Sh’mot

I met Ellen Allard a few years ago at the NewCAJE conference. Ellen is an award-winning recording artist, performer, and Early Childhood Music Specialist who has produced several music albums. The first song on her album, “Build It Up,” is about God. “Hear God, see God, smell God, taste God, know God, touch God, feel God, one God … everywhere God, everyone God … God, God, God.” My then 3-year old granddaughter got into my car and I started the CD. She listened intently as I made up hand motions to accompany the lyrics, and she learned the song quickly. The message of Ellen’s composition became the prompt for many a theological car conversation that she and I have had over the last three years. And a couple of weeks ago her 3-year old twin siblings heard the song for the first time, and they now want to listen to it endlessly as well. Thanks a lot, Ellen. But actually, thanks a LOT to Ellen. She has brought God into the lives of three more Children of Israel.

In this week’s Parshat Shmot, beginning the Book of Exodus, we see evidence of God’s existence through interactions with Moses. The thorn bush that burned but was not consumed is Moses’ first encounter with the Almighty. Moses wants to look, to see God’s existence. But instead he is instructed to remove his shoes “for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” He is instructed to let the Israelites know that God, known as “Eh’yeh asher Eh’yeh” has sent him to announce that they will be taken out of Egypt. It is through Moses’ voice that the Israelites will come to know of their redemption.

Further evidence of God’s existence comes from turning a staff into a snake, causing Moses’ hand to appear leprous, and pouring the water of the Nile onto dry land, turning it to blood. Moses doubts his ability to convince Pharoah and his fellow Israelites that God will fulfill the covenant of his ancestors, freeing them from slavery and bringing them to the Promised Land. But God retorts: “Who gave man a mouth, or who makes [one] dumb or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” It is through the senses that we, like Moses, come to know God.

I grew up reading Bible stories from a large book, “The Golden Book of Bible Stories.” The opening page shows the wheel of the Creation of the World, with a picture of “God” holding a staff in the middle. I imagined that God must have looked like that old man with the white beard. In 8th grade (I was a slow learner) one day it hit me that God didn’t actually look like any particular old man with a white beard. My rabbi certainly didn’t look like that and he was as close to God as any human being I had ever met. That threw me into a whirlwind of doubt and disbelief that there even was a God. I certainly considered myself Jewish, but couldn’t attach a theology to that identity. It wasn’t until the moment of my daughter’s birth that I recognized God’s existence and my partnership with the Source of all Creation.

So how do we know that God exists? Do we need scientific evidence or proof in order to have an “Ah-Ha” moment in the course of our day? I think not. But it does take opening our eyes, perhaps metaphorically, as our morning blessing affirms God’s action: “Hama’avir sheinah mei’einai ut’numa mei’afapai.” “Who removes sleep from my eyes, and slumber from my eyelids.” Not only do we have to be mentally or physically awake, but we have to be called to action. In our daily encounters with our fellow humans, we can increase the potential for, as Martin Buber notes, I-Thou relationships.

This Monday we will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day devoted to social justice. This national holiday is intended to empower individuals, strengthen communities, bridge barriers, create solutions to social problems, and move us closer to Dr. King's vision of a "Beloved Community." According to Talmud, to save a single life is as if we have saved the world. We may not be able to heal the world, but we can start with a single action. Look around you. Notice the beauty in a single human being, in the earth, in every physical manifestation of what God has created in our universe. What one small step can you take to help shape the world into one that will be filled with God’s loving presence? In the words of Rabbi Ed Feinstein, senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California: “May we present our children with a God who demands uncompromising intellectual honesty and devoted moral commitment,a God who cherishes human goodness and energizes acts of compassion, a God who offers support and comfort in times of pain, a God who shares the sweetness of our simchas. This is a God who enjoys a good argument, a God unafraid of the wanderings of the human imagination. Our God celebrates the achievements of the human mind and spirit, and depends upon us to remake the world in the image of the Almighty.

Ken yehi ratzon – May it be God’s will.