EXOD73 God has no image because He is not physical. He transcends the physical universe because He created it. Therefore, He is free, unconstrained by the laws of matter. That is what God means when He tells Moses that His name is "I will be what I will be" [this verse], and later when, after the sin of the Golden Calf, He tells him, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy" (Exodus 33:19). God is free, and by making us in His image, He gave us also the power to be free. This, as the Torah makes clear, was God's most fateful gift. Given freedom, humans misuse it--as we noted earlier, Adam and Eve disobey God's command; Cain murders Abel. By the end of the parasha we find ourselves in the world before the Flood, filled with violence to the point where God regretted that He had ever created humanity. This is the central drama of Tanakh and of Judaism as a whole. Will we use our freedom to respect order or misuse it to create chaos? Will we honour or dishonour the image of God that lives within the human heart and mind?

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EXOD74 "It is not right to alienate, scorn, and hate people who desecrate the Sabbath. It is our duty to befriend them and encourage them to fulfil the commandments." [Abraham S. Halkin and David Hartman, Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985), 15-35]. In a daring stroke of interpretation, he [Maimonides] quotes the verse: "Do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving" (Prov. 6:30). The Crypto-Jews who [embrace Christianity publicly but remain Jews privately] come to the synagogue are hungry for Jewish prayer. They "steal" moments of belonging. They should not be despised, but welcomed. This is a masterly example of that most difficult of moral challenges: to combine prescription and compassion. Rambam leaves us in no doubt as to what he believes Jews should do. But at the same time he is uncompromising in his defence of those who fail to do it. He does not endorse what they have done -- but he defends who are they are. He asks us to understand their situation. He gives them grounds for self-respect. He holds the doors of the community open. The argument reaches a climax as Rambam quotes a remarkable sequence of midrashic passages whose theme is that prophets must not condemn their people, but rather defend them before God. When Moses, charged with leading the people out of Egypt, replied, "But they will not believe me" [this verse], ostensibly he was justified. The subsequent biblical narrative suggests that Moses' doubts were well-founded. The Israelites were difficult people to lead. But the Midrash says that God replied to Moses, "They are believers and the children of believers, but you [Moses] will ultimately not believe" (Shabbat 97a). Rambam cites a series of similar passages and then says: If this is the punishment meted out to the pillars of the universe, the greatest of the prophets, because they briefly criticized the people--even though they were guilty of the sins of which they were accused--Can we envisage the punishment waiting those who criticize the Crypto-Jews who are under threat of death and without abandoning their faith, confessed to another religion in which they did not believe?

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EXOD76 Moses defended the people. Did he like them? Did he admire them? Was he liked by them? The Torah leaves us in no doubt as to the answers to those questions. Yet he defended them with all the passion and power at his disposal. Even when they had sinned. Even when they were ungrateful to God. Even when they made a Golden Calf. He risked his life to do so. He said to God: "And blot me out of the book You have written" (Exodus 32:32). According to the Talmud, God taught Moses this lesson at the very outset of his career. When Moses said about the people, "They will not believe in me" [this verse], God said, "They are the believers, children of believers, and in the end it will be you who does not believe" (Shabbat 97a). The leaders worthy of admiration are those who defend the people--even the non-Orthodox, even the secular, even those whose orthodoxies are a different shade from theirs. The people worthy of respect are those who give respect. Those who hate will be hated, those who look down on others will be looked down on, and those who condemn will be condemned. That is a basic principle of Judaism: midda keneged midda. The people who are great are those who help others to become great. Moses taught the Jewish people how to become great.

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EXOD78 …tzaraat….has been variously translated as leprosy, skin disease, and scaly infection. Yes there are formidable problems in identifying it with any known disease. First, it symptoms do not correspond to Hansen's Disease, otherwise known as leprosy. Second, as described in the Torah, it affects not only human beings but also the walls of houses, furniture, and clothes. There is no known medical condition that has this property. Besides, the Torah is a book about holiness and correct conduct. It is not a medical text. Even if it were, as David Zvi Hoffman points out in his commentary, the procedures to be carried out do not correspond to those that would be done if tzaraat were contagious disease. [Rabbi David Zvi Hoffman, Commentary to Sefer Vayikra [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1972), vol. 1, 253-55)]. Finally, tzaraat as described in the Torah is a condition that brings not sickness but rather impurity, tum'a. Health and purity are different things altogether. The sages decoded the mystery by relating this parasha to the instances of the Torah in which someone was actually afflicted by tzaraat. One happened when Miriam spoke against her brother Moses (Num. 12:1 – 15). Another occurred when Moses at the burning bush said to God that the Israelites would not believe in him. His hand briefly turned "as leprous as snow" [this verse]. The sages regarded tzaraat as a punishment for lashon hara, evil speech, speaking negatively about or denigrating another person.

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EXOD82 At the burning bush, Moses said to God: "I am not a man of words. I am heavy of speech and tongue" [this verse]. By the time we reach Deuteronomy, the book named "Words," Devarim, Moses has become the most eloquent of prophets. Some are puzzled by this. They should not be. God chose one who was not a man of words, so that when he spoke, people realized that it was not he who was speaking but God who was speaking through him. What he spoke were not his words but God's words. That is why He chose a couple who could not have children--Abraham and Sarah--to become parents of the first Jewish child. That is why He chose a people not conspicuous for their piety to become God's witnesses to the world. The highest form of greatness is to open ourselves to God so that His blessings flow through to the world. That is how the priests blessed the people. It was not their blessing. They were the channel of God's blessing. The highest achievement to which we can inspire is to open ourselves to others and to God in love so that something greater than ourselves flows through us.

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EXOD114 The question is ancient. If God hardened Pharaoh's heart, then it was God who made Pharaoh refuse to let the Israelites go, not Pharaoh himself. How can this be just? How could it be right to punish Pharaoh and his people for a decision--a series of decisions--that were not made freely by Pharaoh himself? Punishment presupposes guilt. Guilt presupposes responsibility. Responsibility presupposes freedom. We do not blame weights for falling or the sun for shining. Natural forces are not choices made by reflecting on alternatives. Homo sapiens alone is free. Take away that freedom and you take away our humanity. How then can we say, as it does in Parashat Va'era, that God hardened Pharaoh's heart [this verse]? All the commentators are exercised by this question. Rambam and others note a striking feature of the narrative: for the first five plagues we read that Pharaoh himself hardened his heart. Only later, during the last five plagues, do we read about God doing so. The last five plagues were therefore a punishment for the first five refusals, freely made by Pharaoh himself. [Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuva 6:3]. [Continued at [[EXOD130]] Exodus 10:7 SACKS 86 realise].

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EXOD115 [Continued from [[EXOD130]] Exodus 10:7 realise SACKS 86] A third approach calls into question the very meaning of the phrase, "God hardened Pharaoh's heart." In a profound sense, God, author of history, is behind every event, every act, every gust of wind that blows, every drop of rain that falls. Normally, however, we do not attribute human action to God. We are what we are because that is how we have chosen to be, even if this was written long before in the divine script for human kind. What do we attribute to an act of God? Something that is unusual, falling so far outside the norms of human behavior that we find it hard to explain in any other way then to say that surely this happen for a purpose. God Himself says about Pharaoh's obstinacy that it allowed Him to demonstrate to all humanity that even the greatest empire is powerless against the hand of Heaven [this verse, Exodus 14:18]. Pharaoh acted freely, but his last refusals were so strange that it was obvious to everyone that God had anticipated this. It was predictable, part of the script. God had disclosed this to Abraham centuries earlier when He told him in a fearful vision that his descendants would be strangers in the land not theirs (Gen 15:13-14). These are all interesting and plausible interpretations. It seems to me, though, that the Torah is telling a deeper story, one that never loses its relevance. Philosophers and scientists have tended to think in terms of abstractions and universals. Some have concluded that we have free will, others that we do not. There is no conceptual space in between. In life, however, that is not the way freedom works at all. Consider addiction: the first few times you smoke a cigarette or drink alcohol or take drugs, you do so freely. You know the risks and you ignore them. As time goes on, your dependency increases until the craving is so intense that you are almost powerless to resist it. At that point you may have to go into rehabilitation. You no longer, on your own, have the ability to stop. As the Talmud says, "A prisoner cannot release himself from prison" (Berakhot 5b). Addiction is a physical phenomenon. But there are moral equivalents. For example, suppose on one significant occasion, you tell a lie. People now believe something about you that is not true. As they question you about it, or it comes up in conversation, you find yourself having to tell more lies to support the first. "Oh what a tangled web we weave," Sir Walter Scott famously said, "when first we practice to deceive." That is as far as individuals are concerned. When it comes to organizations, the risk is even greater. ... Within nations, especially non-democratic ones, the risk is higher still. ... [lengthy discussion omitted] That is what the Torah means when it says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Insulating others, Pharaoh himself became enslaved. He became a prisoner of the values he himself had espoused. Freedom in the deepest sense, the freedom to do the right and the good, is not a given. We acquire it, or lose it, gradually. In the end, tyrants about their own destruction, whereas those with willpower, courage, and the willingness to go against the consensus acquire a monumental freedom. This is what Judaism is: an invitation to freedom by resisting the idols and siren calls of the age.

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EXOD128 See [[EXOD7]] Exodus 1:9 numerous SACKS 99

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EXOD130 [Continued from [[EXOD114]] Exodus 7:3 hardened SACKS 85] A second approach, in precisely the opposite direction, is that during the last five plagues God intervened not to harden but to strengthen Pharaoh's heart. He acted to ensure that Pharaoh kept his freedom and did not lose it. Such was the impact of the plagues that in the normal course of events a national leader would have no choice but to give into a superior force. As Pharaoh's own advisers said before the eighth plague, "Do you not yet realize that Egypt is destroyed?" [this verse]. To give in at that point would have been action under duress, not a genuine change of heart. Such is the approach of Joseph Albo [Albo, Sefer HaIkkarim, IV, 25] and Ovadiah Sforno (on Exodus 7:3). [Continued at [[EXOD115]] Exodus 7:5 SACKS 86 destroyed.]

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EXOD159 The history of storytelling as an essential part of moral education begins in Parashat Bo. It is quite extraordinary how, on the brink of the Exodus, Moses turns to the future and to the duty of parents to educate their children about the story that was shortly to unfold. In fact, he does so three times: "When your children ask you, 'What is this service to you?' You shall answer, 'It is the Passover service to God. He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians, sparing our homes'" (this verse and previous); "On that day, you shall tell your child, 'It is because of this that God acted for me when I left Egypt'" (Exodus 13:8); "Your child may later ask you, 'What is this?' You shall answer him, 'With a show of power, God brought us out of Egypt, the place of slavery'" (Exodus 13:14). This is truly extraordinary. The Israelites have not yet emerged into the dazzling light of freedom. They are still slaves. Yet already Moses is directing their minds to the far horizon of the future and giving them the responsibility of passing on their story to succeeding generations. It is as if Moses were saying: Forget where you came from and why, and you will eventually lose your identity, your continuity, and raison d'être. You will come to think of yourself as the mere member of a nation among nations, one ethnicity among many. Forget the story of freedom and you will eventually lose freedom itself. .... Moses ... knew that without a specific identity it is almost impossible not to lapse into whatever is the current idolatry of the age--rationalism, idealism, nationalism, fascism, communism, postmodernism, relativism, individualism, hedonism, or consumerism, to name only the most recent. The alternative, a society based on tradition alone, crumbles as soon as respect for tradition dies, which it always does at some stage or another. Identity, which is always particular, is based on story, the narrative that links me to the past, guides me in the present, and places on me the responsibility for the future. ... The Jewish story is in its way the oldest of all, yet ever young, and we are each a part of it. It tells us who we are and who our ancestors hoped we would be. Storytelling is the great vehicle of moral education. It was the Torah's insight that a people who told their children the story of freedom and its responsibilities would stay free for as long as human kind lives and breathes and hopes.

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