By: Soli Foger

Soli Foger — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 04:27:09 +0000

In trying to understand G-d, we can question the grand description of G-d is in the blessings that describe his three grand deeds:
עשה שמים וארץ – The G-d who created the heavens
כרת הברית עם אברהם, יצחק ויעקב-The G-d of Abraham, Yitzhak and Jacob
הוא שהוציאנו מארץ מצרים-The G-d who took us out of Egypt
While G-d is better described in his thirteen attributes, each of these grand deeds covers an aspect that requires our understanding.
The first – covers revelation, the second – his choice of man’s representation and the third, showing his miracles in creating the Jewish nation.
Our parasha, joined with last week’s Shmot שמות and next week’s Bo בא, cover the story of leaving Egypt in the miraculous way that is depicted in our prayers; where יציאת מצרים, our leaving Egypt, is mentioned in the שמע ישראל Shma prayer, which we recite several times a day and is the central part of the commandment לספר to tell of it during the holiday of Passover and in the commandment of teaching ones child, והגדת לבנך.
Why is leaving Egypt so central a part of the Jewish narrative to mark G-d’s role in our lives, thousands of years after the fact.
The answer is embedded in the central paradox of Jewish observance; where revelation is the more difficult way to connect to an omnipotent distant G-d, the telling of the story of us leaving Egypt, reasserts the central role of the family in the Jewish narrative where the transmission of past miracles, witnessed by the entire nation, is told and retold in every generation, thus connecting us in a more direct and unbroken narrative that helps us feel close to G-d through the truth, transmitted by our parents, their parents and their parents parents, going back thousands of generations all the way to our ancestor’s witnessing our miraculous beginning.
That is why the story of our leaving Egypt and the commandment to retell the story and to teach it to our children plays so central a role in our Jewish life.
We are not only to abide by our holly Torah and it’s commandments but we are commanded to play a central a role in our religious life by continuing and actively perpetuating the live chain that transmits the story of our humble beginning and our becoming a nation through Gd’s miracles.
In doing so, we can connect and understand Judaism as a connection to an omnipotent if distant G-d who is made to be closer to us through our retelling of our personal connection through the miracles he made for us in Egypt as told and retold by our living chain of family witnessing of such.

Comments on: On the Weekly Torah Portion of Va’era

By: Soli Foger