The Path We Choose To Walk
Our Parsha begins in the middle of a conversation with the words, “And Elokim spoke to Moshe, and He said to him, ‘I am Hashem.’” This is Hashem’s response to Moshe’s cry at the end of last week’s parsha, “Why have you done evil to this people, why have you sent me? (Shemot 5:22)” The structure of this pasuk is both interesting and familiar. It begins with the name Elokim, and then shifts to the four-letter name of Hashem, the Shem Havayah. We can recognize this same pattern from the story of creation. The Torah begins, “In the beginning Elokim created heaven and earth.” Only in the second perek is it written “on the day that Hashem Elokim made the earth and the heaven (2:4).” Rashi tells us that, “In the beginning, it arose before Him in thought to create the world with Middat HaDin, He saw that the world would not endure, and so He added Middat HaRachamim.”
This does not mean, chas v’shalom, that there was a change in Hashem’s Will. The Midrash is describing the reality that creation is made up of many worlds. An olam, a world, is a place of he’elem, a place of concealment, where Hashem’s presence is concealed. Or, if we flip that idea, it is a place where we have a certain amount of clarity through the concealment. Each world is a revelation of the middot of Hashem on a different level. All the worlds exist simultaneously. What we perceive, which world we live in, is determined by our spiritual level, and by our personal and national avodah. The same way that we have a choice of where we walk in space, we have a choice of how we travel through time and what world we experience as we do so. We can live in the natural order of the world. We can also live on a higher level, in the Toratit level of the world. This is how two people can be standing in the same place, and yet be in completely different worlds. We saw this phenomenon in Parshat Vayechi, where Yaacov was living in Olam Habah within the confines of Mitzrayim while his children were living in galut.
The world of thought, the world of din, continues to exist, even as we exist in the world of rachamim. The Avot, and certain tzaddikim like Moshe and Rebbe Akiva, lived with a connection to it. We saw that at the akeidah Avraham acted in both worlds simultaneously. In the world of thought, the akeidah was actually carried out, and the ashes of Yitzchak are considered as if they still rest on the mizbeach. However, in the world of action, the malach told Avraham not to touch Yitzchak, and the command from Elokim was tempered with rachamim.
In our Parsha, Hashem tells Moshe that there was a plan for the slavery in Egypt which was in accordance with Middat HaDin. That plan was that we would be in slavery for 400 years. Moshe, like Avraham, lived with an attachment to the world of Din. But what he sees on the ground is that as a nation, Klal Yisrael is not there. They can not withstand this level. They need rachamim. Moshe takes this plea to Hashem, and Hashem responds by revealing to Moshe that His relationship with us as a people is going to take a new form, different from the Avot.
The Avot related to Hashem through the name Shakkai. This name, as we spoke about in Parshat Miketz, refers to the way Hashem acts upon nature to place boundaries on it so that it is both able to conceal and reveal Hashem’s presence in the world. This was the path of the Avot. They used the natural world as the path for experiencing Hashem. Avraham looked at the world around him and came to recognize Hashem through his contemplation of it. The Torah goes to great lengths to describe the physical actions of the Avot, because each one was imbued with connection and attachment to Hashem. They constricted their physical actions in such a way that malchut shamayim could be seen in the midst of the physical creation. Hashem’s response to the Avot was a reflection of their own avodah. The miracles that Hashem performed for the Avot fit into this pattern. The fire did not burn Avraham when he was thrown into the furnace in Or Kasdim because when Hashem set limits to the world, one of those limits is that the natural world can only operate in its own sphere. Avraham raised himself to a spiritual level beyond the system of nature, and fire, by right, had no ability to burn him. This is a miracle from within the system of nature, part of the boundaries that were set up for the natural world from the time of creation.
However, with the words, “I am Hashem,” Hashem reveals to Moshe that in Mitzrayim, everything was going to change. We were not on the level to effect miracles though the natural world. We would now have a new relationship with Hashem, based on the Shem HaHavayah. This name of Hashem reflects the truth that every single aspect of creation is continuously brought into existence by Hashem. The natural world exists, but only because Hashem wills it into existence at every moment. There is nothing forcing it to continue along its current path except for Hashem’s will. There is also nothing confining it, and on this level, Hashem can bring about the geulah even if we don’t deserve it. We don’t really understand this fully in this world, and that is why we can’t say this name aloud.
Hashem reveals to Moshe that Klal Yisrael is about to embark on a process that will allow them to stand at Har Sinai and experience the full understanding of this name, even though they were not on the level to earn it. This is the message that Hashem gave Moshe through the nevuah of the burning bush. The bush did not raise itself up spiritually. It was a scrub before, it remained a scrub after, but it still didn’t burn. Hashem changed the laws of nature, and the bush was not consumed. Even more, it was able to experience the tremendous revelation of Hashem that was expressed through that fire.
This is what we gained in Mitzrayim. We gained the ability to have a relationship with Hashem at every level, at all times. The process that gave us this ability was the process of the ten plagues, which were a revelation of the ten ma’amarot that keep our world in existence. The plagues revealed that it was only the Will of Hashem that keeps the world in existence at any given moment. We can’t understand this on its deepest level, of course, but for me, the experience with Covid has given a bit of an insight into it. What I’ve noticed is that all of us, even those of us less affected, have a new relationship with our world. Maybe we learned not to make plans too far ahead, not to rely on school happening, or stores being open, or being able to get a hug from a friend when we need it. Most of us have a different relationship with time than we did before. And our world has only been partially disrupted. Imagine living in a world where water turns to blood and burning hail falls from the sky. How could you not have a new appreciation for how the system of nature is only the hand of Hashem? The process of the ten plagues was a revelation of Hashem that taught an entire nation to have a different relationship with the physical world.
We did not retain that level of awareness of Hashem. But we did retain an imprint of it. As a nation, and as individuals in that nation, we retain the knowledge that the natural order is not the only order in this world. There exists a higher order, which we can reach according to how we choose to serve Hashem in this world. The Maggid of Kozhnitz says that this is the deeper meaning of the question each person is asked at the end of their life, “Were you koveah itim in Torah?” He reads this not as, ‘Did you establish times to learn Torah?’ but as, ‘Did you establish your time as Torah, did you establish the time you walk through as being in the seder Toratit, in a place above nature?’ This is the choice we all have. We can walk through our time in the natural world, or we can choose a path through it on a higher plane.