Va'era 5774

God has many names.  One is “El Shaddai,” the name of peak power, by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 6:3).  Another name is spelled “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.”  It is the unpronounceable Ultimate name that the patriarchs did not know.  God is so complex and unfathomable that no single Name can express all that God is, just as no bottle can contain the sea.  In our tradition, God uses a range of names, each of which conveys a different aspect of the Divine Being. 
The idea that God is known by these two names appears not only in this week’s parsha, Va’era, but also last week’s.  How appropriate that is, since these are the first and second parashiot of the Book of Exodus – in Hebrew, “Shemot/Names.”
Names are central to how we see ourselves, and we, like God, have multiple names:  “Dean,” “daddy,” “rabbi,” “son,” “uncle,” “scuba diver,” “hopeful,” “listener,” “celebrant,” and many others.  Names convey our identity, our relationships, our professions and hobbies, our moods, attitudes, and beliefs.  They describe the different parts of ourselves.
This year’s early calendar means that we read Va’era beginning on Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year.  This is a time of hibernation and introspection.  It is no coincidence that Hanukkah, the festival that celebrates the growing of the light, usually takes place around the Winter Solstice!  Long nights can rob us of hope.  Human beings need a reminder that light, warmth, and joy will return.
In these longest nights of the year, take some time to look inside yourself.  Is there darkness within?  Is there cold, or loss, or quiet?  Some other feeling?  What name can you find that expresses where you are and what you need?  What name can you call yourself in these Darkest Days?
Project forward to springtime.  Imagine the person you will be when evenings are long and the living is easy, when summer’s heat scratches threateningly at the screen door.  What name do you give that version of yourself who will live in sunlight and hope once more?
We have many names, just as God does.  Name yourself, and know yourself.

Shemot 5774

Moses, brought up behind palace gates and shielded from the misery outside, grows up and ventures into the great wide world.  There, he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave.  “Turning this way and that and seeing no one about,” Moses slays the perpetrator (Exodus 2:12).

Moses sees no one?  How could this be, when the Hebrew slave was right in front of him?  Although Prince Moses is able to see the injustice, he is unable,; it seems, to see his fellow man.  He wears the glasses of privilege, which render another human being into an object – a vehicle, an ornament, a cause, perhaps, but not a real person.  The slave is invisible to Moses.

Our society works the same way.  It is structured to make people in service professions invisible.  The housekeeper who cleans the hotel room while the guest is out, and the busboy who clears a table silently and without eye contact both learn to work unnoticed.

If we do not see them at work, neither do we see them in in the rest of their lives.  We do not see how they soak their tired feet when they get home, or how empty their refrigerator – and stomachs are – at the end of the month.  We do not see the strain caused by the choice between a child finishing her homework and turning off the light to save electricity and money.  We don’t see the lucky break that never comes.

Temple Emanuel is an economically diverse community.  Some of us eat in restaurants and some of us work in them.  Some of us trade stock and some of us stock the shelves.  Others of us exist in both worlds.  We do not know each other’s economic reality.

It is incumbent upon us, as members of one community, as Jewish families who sit and pray on the same benches, to notice each other.  Out in the busy world, we might fail to see each other.  In synagogue, we recognize each other, appreciate each other, connect with each other.  We see what Moses, in his first foray into the world, could not:  each person’s worth.  Within the gates of the synagogue and, hopefully, in the great wide world beyond, let us pause and look deeply into each other’s eyes and there see the spark of the Divine that is our shared humanity.  Let us see each other.

Vayechi -- 5774

The world listened enraptured as Nelson Mandela was eulogized in recent days.  His life was lauded and, even as he was mourned, his nation looked towards the future.  The South African people rededicated themselves to the vision of a “Rainbow Nation.”

Something similar happens in the Torah this week.  The patriarch Jacob sits on his deathbed and speaks of the future.  Then he dies and is buried, his quarrelsome sons gathered uneasily for the rites.  When the Book of Genesis closes, favorite son Joseph, too, will have met his Maker.

Mandela reminds me of Joseph.  Each was a chieftain’s son.  Each dreamt of a bright future.  Each spent long years languishing in prison, and each was released to ascend the heights of power.  Each managed to put aside bitterness and pursue reconciliation.  Each accepted the supreme challenge of transforming a nation, and each succeeded.  Each combined great leadership with profound humility.

How does it happen that the Torah speaks of the burial of a great leader on just the week that a great leader is laid to rest?  Is it cosmic coincidence or the hand of God that two men teach us anew how to dream?  Who can explain the mystery of being reminded again and again of the power of forgiveness?  The Torah never ceases to astound me.

Lest we forget:  every single person has been in prison – perhaps not prisons of bars and barbed wire, but certainly prisons of resentment, of harmful patterns, or of inability to see a better way.  People can make their own prisons.  Let Joseph and Mandela both remind us that the doors of every jail can swing open, and that one day we, too, can be wholly free.

From now on, Joseph’s rainbow-colored coat will evoke for me the promise of Mandela’s Rainbow Nation, and a better day for all.  Zichronam l’vracha – their memories are a blessing.