The Exodus event did not happen historically, but maybe it’s our ability to discuss these episodes in the abstract that we’ll learn how better to deal with contemporary calls for liberation.

So bo, come to Pharoah. Let us liberate.