As you can probably imagine, one of the main questions I get, as a rabbi, is about God. It's often a variation on the themes of where God is, what God is like, why do bad things happen to good people, or why doesn't God speak to us anymore?
Just between you and me, I don't have a lot of answers to these questions. I think about them a lot myself, to be sure, but I certainly don't know THE solutions to some of humanity's greatest dilemmas. But do we really have NO sense of what God wants of us? Is it fair to say that we are totally on our own, and that God isn't speaking to us in ANY way? In reality, I think we overload our senses with work, social media, terrifying news headlines, and pretty much ANYTHING we can find, just so we don't have to listen for the still, small voice inside all of us that actually DOES know more than we'd like to admit.
I'll tell you why this came to mind this week. Our Torah portion is Va-eira, and it's the second parashah in the Book of Exodus. Moses has confronted Pharaoh about letting the Israelite slaves go free, Pharaoh has stubbornly refused, and the plagues have begun. In fact, seven of the ten plagues rain down on Egypt in our Torah reading. The seventh
one is fiery hail that destroys land and kills cattle and people. The Torah introduces this calamity by having Moses tell Pharaoh: "order your livestock and everything you have in the open brought under shelter; every man and beast that is found outside, not having been brought indoors, shall perish when the hail comes down upon them!" (Ex. 9:19) So what do you think happened? Sure enough - "Throughout the land of Egypt, the hail struck down all that were in the open, both man and beast" (9:25). I find myself asking, who were these fools who stayed out in the open, leaving themselves vulnerable to lethal weather storms??
Remember again, this is the SEVENTH plague!! Clearly God has already demonstrated, unequivocally, the ability and intention to afflict Egypt with plagues. How is it even possible that by plague #7, there are still skeptics and doubters??? It's almost comical! And yet, of course there are. In every generation,
and in every situation, there are always going to be people who simply REFUSE to accept facts, or who insist that they are right, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Today we deal with climate change deniers, gun rights activists, and people who are convinced that we've "solved" racism in America. Like the Egyptians who insisted on taking a stroll outside when the hail began to fall, many people today are too invested in the status quo. Even when the system is wholly broken and change MUST come, the prospect of giving up on long-held beliefs is simply too scary.
We prefer to look to heaven, and ask why God hasn't "fixed" hunger, poverty, racism, and intolerance. It's easier, really. The harder truth to face is that we have all the food we need on this planet, we just don't care to allocate it better. We CAN work on all the problems that
plague our society today, but it takes effort, sacrifice, discomfort, and probably a fair amount of pain and loss. But let's not be ancient Egyptians about this. Slavery was deeply entrenched in their society, and it was probably unfathomable to let ALL the slaves go free. But that doesn't make it ok to keep them. When we read the famous story of the Exodus, we all like to think of ourselves as the Israelites. Let's first be sure that we're not actually the oppressors, and let's be a little more vigilant to the stubborn tendencies that are tough to discard. Being an Israelite isn't a God-given right; it's a choice, and one that we must constantly be making again and again if we are to be truly free.
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