shemos: this you call a torah commentary?
hello friends,
I just submitted my last paperwork of the semester, handled my last student emergency of the semester, and closed my work email -- the school I teach at makes us all take a pledge to not send any work-related email, other than the most urgent, between Dec 23 and Jan 3rd. At last, some time for Torah....and we're starting a new book! (Reminder that if you want my revised and updated commentaries on Genesis all in one place, you can download them in a nice PDF.)
So welcome to Shemos. Let's talk about names. And let's start not with the list of names at the beginning of this portion but towards the end of the portion, after Moshe has left Egypt and encountered haShem in the fire. When haShem tells Moshe what he is to do, Moshe objects that he is not a man of words, that he is slow of speech, and begs haShem to send someone else. And haShem responds in anger -- specifically, in burning anger. We learn in the Talmud that
כל חרון אף שבתורה נאמר בו רושם וזה לא נאמר בו רושם
every "burning anger" that is taught in Torah also has its mark in Torah, but here the mark is not included
That is, every other instance of haShem experiencing burning anger comes with a specified consequence except for this one. The Rabbis use this to argue that, in fact, this is the moment where it is determined that Aharon will become the High Priest instead of Moshe, that the mark of this instance of burning anger is felt in Moshe being removed from that position. The Rabbis are approaching this with the assumption that haShem's anger was justified, and that the mark of that anger must be some kind of punishment.
But I would argue that the appropriate response to someone saying that they are not able to complete a certain task as proposed is to help them or to make the task more accessible, not to become angry at them and give the task to someone else. The mark of haShem's anger here is not a divine punishment, I believe, but simply a natural human consequence of Voix* anger for Moshe: according to Or haChaim, haShem's anger manifested in Moshe's body, worsening/continuing his stammer.
*(I'm practicing using the Voi/Void/Voix pronoun set for haShem invented by brin solomon in siddur davar chadash).
Things said in anger about people's abilities and identities have a way of making those identities and abilities fixed and unchangeable. I see this every time I teach a gen-ed math course. So many students come into my classroom convinced that they are bad at math and can never find joy or meaning or utility in the subject. Almost every one of them can point to a moment when a teacher or parent or friend said something in anger or frustration that cemented this idea in their minds. And I am certainly not immune to the experience of frustration when I am trying to teach someone and they aren't understanding what I'm doing -- it is a natural reaction. But as my teacher Ken Andrews taught me, it is the job of the teacher in that moment to find another way to teach, and to find a level of patience and kindness beyond that frustration.
This is all not to say, g-d forbid, that if haShem had just been nice to Moshe then Moshe would have suddenly been cured of his stammer. But it is to say that, while the social model of disability can sometimes be taken too literally, the "problem" with Moshe's stammer really was not found in Moshe, but in the ways that people and haShem reacted to it, in the ways that they gave up on him in frustration and anger. The mark of haShem's anger was not truly to impact Moshe's stammer one way or another, but just as another weight holding down these ideas he had already internalized about what he could and couldn't do. About who he could and couldn't be. To extend Or haChaim's observation slightly, haShem's burning anger left its mark b'Moshe, in the name Moshe, in Moshe's own understanding and narrative of himself.
Reb Zalman tells a story in his book Davenology about complaints people expressed over a small yeshiva he had once started (summarized from memory). "This little afternoon program, you call a yeshiva?" they said to a visiting speaker. The visitor responded "Nu, you think that's bad. I saw a bus outside with Chicago on the front and we're nowhere near Chicago!" As Reb Zalman observes: you have to name where you are going if you want to ever get there. You especially have to name where you are going if you want to bring anyone else along with you.
And so as much as there is destructive power in telling people what they are not, in letting our anger mark their names and identities, there is healing power in letting people name what they want to become as what they presently are. This duality is expressed right in the Hebrew language, as we learn in gemara:
אָמַר רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר, דְּאָמַר קְרָא: ״לְכוּ חֲזוּ מִפְעֲלוֹת ה׳ אֲשֶׁר שָׂם שַׁמּוֹת בָּאָרֶץ״, אֶל תִּקְרֵי ״שַׁמּוֹת״ אֶלָּא ״שֵׁמוֹת״
From where do we derive that the name affects one’s life? Rabbi Eliezer said that the verse says: “Go, see the works of the Lord, who has made desolations [shamos] upon the earth” (Psalms 46:9). Do not read the word as shamos, rather as shemos, names.
We are starting the book of Shemos, of names, this week. So let people name what and who they want to be. Let people take the future narrative of their life and express it in the present, the only moment they can control. Do not speak in anger and make desolations on the earth, speak from generosity and help people make their own names.
On Yom Kippur we say
דַּרְכְּךָ אֱלֹקֵֽינוּ לְהַאֲרִיךְ אַפֶּֽךָ לָרָעִים וְלַטּוֹבִים וְהִיא תְהִלָּתֶֽךָ
our g-d, your way is to delay your anger against people both evil and good. and that is your prayer.
The word I've translated as "delay" could also mean (g-d forbid) "prolong". These dualities of delay/prolong and desolations/names pose the question I've been circling around themselves: do we prolong anger and desolation and delay naming who we are? Or do we take up our names now, even if fully inhabiting them may be a prolonged process, and delay anger and desolation instead?
Even though haShem acts in anger many times in Torah, we must choose to name that our g-d's way is to delay anger. And even more: that is haShem's prayer for Voidself, because you have to name where you're going if you want to get there.
gut shabes,
ada