VAERA 1994

In the Torah portion Vaera we learn how Moshe was discouraged.  In fact, at the end of last week's Torah portion we learn how the Jewish people even were complaining to Moshe how he made them stink in the eyes of Pharaoh.  The Jewish people were no longer to be given straw for the bricks.  According to the rabbis, they were no longer even allowed to gather together for religious services or to strengthen one another.  Moshe was very discouraged and he complained to G-d about it, and in this week's Torah portion G-d gives him an answer.

We all know that many times before things great better they have to get worse.  We all know that when we go to a doctor that many times things get much worse before they get better.  For example, if a doctor says that we need an operation it means that we have to go to the hospital, we have to be cut upon, we have to go through anesthesia, we will be filled with pain and sometimes with nausea, but at the end of six weeks we will feel much better.  In fact, we will probably save our lives, so sometimes things get much worse before they get better.  The Jewish people, too, had to realize that with Moshe' s coming that temporarily things would get worse but eventually they would get better, but G-d gave an answer to Moshe when he spoke and said to him, "I.  am G-d.  I am Yud Kay Vav Kay, and I appeared to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob with the name G-d Almighty, but My name Yud Kay Vav Kay I did not make known to them, and also I have erected My treaty with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of the sojourning which they sojourned in it, and also I heard the cry of the sons of Israel which are in Egypt which Egyptians are enslaving them, and I will remember My covenant."  This seems a very strange answer.  Why should Moshe be satisfied with the answer when He says, "I am Yud Kay Vav Kay"?  What does it mean that "I appeared to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob with the name G-d Almighty"?  In Hebrew if we look at the name G-d Almighty is means that nurturing G-d.  It means the G-d Who nurtures us all.  In fact, many times there is a lot of female imagery concerned with G-d.  G-d in the Bible is both male and female, singular and plural because G-d has no sex and G-d is not a person in the way that we conceive of people.  Why do we have three fathers anyway?  We have three fathers because e each of them sought G-d in their own way.  Abraham learned about G-d from nature.  He was the man who used science to determine G-d.  He saw that the sun could not be G-d because the sun sets at night.  The moon could not be G-d because it, too, set, and the wind who blew the clouds in front of the moon could not be G-d either because it dissipated in rain and it, too, was swept away, so he realized that there had to be some unifying force behind nature that was G-d, and that has always been a Jewish passion to find the unifying force behind nature.   Einstein worked on that all his life and this was really the basis of modern science.   Science could not come into being until there was a feeling that there was a unifying force behind nature.  Yitzchak, on the other hand, found G-d through personal experience, and many times what people will tell me, "What do you mean a personal experience of G-d?  We Jews do not believe in such a thing."  I always answer, "What do you mean we do not believe in such a thing?  Who were the prophets?"  Anybody who is acquainted with eastern European Jewry knew that they had many experiences of G-d personally.  That's the whole story of Tevia in "Fiddler on the Roof", how he was constantly talking to G-d.  Jacob found G-d through history.  That was the whole story of the ladder with the angels going up where the guardian angels are of different nations and they go up so high and then they coma down.  Eventually the Jewish nation would go up and we would ultimately reach G-d, meaning that ultimately the Mashiach will come and the world will be redeemed.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were people who sought G-d, who were looking for a relationship with G-d, and they found this relationship with G-d.  G-d nurtured their hopes and gave meaning to their life.   That's why it talks about the nurturing G-d, but that was not enough for people.  When the Jewish people were in slavery they, too, could search for G-d, but it was not enough to search for G-d.  They had to know that G-d was interested in them and that is what the Yud Kay Vav Kay means.  Yud Kay Vav Kay means that G-d is interested in us.  That is the name of G-d that is used in the second creation story in Genesis.  Three when G-d wants to establish a relationship with man.  G-d is telling us, you are important.  Each of you are very, very important.  I need you.  Once a man feels that G-d needs him, that G-d is searching for man also then we know that we could never be slaves.  Then we know that internally we are free because we are important.   We count.  We are not just a cipher.  We are not just a cog in some civilization, like Aristotle and Plato believed that slavery was absolutely indispensable for civilization and that the slaves were nothing more than work animals, but that is not the way it is because G-d seeks us and that is why it says, "I am Yud Kay Vav Kay," which means I need each one of them.  They are precious to Me.  They count and I am counting on them to help bring redemption to the world.  That is why the Jewish people when they hear that message regain hope.  Yes, if we believe that G-d needs us and that we are important them even in Auschwitz we can make a seder, and in Auschwitz they did make a seder.  I hope that all of you have seen the movie "Schindler's List".  Every Jew should see that movie because in that movie we are taught about the fact that our Jewish people never gave up, that our Jewish people cling to life, and that is a very, very important concept.  We always speak about the fact that G-d is powerful.  In fact, even if you go to a house of mourning you find the concept that G-d is powerful, and why do we have that concept that G-d is powerful?  Because even though there are all sorts of things in the world which we cannot understand, even though there are all sorts of things in the world which seem absurd, like death and pain and suffering, we ultimately have faith and hope that we will understand, that G-d at the end of days will reveal to us why we had to go through all these things.  We do not understand them now.  It is like going to a doctor, and a doctor we feel is powerful.  We trust him.  When he tells us to take bitter medicine we take it even though it seems to make our condition worse sometimes until eventually it gets better.  Sometimes he tells us to go through al sorts of procedures.  Sometimes he has to break arms and legs in order to strengthen them.  Sometimes he has to operate on us in order to cure us and many times we all sorts of pains, but we trust him that eventually because he has a powerful amount of knowledge that, therefore, he will cure us and we will understand at the end why we had to go through all these things.  The same thing is true with G-d.  The Yud Kay Vav Kay is also the name of G-d Who gave us the Torah because G-d gave us the Torah so He will allow us to reach and fulfill our full potential.  Of course, sometimes there is a danger in just studying Torah because knowledge is so engrossing that we forget that we have to apply our knowledge.  G-d wants us and counts on us so that we will improve this world, so we will make this a better world.  Therefore, even if you are a slave you know that you have a role to perform, and if you know that G-d is counting on you you are no longer a slave inside and you know that eventually slavery is going to end.  This is just like some of the pains that a patient is going through until he is finally cured.  You know that you are going to be free someday and, therefore, you can endure these pains because you will be free, and you have a role to play to make sure that this type of slavery never occurs again, that the Pharaohs of the world never come up and arise again.  You know that it was not for nothing that you suffered, and the Jews that went through the Holocaust know that, too.  That is why they are building the Holocaust Museum because they know that the world has to be taught a lesson that man cannot treat man this way otherwise e everyone is going to be destroyed.  It is our hope and prayer that all of us will realize that we are important, that all of us will continue to do our best to make sure that the world is perfected.  Each of us is a member of a people which stretches back 3,500 years.  We are all a link in the chain to make sure that the Mashiach will eventually come.  Each of us can improve this world a little bit.  G-d is counting on each one of us, and none of us should ever feel inside that we are a slave.  We are not.  We are given a wonderful role.  We have a wonderful dimension in the world and we have to do our share, and if we do our share to add our part to the part that has been done by 3,500 years of Jewish history, then we can rest assured that maybe not in this generation but in the next generation or certainly within the next few hundreds years the Mashiach will come and the world will be redeemed.  That is very, very important.

I am reminded of the story they tell about a man who could not sleep so he went to a psychiatrist.  The psychiatrist asked him why he could not sleep.  He said, "Well, because I have tried to solve all the world's problems."  The doctor said, "Well, in your dreams are you solving all the world's problems?"  He said, "Yes, I am solving all the world's problems."  The doctor then asked why he could not sleep.  He said, "Because of the ticker-tape parade that they are making for me afterwards."  There are certain types of people who feel that they do not have to act, that as long as they have dreams that is enough, but if we know that G-d is counting on us then we know that we have to act, and even a slave knows that when he has the opportunity he will act.  Even a slave knows that he is not really a slave.  He is only temporarily suffering from some disability so he cannot fulfill his function as G-d' s junior partner in creation but he knows that he will be able to.  He knows that this slavery is only temporary and that is what gave the Jewish people hope in Egypt when Moshe told them, "Yud Kay Vav Kay".  G-d is also interested in you.  G-d has a mission for you.  G-d not only wants you to come close to Him, but He wants to come close to you so that you can help Him bring redemption to the world.  Let us all hope and pray that this redemption will come soon because each of us has played our part.  Let us all hope that we will all live to see the Mashiach.
Amen.