The rabbis say that the Israelites in Egypt had sunk to the lowest (49th) level of impurity when God redeemed them. Reading the parsha this year, I see what they mean.
When the Israelites cry out from suffering over their enslavement, their cries go up to God, but the Torah does not say that they were directed that way. They simply cried, but not to God, as if without a protector, as if they no longer feel they have that divine angel that, as Yaakov said at the end of his life, had always saved him from all evil.
When Moshe finds out that his killing of the Egyptian has been discovered, he is very frightened and runs away. He does not turn to God, beseeching Him to protect him as Yaakov did when he was frightened before he faces Esav. Moshe simply runs.
When Moshe names his first child Gershom, he explains, “I was a foreigner in a foreign land.” There is no God in this name. The naming is reminiscent of Yosef’s naming of his children. He, too, had been a stranger in a foreign land, but his names refer to God’s help – “for God has made me forget my troubles” and “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”
It seems that the descendants of Yaakov, Yitzhak and Avraham have not continued their legacy. God is not on the tip of their tongues or in their hearts. They have indeed sunk low. And so it is that when Moshe does discover God, as if anew, through the burning bush, and is asked to bring back word of this God and His plan of redemption to the people, Moshe asks for a name – Who are you? I have no tradition of you nor do these people, apparently.
The people have forgotten God, lost sight of Him in their misery and lost the thread of their tradition of faithfulness to this God. Yes, the people have lost their connection, but not so God. God remains faithful. God remembers and appears and redeems.
The symbol of the burning bush is important in this regard. It is a bush that burns but is not consumed, like God Himself. He does not wear out; His love has not been used up by our ancestors; God’s symbol here is one of a never-ending supply of ardor and passion and connection. Most resources are finite and can be used up. Not so God’s love for us.
Sometimes, I think more often than we like to admit, we do not feel worthy of connecting to God. We are not necessarily on the lowest rung like the people of Israel, but we do sink pretty low. We forget God; we go about our business without paying attention to the divine glory around us; we don’t name the divine in our children; we don’t see their kedushah, their holiness. We are frightened and overwhelmed by difficulties and we cry out but not to God; we are simply hopeless.
If we add to this distance, this forgetting, a certainty that because of our forgetting we therefore no longer have access, no longer deserve to have God’s love, then we are doomed. We need to know that just because we have abandoned God, as did the grandchildren of Yaakov in Egypt, does not mean that God has abandoned us. Like the little light that would not go out on Chanukah, God’s love for us burns eternal without ever consuming its energy source.
Moshe was, in a way, the first real ba’al teshuvah. He knew he was “Jewish” on some level, but does not seem to have a tradition of what this means. He rediscovers the God of his ancestors and in this rediscovery, brings about redemption and the eventual revelation of the whole Torah.
Later, after the miracles of the exodus, when the people of Israel stand at the Sea and cry out to God, this time the Torah tells us that they cried out “to God.” The rabbis add: tafsu umanut avoteihem, “they caught up the art of their ancestors.” To return to such a call is to know that this connection can never be severed, to know that, like Moshe and his generation in Egypt, we will always have access, can always return to the ever-burning Source that is waiting for us to rediscover Him.
