WOW (Word of the Week): ואיו, “And Where is He?” (Parashat Shemot)

Word: ואיו, ve’ayo?, “And where is he (now)?”

Root:איה, where

Context: Yitro says ve’ayo to his daughters when they arrive home earlier than expected from the well after being saved from the other shepherds by an Egyptian man (Moshe):  ואיו?  למה זה עזבתן את האיש? קראן לו ויאכל לחם    And where is he?   Why did you leave the man?  Go call him and invite him to eat bread!  (Exodus 2:20).

Other instances of the word in the Torah: 

The root איה/אי appears eight other times in the whole Torah.  Four of those times God or an angel is speaking.   The first instance is from the story of the Garden of Eden, when God says to Adam and Eve, after they eat of the forbidden tree and then hide from Him: Where are you? איכה?   Similarly, God asks Cain where his brother is after he kills him, and the angels visiting Avraham ask where Sarah is.  

Interpretation: To ask ayeh is not to ask for the geographical location of a person (as Avraham mistakenly assumes – she’s over there, in the tent).   It is a question of inclusion – why isn’t this person part of the group, why have you left them out or killed them or hid from them (including from yourself)?  It is a divine call to bring everyone home, out of hiding and back into connection and relationship, a call not to abandon – why did you just leave Moshe standing there, alone at the well – but to draw close,  to care in a continuous, steady way about “where” they are, how they are, what is happening to them, to invite them in, as Yitro suggests, to break bread.

Moshe, as an “Egyptian” in the land of Midian, was a ger, a stranger, and as such, represents the whole people of Israel, who were gerim, strangers, in the land of Egypt itself.  Redemption comes through learning how to treat the stranger, a theme that will be picked up in many later laws, and has its foretelling hereL Moshe, the stranger, needs to be brought in and included, not left to fend for himself at the well.  

Message:  The natural application is an external one – to notice who is absent and ask “where are they” and draw them in.  But, given that the first instance of the use of this word by God implies an internal exploration – ayeka, “where are you,” what is going on inside that you are hiding from yourself – I want to suggest one here as well for ve’ayo:  we abandon parts of ourselves all the time.  We leave them, even if they may have saved us in the past, as Moshe did, we leave them awkward and alone, outside; often when they need us most, when they most need to be brought in to connection and nourishment.    These may be parts we are ashamed of, maybe because they are different – they seem like foreigners, not fitting into our family or social culture – or they may be young parts who just need to be taken in and fed.   And often, like the daughters of Yitro, we walk away and abandon them, not caring to bring them inside to the warmth, perhaps imaginging that they can take care of themselves.  

Ve’ayo?  Where are they?  See if you can, right at this moment, find where they are in your body, those abandoned parts who need some love and connection and inclusion.  Who is feeling left out inside you? Who needs care? Where do you feel them?   

Lamah zeh azavten et ha’ish?  Why did you abandon them?  See those parts there, standing outside; feel their sense of abandonment, the self-abandonment that happens again and again, and sense the suffering involved, the habit of not taking care of them, not seeing them, not including them inside, how much that hurts.  Maybe you can get a sense of why, too, of how the habit of self-abandonment started, perhaps as a way of maintaining connection to key caretakers, abandoning parts of yourself in order to ensure essential love and connection from outside.  

But now:

Kirena lo ve’yokhal lehem.  Invite them in and offer them some bread.  Let them join the circle inside; let them feel connected and nourished.  Let them know they are part of the family, your internal family, your integrated whole self.

When we offer such kindness – to the outsiders inside and outside us, both – we begin the process of redemption from our own hiding that began in the Garden of Eden, we begin the healing and return to God, to center, to each other, to ourselves.   We beging the ultimate redemption, the ingathering of exiles to their home. Ve’ayo is a divine call to search them out and draw them close.

Photo by Taryn Elliott at Pexels