Four Days: a drash for Parshat Bo

In a small village of destitute slaves

Watched over by nasty Egyptians

The kind who worship animals,

Like lambs,

And who will kill you if they find you with one of their sacred beasts.

And Moses says,

"You shall take a lamb to a family"

"You shall keep watch over it until the fourteenth day of this month."

okay.

Easy for him to say.

You ever keep a lamb?  

'Specially a lamb without its mama?

You know what lambs do when they're looking for their mamas?

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

So four days,

Four days with this lonely lamb

Waiting for the Egyptian soldiers to come crashing in

And if they do

It ain't the lamb they're gonna slaughter for breakfast.

In a large gathering of destitute slaves

Oppressed by nasty Egyptians,

The kind who take pleasure in causing pain

To innocent slaves
Like you and me,

And said Egyptians only want an excuse to hurt you
Bad

And Moses says,

Use these four days

To prove your commitment!

If you can live through this tension

You can live through anything.

Trust in God

Trust in goodness

Trust in the future

And you will be protected

And you will be free.

Baaaaaa.

Long story short,

We waited four days.

Lemme tell you

It was very stressful.

Four days felt like four years.

It took ten years off my life, easy.

But the time finally passed

And we killed that monster

And we ate him up,

Every baa and bleat of him.

He was delicious.

And we put his blood on the wall

And the Angel of Death passed over.

You know the rest.

Shemot

Names

This parsha is Shemot, which in Hebrew means names.  It's also the name of this second book of the Torah.  In English it is called Exodus, which means the mass departure of many people.   Life sucks in Egypt for the Hebrew slaves and so they leave.  Stuff happens.  Exodus.  

The plot of this one little parsha is hard to sum up quickly:  The torah names all the tribes of Israel who have moved to Egypt, they become enslaved, AND THEN  after 400 years they become so numerous and the Pharoah is afraid of them so he orders the midwives to kill all the male Hebrew babies.  AND THEN Two midwives manage to save a lot of the male babies, one in particular is hidden from the bad guys until he gets too big and loud to hide, AND THEN his mother puts him in a basket and floats him towards Pharoah's daughter, who adopts him and names him Moshe AND THEN he is given to his mother to nurse and then back to Pharoah's Daughter to be raised as an Eqgyptian prince.  AND THEN One day Moses sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave AND THEN he kills the Eqgyptian so he has to skedaddle AND THEN he faces the fact that he is a Hebrew  AND THEN He runs away to Midian, marries Zipporah, has children, becomes a shepherd and generally drops out, AND THEN one day, just when he thinks his life is settled, God appears in a burning bush that is not consumed, insists that Moses go back to Egypt and liberate his people with the help of his brother Aaron AND THEN God teaches the reluctant Moses some magic  tricks AND THEN  Moses goes back to Egypt, confronts the Pharoah of all Egypt and says, no, demands that he let his people go, AND THEN Pharoah says hell no and gets even meaner to the slaves than he was before, AND THEN God tells Moses that he is going to kick Pharoah's ass.

Great story.  Can't wait to see what happens next.

But for me, this is not about the journey, epic though it may be, but about something as simple as a name.  With a name you are given a place, in your family and your community, and sometimes within your soul. The Israelites and then Moses, and then God, are named and found in this parsha, and the nexus is the Burning Bush, when God invites Moses back into who he is, Mose the Hebrew, the friend of God and the savior of the slaves.

The slaves are the children of Israel, known as the, Ivrit.  The word Ivrit, meaning, Hebrew, comes from the shoresh Ayin, Bet, Raish.  As a verb, it means to cross over, and it's first used to describe that wanderer, Abraham.  But by the time the people are in Egypt they are definitively known to the Egyptions as the Hebrews, re the people who crossed over, from Canaan to Egypt.  And Shemot is the story of when those Hebrews go across the desert to go back home.  The name is descriptive of how these people, our people, act and how we are seen.  We know how to move on, when necessary.  History acts upon us, we change as we must.

The second name is that of Moses, which is taken from the meaning, to be drawn out, Pharoah's daughter names him that becuase he was drawn out of the water..  It is apparently also now meant that it is also Mose who draws the people out of Egypt.   Moses is given his name as a child, acted upon by others, until he kills the Egyptian and runs away, spending his time in Midian becoming a new person until his encounter with God, at which point he can reclaim himself and that name and become the agent of his own life.  He draws himself out and discovers his true self, who is is, his I am that I am and embraces his connection with the one-ness and his people and goes back into the story.  Moses, the protagonist, changes dramatically.  Pharoah, his mother, his sister, Pharoah's daughter, Jethro, Zipporah, and God, they all act upon him, but finally, when Moses sees the Burning Bush, when he chooses to see the Burning Bush, he draws himself out and becomes his people's leader.  He names God and becomes Ivrit at last.

And what about God's name?  Many observant jews never call God by any name other than HaShem, The Name.  I'm not totally sure why, but to me it seems that it's as if, by naming God you quantify God, you surround and separate and personalize, you make the Is-ness into a human or a supernatural that which cannot be surrounded or separated or personalized or be human or a being. 

And yet we insist on giving this non-corporeal non-being a Shem, a name.  In fact, Shemot.  Names:

El

Elohim

El Shaddai

Elyon

Shechinah

Yah

Adonai

Yahweh

Jehovah

Ruach HaOlam, The Breath of Life

The Eternal

The Righteous One

Ha Makom, The Place

Adon Olam, Lord of the World

Avinu Malkeinu, Our Father Our King

Elohei Avraham, Elohei Yitzchak ve Elohei Ya`aqov

Elohei Sara, Elohei Rivka, Elohei Leah ve Elohei Rakhel

E'in Sof—"endless, infinite",

HaKadosh, The Holy One

 Barukh Hu , Blessed One

HaRachaman-"The Merciful One"

Melech HaMelachim—"The King of kings" or

Ribeinu Shel Olam, Master of the World

Rofeh Cholim, Healer of the Sick

Tzur Yisrael, Rock of Israel

Oseh Shalom, Maker of Peace

And my personal favorite, Zokef efufim, Straightener of the Bent.  What ever does that mean, I wonder?

God is not nearly as pretentious as we are.  When Moses asks God what he should call God, God simply (!) says, Eheyeh Asher Eheyeh.  I Am That I Am.

Rabbi Art Green interprets this to be not the description of something that has ever been, is now, and ever will be, outside of time and space, Was/Is/ Will Be.  It is the essence of, well, IS, and this Is-ness knows it.  For the first time, The Was/Is/Will Be, the I AM THAT I AM, doesn't identify itself as God or Lord or Father or any of that.  This Is-ness sends Moses off on his quest to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt and into covenant with I am that I am.  So HaIvrit, The Hebrews, and  Moses and I AM THAT I AM have come together and the story that will climax at Sinai in Torah and Jews and you and me.

So  What are the names you were given at birth? 

What are the names you were given by your history? 

What are the names you have chosen for yourself at your burning bush? 

My parents gave me the name, Patricia Ilene Arlin.

AND THEN They gave me a name for my religion, my people, my history, Aleeza Bat Rut v'Shlomo.  Aleeze means Joyful.  That's me, Full of Joy.

I always hated that name, Aleeza.   I didn't have much joy growing up and I don't present as joyful lke some people do, even when that's how I'm feeling.  So the name Aleeza never sat well with me.  So when I started studying Jewish stuff, I thought I wanted a more appropriate Hebrew name.  My hero became Rabbi Akiva, who was illiterate until he was in his forties and who then started to learn from scratch and who became one of the greatest rabbis of his time.  I decided I wanted the female equivalent of the male name, Akiva, but when I looked it up one one of those sites for finding Hebrew names, it said there was no female equivalent.  AND THEN, I complained about this to a friend who had some knowledge of hebrew names, AND THEN she suggested what she thought was the closest female equivalent to Akiva:  Aleeza.

I've been thinking about it, and I think I am almost ready to drop the name I was given, and reclaim my name and draw myself out and choose to be joyful. 

Aleeza. 

Baruch atah HaShem, Blessed be the Name, blessed be that which cannot be named and blessed be our names, those we receive because of love, and those we receive because of our history and culture, and those names we choose for ourselves, because we are B'tzelem Elohim, made in the image of the I AM that chooses to be I AM.  

Amen.

BEHOLD

I. Behold
In Torah, God shows the future in our dreams to whomever God thinks appropriate.
Then God sends wise interpreters to the dreamers to explain the messages that God has sent us.
Only when interpreted can the dreams come true.
Hinei, meaning Behold, is the word used in Torah to introduce such a dream.

II. Behold, Joseph dreams
Joseph dreamt of wheat sheaves that bowed to him and the aging Wrestler Jacob understood and interpreted
Thus, he gave his annoying son a striped coat.
So the story could begin and the prophecy come true.
 Once upon a time, a gifted but foolish child was sold into slavery…
But when Joseph saw his brothers again, they were hungry and he was a lord.
And they bowed down to him and he understood, and forgave because it was basherte, meant to be.
Thus they hugged and they ate and they cried.
So thank you, Jacob.
Because without interpretation, a prophecy is wasted.


III. Then behold, science dreams.
While we sleep our brains show us random pictures of what we had seen that day or what we can imagine, based on what our brains already knew even if we didn’t know we knew them.
And our brain imposes order on the random and constructs a story.
Thus we gain access to the things we know but don’t know we know,
And we call that a dream.
Chalom is the Hebrew word for dream, which sounds like chalon, which is the word for window.
So a dream can be prophecy or neurology or a window to one’s soul.
And our therapists interpret our dreams so we’ll understand our inner motivations.
Once analyzed, a dream gives insight.
So Danke Schoen, Freud.
Because without explanation, an image is wasted

IV. Hinei! Rebbe Hannina dreams
He says,
Human versions of God’s vast intent are as unripened fruit,
Filled with potential,
Perceived completely only by God.
Hanina says that the unripened fruit of prophecy is a dream.
Which is kind of cool.
So I speculate,
The unripened fruit of truth is the story.
We tell tales with beginnings middles and ends around our seder table, for instance.
Then we bite into sweet charoses and pretend it is mortar for bitter bricks,
Because it fits the narrative.
So thanks, all you Jews.
Because without a congregation, a maggid is wasted.

V. Behold, Jacob dreams
Jacob dreamt of a ladder and souls that went up and down,
But his soul stayed put as he mourned his dead son, Joseph, who turned up actually not so dead.
And when Jacob got the good news and moved to Egypt, he had to face the facts.
At the end of his life, the end of Bereishit, he predicts the future.
Behold! says Jacob, and some get a farmland and some get sheep.
Behold! says Jacob, and those rotten kids, Reuben, Simeon (not so nice, not so honest, not so deserving) get futures of disgrace and division.
Behold! says Jacob, and Judah, who made teshuvah,  who pleased God because he could learn from his mistakes and change,
Judah gets history,
Jew-dah gets us, the Jews.
Then Jacob dies, a hard, full life.
 Chazak, chazak, Jacob – Be strong, be strong
So thanks, Genesis,
Because without dynastic mythologies, a dysfunctional family is wasted.

VI. Behold, Moses dreams
One tale ends, so another can begin.
In Shmot, starting next week, another great story, more unripened fruit, this one of murdered babies, supernatural revenge, bad guys, and heroes.
And, after a mad dash across the Sea of Reeds,
There’s much rejoicing,
Quickly interrupted by hunger and miracles and rules and revelation.
And even though the rest of us often find ourselves in the desert,
Or tied up on the metaphorical railroad tracks:
“Pay the rent!” “I can’t pay the rent!”
Not even dreaming of rescue,
Making bricks without straw,
No aspirations, no hope, no prophecies, no future!
Then here comes our hero, Moshe, “I’ll pay the rent!
Have some commandments! Become a people!”
So, nice to see you coming up in the third act, Moishe.
Because without a happy ending, complications are wasted.

VII. Behold, our dream
So we pray and listen for the presence of God in ambient sound
Trying to hear truth amongst all the voices of our lives
Trying to interpret the noise properly so that it will come true, if it should,
And we can be part of a much larger story.
Not Hinei,
Behold
But Hineini,
Here I am.
So we can all take responsibility and not be ashamed,
Se we can all learn from our mistakes and make teshuvah,
So we can all forgive and not be bitter.
And hug and eat and cry and change the world.
For good and for ill,
As did our illustrious uncle, Joseph of Egypt.
And our great great grandpa, Judah the Lion.
So thanks, Grace Paley, who more or less said,
“Without action, hope is wasted.”


Brucha At Yah,
Infinite and eternal so that we may have endings and beginnings.
I am so grateful that we are able to study Torah together.
Because without connection, dreams are wasted.

Amen.




Written originally for the Drisha Institute Artists Fellowship program, based on our study of dreams in Talmud