One of the greatest scandals for Jewish philosophy is the way that Pharaoh loses his freedom over the course of the exodus as his hardened heart numbs him to the suffering of his own people and to the ethical claims of his Israelite slaves. He neither acts with crass self-interest as the king of Egypt nor does he act with moral clarity. His autonomy is stripped from him by the hardness of his heart; his incapacity drives the narrative forward as his personality ossifies into wicked defiance and folly.
But the Israelites also lost our freedom and our autonomy over the course of the exodus. When we stood at Sinai, in the words of the Talmud, God held the mountain over our heads and threatened us: accept the Torah or you will be entombed beneath this mountain. This should allow us to claim that acceptance of the Torah was made under duress and we are not accountable to its demands! The Torah is only binding upon us, the Talmud concludes, because of the voluntary and free recommitment to the Torah that was made in the time of Mordechai and Esther. I don’t know that the mountain was literally suspended in the air above the Israelites, but the same miracles and signs and wonders that forced Pharaoh’s hand, took away our capacity to rationally evaluate or freely accept the Torah and it was centuries before we were in a position to do so.
The opening verses of Parashat Vaera may hint to this dynamic.
וַיְדבֵ֥ר א-ֱלהִ֖ים אֶל־מֹשֶ֑ה וַיֹ֥אמֶר אֵלָ֖יו אֲנִ֥י ה׳׃
וָאֵר֗א אֶל־אַבְרהָ֛ם אֶל־יִצְחָ֥ק וְאֶֽל־יַעֲק֖ב בְא-ֵ֣ל שַדָ֑י ושְמִ֣י ה׳ ל֥א נוד֖עְתִי לָהֶֽם׃
And God spoke unto Moses, and said unto him: ‘I am the LORD; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty, El Shadai, but by My name Hashem I made Me not known to them.
If you were to walk up to a Jew on the street, (or find someone at Kiddush today who missed the drasha) show him or her these verses, and say: “explain what they mean,” the vast majority would interpret the verse to mean that the patriarchs, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, did not know the four-letter, proper name, of God, but only related to God through a different name.
But, that simple and straightforward explanation of this passage is undermined by several occasions where the patriarchs and matriarchs encountered God, quite explicitly, with the very name that our parsha claims was held in reserve until the time of Moshe.
A contradiction this obvious cannot be a mistake.
What is the significance of these different names of God? As we heard last Shabbat from our visiting scholar, different names for the same person or thing can carry significance. We learn about a relationship based on the names that we use for one another. During my first week working as a rabbi, someone called out “David” and I turned and said, “yes” and the person grew bright red, was mortified, and responded, “oh, rabbi, I was talking to that other David standing next to you, I would never call you by your first name.” I had been a rabbi for less than three months. Meanwhile, some years later, Sara was being questioned by El Al security when she was asked about her Jewish community and was asked, “what do you call the rabbi?” And she said, “I call him David; I’m married to him.”
Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, Netziv, understands the names that are listed in these verses to be stand-ins for the ways that we can experience God’s relationship to the created world. El Shadai is a name that signifies God as the Creator of the Universe, the Creator of Nature, and the Creator of the scientific laws that describe the universe (ie the one who declared, “dai” – enough, stop, to the universe and gave it laws). A relationship with God through the name El Shadai is a relationship that accepts the world as it exists and accepts that the world as it exists is precisely the way God wanted it to be.
The four-letter name of God, in contrast, signifies God’s operation in history independent of nature and nature’s laws. This Name of God signifies God’s ability and willingness to supervise, direct, and control the path of the universe, even when this entails deviations from what would have otherwise occurred naturally.
According to Netziv, when God tells Moshe that the patriarchs did not know the four letter name of God, what Moshe was truly being told was that a new religious paradigm was beginning. Several other commentators also adopt this approach. All of them see the religious perspective of the patriarchs as being immature and primitive when compared to the fuller perspective that Moshe’s generation merited.
I suspect that most of us would also see the religious perspective that was inaugurated during the exodus as the pinnacle of religious experience. God was more manifest during the exodus. We experienced the greatest miracles. And they changed the course of Jewish history in ways that we remember with gratitude every day.
But Rav Simcha Bunim of Przysucha understood the valence of these different perspectives in a dramatically different way. Rav Simcha Bunim was a Hassidic rebbe who was active in the first decades of the 19th century. He was one of the key figures in a brief brilliant and iconoclastic renaissance of Hasidic thought in Poland that tried to inject a fresh spirit of authenticity into the service of God among a religious community that had already developed its own entrenched hierarchies and conformist spirit.
Rav Simcha Bunim, like Netziv, explains the name Shadai as being, etymologically, linked to “Dai” – which means sufficient, enough. But whereas Netziv understood the name to be a reference to God’s placing limits on creation, Rav Simcha Bunim says that the name alludes to God’s placing limits on the amount of God that is revealed in the created universe. There is “Dai” which means there is just enough opportunity to encounter God, but no more. There is just enough knowledge about God and encounter with God to sustain faith, but no more. God established a model of disclosure to the patriarchs and matriarchs that sustained their lives of faith and devotion amidst a world that mostly proceeded without obvious and spectacular miracles.
Parashat Va’era introduces the four-letter name of God and that inaugurates a season of signs and wonders and dramatic revelation that were needed to force Pharaoh to submit to God’s will. This form of revelation is awesome, and it was needed. But what is necessary in a moment of crisis is not always the model for daily religious life. Pharaoh’s heart is hardened and he becomes a demonstration of God’s power rather than an autonomous human being. The Israelites were freed from Pharaoh but were then not capable of freely accepting the Torah. Where Netziv reads history as a progression toward greater religious maturity, Rav Simcha Bunim reads it as a deviation necessitated by crisis
The Torah is warning us. Yes, there were moments in which God intervened and overturned the laws of nature, and we are grateful for those moments. Yes, there were moments in which God intervened in the affairs of people and changed the course of history, and we are grateful for those moments as well. But only commitments made freely by autonomous people—acting out of authentic and personal love for God and for tradition—can sustain a life of Torah and mitzvot from generation to generation. Parashat Va’era, according to Rav Simcha Bunim, marked a momentous turning point in God’s relationship with our ancestors, but it did not represent an evolution into something more exalted. The faith of Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov remains the paradigm to emulate.
This form of relationship with God is also a model for our relationships with one another as we create sustainable communities of commitment and mutual responsibility. Traditional Jewish life so easily devolves into rote. The warm embrace of a community so easily devolves into conformism. Devotion to tradition and its continuity so easily devolves into coercion. But if we value the free commitments of authentic Jews in love with God and with one another, then our communities too need to make space for freedom and individuality.
One of Rav Simcha Bunim’s yeshiva classmates from his youth, Aaron Chorin, went on to become one of the founders of Reform Judaism in the first decades of the 19th century. He too, apparently, was grappling with human autonomy and its place in the authentic service of God. Sometimes certain questions are in the air and great thinkers find their own ways to respond to those questions. Not every response to the challenge of autonomy results in a religious framework that Orthodoxy can support, but the challenge is inescapable.
Orthodox Judaism too can make room for autonomy and the authentic service of God that combines careful and conscientious mitzvah observance, sustained and enriching Torah study enabled by universal Torah literacy, at the same time as we celebrate human freedom and individuality.
From Pharaoh’s hardened heart to Sinai’s coercion, we are warned that religious power can overwhelm human freedom. Only freely chosen commitments can sustain a life of Torah
So much of the world today seems to be seduced by voices that promise certainty and stability, even at the cost of freedom. But the Torah reminds us that the commitments made by free people are sustainable while the obedience imposed by power cannot endure.
Can we aspire to build a community with depth and intensity that nevertheless makes room for freedom? Can we foster religious fervor without the superficial simplicity of fundamentalism? Can we sustain our religious commitments and transmit them to our children through love and freedom rather than coercion, conformity, and fear?
We remember the exodus daily when we recite the Shema but we recall the distinct relationship that the patriarchs had with God every time we rise in prayer and recite the amidah. For most of us the world we encounter is more similar to the world of Avraham, Sarah, and their children and grandchildren. There are few revealed miracles and we patiently await the fulfillment of God’s promises, but the opportunity exists, all the same to seek out and experience the Divine.
The path of our patriarchs and matriarchs was augmented in Parashat Va’era but never superseded. Their faith is our origin and their enduring legacy, and it remains a living model for us as well.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 