Parshas Va'eira - Extreme Humility

Moshe initially approached Pharoah and asked that the Jewish people be released from bondage for a three-day religious festival in the desert. Pharoah denied the request and, instead, harshly increased the work demands on the Jews. The Jewish overseers, crushed by the new rules, yell at Moshe. Moshe complains to God: “Why have you made things worse for your people?” (Exodus, 5: 1-23) God says: “Go back, tell the Jewish people that I will save them and tell Pharorah to release them or I’ll afflict his nation with plagues.” Moshe tries to talk with the Jewish people but they are exasperated and won’t listen. Moshe says to God: “Behold, the children of Israel haven’t listened to me; so how will Pharoah listen to me? And (besides), I have a speech impediment!” (6:12).

The last clause of Moshe’s argument is very puzzling, because he had already raised this objection to God earlier (4:10) and God explicitly addressed this concern, telling Moshe that since He created the gift of speech, He can grant Moshe relief from his disability (4:11-12). So why did Moshe raise the same concern again?

In his book Redeeming Relevance In the Book of Exodus: Explorations in Text and Meaning, Rabbi Francis Nataf suggests that Moshe’s reiterated objection reflects his extreme humility. Despite God’s reassurances, he just could not believe that he was capable of serving as God’s agent in freeing the Jews from bondage. As Rabbi Nataf puts it: “On some level, he felt that he was a speech impedient.” Moshe may have feared that no human messenger would be well suited to accurately and movingly convey God’s will in the world. But he was certain that he was not up to the task and even God couldn't convince him that he was fit for the assignment.

As Rabbi Nataf points out, it was precisely that level of sincere, deep humility that made Moshe the ideal candidate for the job.  Because Moshe was so very humble, God's messages could be related clearly without any possible distortion from the ego of the messenger.

Vayetzei - Difficult tradeoffs

In last week’s Torah portion we read how our patriarch Jacob, urged on by his mother Rebecca, presented himself as his brother to his near-blind father Isaac so that he (Jacob) could receive the blessing Isaac intended for Esau. Commentators through the ages have grappled with this difficult episode, as it appears to present one of our ‘founding fathers’ as a deceitful person taking advantage of his father’s infirmities, rather than dealing directly or honestly, in order to gain an advantage – however justified Jacob might have been in claiming the preferred blessing.

Nechama Leibowitz, in an essay “Your Brother Came with Deceit,”¹ suggests that scripture itself attests that while Jacob’s ends were just, the means he used to achieve them were quite unsavory. In a similar vein Rabbi Francis Nataf, in an essay “The Inevitability of Choice,”² draws on a number of sources and makes the claim that the personalities in Genesis were often faced with difficult choices. He asserts that they understood implicitly that a course of action favored by God could, nonetheless, involve painful trade-offs and difficult consequences. We can see this in the deceptions that afflict Jacob in this week’s Torah portion, such as the switch of Leah for the desired Rachel on the wedding night and his father-in-law’s repeated changes of his wages. We can also see this in the deceptions that befall Jacob later – his two sons’ peace treaty with and then stealthy massacre of the town of Shechem and the eleven brothers’ sale of Joseph and cover-up story that an animal devoured Joseph.

The message of the Torah is clear – if you start your ‘career’ with deception, it will gain a life of its own.

1.     New Studies in Bereshit (Genesis), by Nechama Lebowitz. Published in Israel, 1977 (?); p. 264–270.   

2.     Redeeming Relevance in the Book of Genesis: Explorations in Text and Meaning, by Rabbi Francis Nataf. Published in Jerusalem, 2006; p. 41-56.