ESSAY: Floating into Redemption (Parashat Va’era)

One of the things that makes us uncomfortable about the story of these parshiyyot of the redemption from Egypt is how fully God takes over as the primary actor and agent.  We normally think of God as at most pulling the strings behind the scenes, as in the Yosef story, and that is our daily experience of life, that God and God’s activity is mostly hidden.   So there is something dissonant for us, and a little jarring, about reading these parshiyyot and hearing tales of such intense divine involvement.  Perhaps precisely here is the growth for us.  

But first to make the case stronger: What happens in these parshiyyot of redemption is that God becomes an “I’ actor.   The phrase ani Hashem, “I am God,” appears eight times in this parsha – tell Pharaoh, tell the Israelites, let the world know – I am God. I am here and I am the one making things happen.  Indeed, the four special words of redemption, vehotzeit, vehitzalti, . . .  “I will take you out,” “I will save you,” . . . . are all also in the first person.  Don’t get confused –  it is I, God, who does the redeeming.  

The emphasis on the use of the first person for God is also highlighted by our parsha’s name, va’era, “I appeared,” as opposed to the parallel Breshit parsha name, vayera, “He appeared,” referring to God’s appearance to Avraham in the story of the three angels.   The difference is significant.    Whereas in Breshit, God was entering Avraham’s story and Avraham remained the primary actor, albeit in relationship with God, here the emphasis shifts – this is God’s story, a story of the redemption of the Israelites, yes, but God’s story nonetheless, told, in some way, in the divine first person.  God is the primary actor. 

There is something very telling, and very important about this idea for us.  We suffer. We suffer from our own metzarim, our narrow straits, from stress and anxiety and tension and fear and hurt, and also from the legacy burdens that have been handed down to us.   We search and seek everywhere for redemption, for our own re-deeming, re-valuing, to become whole and at peace inside ourselves, released from some of that suffering and stuckness.   We put a lot of effort into this seeking, into the whole business of self improvement, and all of that is good.  But here is the thing, the point that I think these parshiyyot are trying to make:  Redemption comes only from God.  

That doesn’t mean we don’t do anything to make it happen inside us.  But what we do is not what we think.  It isn’t striving and effort.  It is only the effort of learning to allow God to work inside us.  It is the effort of learning to open to the flow of divine redemption that wants to come through us, of learning to let go and surrender.  We hold on so tight; we try to control things; we are so anxious to make it right that often our efforts actually interfere with and impede the natural course of divine redemption inside us.  It’s like we have our fists tightly closed, holding on for dear life, and we just need to open them, and to open our hearts and souls and bodies, to receive the gift that’s continually being offered.  

Moshe is our model for becoming a vessel for divine redemption.  According to the midrash, God said to Moshe – “if you don’t redeem them, no one else will do it.”  The Hasidic commentator Netivot Shalom interprets this pronouncement to mean that Moshe had a certain way of being, an ability to surrender to a Higher Power, hitbatlut, and that without this particular characteristic, redemption could not take place then and cannot take place now.  The essential element in all redemption is this ability to surrender to God’s action inside us, to consent to it, to trust enough to patiently watch it unfold, without interference or resistance or manipulation.   As the second of AA’s Twelve Steps says, “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”   Only such a Higher Power can do it.  We are all convulsed in some way by the straits of our insanity, and there is only one way out, to acknowledge and surrender to this Higher Power. 

Moshe acquired this ability in infancy.  He was saved by floating down the river in a little basin, by not resisting the river, but trusting that it would take him wherever he needed to go.  He did not save himself.  He learned to surrender to the saving that wanted to happen.   

And so he grew up to be a redeemer, or really, a co-redeemer with God, a person who could channel divine redemption in his very being, so aligned with God that God could speak and act through him, and eventually, not just deliver the people from their straits, but also bring God’s words into the world through Torah.  All this happens by means of surrender, by placing yourself in the divine river, relaxing into it, your whole body at ease, all the tension of constant “holding” melting, trusting the river to carry you wherever you need to go.  

Meanwhile, Pharaoh serves as a counterexample.  He wakes early to stand at the Nile, not to float in it, but to stand stridently in opposition to it, in opposition to the divine flow of redemption. Indeed, the midrash says that he goes there each morning to relieve himself, once a day, because the rest of the day he pretends to be divine and have no need for evacuation.  This is the ultimate act of control, to stop up the flow inside your own body.  Moshe floats with the current, while Pharaoh tries to control it.  Redemption comes to those who float.

It’s not that we don’t take human action as we float. Moshe was extremely active. It’s that we find the divine current – learning to discern it inside ourselves – and then we surrender to it, trusting it and allowing it so that our actions proceed from this place, from this alignment and this trust.  There is a kind of stepping out involved, a stepping out of the normal human plane, out of the never ending cycle of striving, hope and despair, out of the stuckness of trying again and again to no avail, jumping out of this vortex to another plane, to a place of infinite possibility and openness, to the knowledge of a Greater Power that is the only force that can really redeem us. 

There is a continuous call in the universe towards redemption – vehotzaiti, vehitzalti, vega’alti, velakakhti, a continuous call of – I will redeem you.  I can help you.   Open your heart to the call and allow the divine redemptive energy to enter you,  letting it do its magic, flowing through you, white light spreading, warming and softening all the tight places, washing and purifying all the accumulated grit of years of habitual control, of decades of misunderstandings about yourself and the world, unbinding the ropes that have held you stuck and locked into place, freeing you and redeeming you – re -deeming – bringing you back to your original pure value, making you whole again, shining and pure and incandescent.    All you have to do is learn to float. 

Photo by NEOSiAM 2021 at Pexels