I had the pleasure of spending this past Shabbos in Crown Heights, a community in Brooklyn that is central to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. There you can find anything and everything Jewish; there's various yeshivas and seminaries, synagogues, including the main 770 shul; Judaica stores, kosher restaurants- a little bastion of Jewish life in America. This Shabbos was an immense source of strength for me, providing me with the inspiration and tools needed to get through these next two weeks, but why do I need strength? What is it that is troubling me so much that I need a Shabbos in Crown Heights in order to get over it? I've spoken about it before many times, so the term "golus" shouldn't be a foreign word to you. It's the major source of our confusion when it comes to faith, the source of our anxieties, fears, and doubts; an itch that you can never quite scratch and so it drives you mad with desperation. What's the best analogy to explain Golus? I found myself sitting in Hadar HaTorah friday night, the first Ba'al Teshuvah yeshiva in Lubavitch, speaking with a complete stranger about his journey. I began to share with him my journey, trying to explain my recent struggle. I said to him "golus is like....it's like..." when the lights in the room went out. I heard a familar voice behind me, my friend from yeshiva, Daniel Bortz, say to me "that's what golus is like." He was right, what a perfect analogy: it's like the lights going out and the room being cast into darkenss. We see in this week's parsha one of the ultimate blackouts for the Jewish people- their enslavement in Egypt.
We all know the story: The Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years until G-d sent Moshe, the people's redeemer and shepherd, the take them out. The pivitol moment in Moshe's life was when he encountered the burning bush, a revelation of G-d that informed him of his need to return to Egypt. When Moshe asks G-d "when I come to the children of Israel and I say to them, 'the G-d of your fathers sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'what is His Name?' what shall I say to them?", G-d responds "Ehyeh asher ehyeh (I am that I am)". When we think about the question that Moshe was asking, it seems a bit odd: according to his question, Moshe had already said who it was that sent him, "the G-d of your fathers". Why did he need to ask what G-d's Name was if he already knew? To illucidate this, let's take Rashi's commentary on G-d's response; according to Rashi, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh" doesn't refer to a name of G-d at all, but a statement: "I will be with them in their present time of need, just as I will be with them at the time of future persecution". The key here is consistency, that I am here for you now just as I will be in the future. Even if we take "Ehyeh asher ehyeh" as a Name of G-d, there is something to learn. It is known that a name of G-d actually refers to a Divine attribute; one name corresponds to judgement, another to mercy, etc. In light of all this information, we can now understand Moshe's question: "what will I tell the Jewish people when they ask me what Name i.e. what attribute of G-d, is this that would let us suffer in Egypt for so long? The answer: I am with you now just as I have always been. This applies to us as well, while we are in golus, G-d is with us just as consistently. However, while this is all well and good, one cannot help but wonder why, if G-d is always with us, does He allows us to suffer?
An answer can be found in G-d's response. After He says "Ehyeh asher ehyeh", G-d then tells Moshe that "Havyah (a Name of G-d)...has sent me to you. This is My eternal Name," The Divine Name Havyah, a Name connotating Mercy, is spelled with a yud, a hei, a vov, and a hei. l'olam, the hebrew word for 'eternal', is usually spelled with a vov, and yet in this passage the vov is missing. What we can learn from this is that G-d's Mercy, while being there, is hidden from us during the exile. Sometimes, a person can feel isolated, lost on the empty gray road of life, alone in a room void of light. We get upset at G-d, blaming Him for all of the misfortune to befall us, only to forget Him when times get better.
This is also another reason for G-d's response of "Ehyeh asher ehyeh": "I am what I am, I am not ashamed to be who I am, so please accept me for that even if you might not understand all of my motivations. I'm consistent; I love you and I never change, so although you may percieve your situation as meaningless suffering, please understand that I am there, in that moment of melancholy, that stinging bitter pain that threatens to cripple your heart. I want you to let Me, Me in all that I am, into your life to give your perspective and to heal. I want you to step outside of the four walls of your own situation, go beyond yourself and find the inner meaning within your pain, transcend your suffering and see it from a higher perspective. The bad times that you are experiencing may just be the birth pangs of something incredibly good. This is what we are supposed to do in golus. We are having a conversation; when the lights go out in the room, we need to trust that Hashem is still there listening. All we need to do is continue speaking our hearts and trust that He will respond. Have a liberating week.
With all my love,
Zach
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