You Just Call Out My Name: Parashat Va-era

Parashah Va-era 2016 jan

Torah Sparks
Exodus 6:2 – 9:35

Our Torah portion opens with a startling declaration by God. After repeating God’s Name – the four-letter Tetragrammaton – God tells Moses that the conveying to Moses that the Tetragrammaton is God’s Name is a new development in history. God says that the Patriarchs of Israel did not know God through this name.

Let us note that God does not say that the Patriarchs did not know this name. God is not talking about whether the Patriarchs intellectually knew how God was to be called. Rather, God’s point is that the nature of the relationship that the Patriarchs enjoyed with God is different from the relationship that God is now establishing with Moses and the people of Israel. The names we use are expressions of the relationships we have. We may address a person very formally when we have official business with them. But with someone with whom we are very close, we feel free to use personal names and even make up new name for them.

God and Israel are trying to start a relationship on an entirely new level, a level unknown in the relationship enjoyed between God and the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. What makes this relationship different? Is it more intimate? But surely it is hard to imagine a relationship with God more intimate than the one enjoyed by our ancestors! Is it more demanding? It is hard to imagine a relationship more demanding than one in which God commands a parent to offer his son on an altar to God, as God commanded Abraham.

Indeed, one way to conceive of a difference between these two relationships is to understand the new relationship, just getting under way, as a relationship with a people rather than with specific individuals. Tied to that change is the possibility of a loss of immediacy. Our Patriarchs heard God’s direct communication. But God’s plan for Israel is to extricate them from slavery and then to give them a Torah to live by as they set up their sovereign existence in the Promised Land. We will no longer expect God to directly speak with us in response to our unique circumstances. But we will be empowered to live by God’s word, which we will have with us always. God’s communication with the Patriarchs was intimate and direct, but it was intermittent. God’s communication with us will not be as palpably direct, but it will be eternal. That is signified by this “new” Name – “YHVH – the Eternal One Who is ever with us.”

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein


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image:  “You, hold my hand, by my side” © Cher Kung altered and used with permission via Creative Commons License

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