Because my commentary links the Torah reading about Moses and the burning bush to the idea of making a blessing, I have included an English interpretation after the Hebrew Torah blessings.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר בָּֽחַר בָּֽנוּ מִכָּל הָעַמִּים וְנָֽתַן לָֽנוּ אֶת־תּוֹרָתוֹ: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה נוֹתֵן הַתּוֹרָה:
“Blessed are You, The-One-Eternally-Unfolding-and-Becoming, The-One-Eternal-Power, who rules and directs the Universe, who chose us from among all the peoples and gave us Your Torah. Blessed are You, Eternal One, who gives Torah – and is giving Torah now.”
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לָנוּ תּוֹרַת אֱמֶת וְחַיֵּי עוֹלָם נָטַע בְּתוֹכֵנוּ. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה נוֹתֵן הַתּוֹרָה:
“Blessed are You, The-One-Eternally-Unfolding-and-Becoming, The-One-Eternal-Power, who rules and directs the Universe, who gave us the Torah of truth and put within us eternal life. Blessed are you, Eternal One, who gave the Torah.”
A word about the translation
This d’var / essay will make more sense in the light of my translation (based on Everett Fox, Shocken Bible), so please read it before reading the d’var. I’m going to use the different Hebrew names of God as they appear in the text, because they convey different ways of experiencing God. The unpronounceable YHVH reflects the compassionate, generous, expansive aspect of God. Elohim (lit. ‘powers’) reflects that aspect of God that is experienced as stern, directive, perhaps more predictable and rule-bound; Elohim is the most ancient manifestation of God in Judaism. Hamakom, meaning ‘the place’, can paradoxically reflect two aspects of God, one that surrounds all of Creation and one that fills it. And Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, the new name that we hear in this passage, is existence itself, constantly unfolding moment by moment.
Translation
- Now Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, priest of Midian. He led the flock achar-behind midbar-the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb.
- And YHVH’s messenger was seen by him as the flame of a fire out of the midst of a thornbush. Moses [he] saw: hineih-look here! the thornbush is burning with fire, but the thornbush is not consumed!
- Moses said: “Now let me turn aside that I may see this great sight—for-what-reason does the thornbush not burn up?”
- YHVH saw that Moses [he] turned aside to see, so Elohim called to him out of the midst of the thornbush, and said: “Moses Moses!”[1] He said: “Hineini-Here I am.”
- God [He] said: “Do not come near to here; put off your na’al-sandal from your regel-foot, for hamakom-[myself!] the place where you stand—is adamah-earth that is kodesh-holy!”
- And he said: “I am Elohim[2] of your fathers, Elohim of Abraham, Elohim of Isaac, and Elohim of Jacob.” Moses concealed his face, for he was afraid to gaze upon Elohim.
- Now YHVH[3] said: “I have seen, yes, seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt-mitzrayim [a narrow place], their cry I have heard in the face of their slave-drivers; indeed, I have known their sufferings!
- “So I have come down to rescue [my people] from the hand of Egypt-mitzrayim-narrowness, to bring [them] up from that land to a land, goodly and rachab-expansive, to a land that zavat-flows with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite, of the Amorite and the Perizzite, of the Hivvite and the Yevusite.
- “So-now, hineih-look here! the cry of the Children of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the lachatz-oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.
- “So now, go, for I send you to Pharaoh—bring my people, the Children of Israel, out of Egypt-narrowness!”
- Moses said to Elohim: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, that I should bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt-narrowness?”
- He said: “Indeed, eh’yeh-‘I will be’ with you, and this is the sign for you that I myself have sent you: [when] you have brought the people out of Egypt-narrowness, you will [all] serve Elohim by this mountain.”
- Moses said to Elohim: “Here, I will come to the Children of Israel and I will say to them: ‘Elohim of your fathers has sent me to you’, but they will say to me: ‘What is his name?’—what shall I say to them?”
- Elohim said to Moses: “Eh’yeh Asher Eh’yeh/I-will-be-however-I-will-be.” And he said: “Thus shall you say to the Children of Israel: Ehyeh/I-Will-Be has sent me to you.”
- And Elohim said further to Moses: “Thus shall you say to the Children of Israel: ‘YHVH, Elohim of your fathers, Elohim of Abraham, Elohim of Isaac, and Elohim of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ That is my name for the ages, that is how I will be brought back to mind [from] generation to generation.
Dv’ar
“Moses Moses!” God calls out from a burning bush. Moses turns to look. And then, what are God’s first words to the man who will become the greatest leader in our Jewish history? “Don’t come near here! Take your shoes off!” On the face of it, not exactly momentous words. And yet. Those words have been not only remembered, but recorded in our Torah. Do we need to turn aside for a moment, and see what else might be going on?
Midrash in Sifre Devarim[4] tells us that Moses spent 40 years as a prince of Egypt, then 40 as a shepherd in Midian. Commentaries from Philo in 1st century Greece, to Rashbam in 12th century France, and Sforno in early 16th century Italy all suggest that, during these second 40 years, Moses matured spiritually through the solitary practice of meditation and contemplation. In today’s story, there is an odd description of Moses going achar-‘behind’ or ‘beyond’ the wilderness. Midbar, the word for ‘wilderness’, is related to the word d’var, meaning a thing or word. In these middle 40 years, we can imagine Moses, the hot-headed prince of Egypt who has killed a slave-driver in a fit of righteous anger, learning to get achar-behind immediate appearances, words or labels – learning how to pay attention, to look and listen deeply. And so, expanding beyond narrow focus, Moses is able to sense a mal’ach, a Divine message, a bit of God, some meaning, emerging from the most ordinary of moments. Midrash asks: “Why from within a thornbush? To teach you that there is no empty place devoid of the Shechinah [in-dwelling Presence of God], not even a [lowly] thornbush.”[5]
Awareness is a skill, but none of us, not even Moses, can exercise it all the time. Moses has to consciously ‘turn aside’, separate the moment, and himself with it – in order to sense the Divine within that calls out to him “Moses Moses!”. God, interconnectedness of life, deeper reality, meaning—whatever name we want to give it—calls to us all the time. But we have to be ready to hear – and to respond. And Moses does respond: “Hineini – Here I am!” Moses makes a three-way connection between the physical world, God, and himself.
And that is precisely when God says: “Take the sandal off your foot – the place on which you stand is holy ground.” That seems an odd statement; the idea doesn’t recur anywhere else in the Bible. But let’s listen again, in another way: “Take the na’al off your regel, hamakom on which you stand is adamah which is kodesh.” Alternative translations of these Hebrew words expand the meaning considerably. Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi gives a teaching from Hasidism about the first two bits of vocabulary—na’al and regel—that opens up a whole new perspective.[6] A na’al is a lock, a regel can be a habit. I think we can draw deeper meaning from the rest of the verses as well: hamakom is a name for the all-encompassing and omnipresent God; adamah, being earth, is by extension also the ‘physical world’, and kodesh means both separate and holy. So a midrashic interpretation of God’s statement about the shoes might be: “Remove the na’al-locks from your regel-habits, step out of your conditioned, routine ways of thinking, feeling, reacting and behaving; and you will see that hamakom-God both surrounds and inhabits everything; through this new way of perceiving and relating, adamah-earthiness and physical objects and actions (perhaps even people) can be made kodesh-separate from their ordinariness, and made kodesh-holy.”
For me, this might explain why God said, “Don’t come near here!” Perhaps this is a lesson about how to become present, and that the only way we can truly start fully living—or, for that matter, experiencing God—is to have the courage and humility to let go, again and again, of preconceptions, and any habit of thought, feeling or action. And so I’ve kept returning to this burning bush, to find out what it might tell me. And what has emerged is that the first five verses (vv. 1-5) seem to suggest a five-step process for making a brachah, a blessing.[7] First, cultivate awareness. Learn to pay attention and get achar-behind immediate appearances, words and labels. Second, bring God into the moment. For those for whom the idea of God isn’t meaningful, perhaps start with the assumption that there is present something good, or to be grateful for, or to honour. Third, ‘turn aside’. Expand the moment, sit with it. Fourth, remember Hineini. Show up, because blessing requires a human participant as catalyst. Elevating a moment is a collaborative act between us and God. Fifth, blessing must be done not mindlessly on autopilot, but mind-fully.
What happens when we make a brachah? The story of the burning bush gives us a clue. At an allegorical level, the next five verses (vv. 6-10) tell us that it’s possible to come out of Egypt-mitzrayim-narrowness to a place that is rachab-expansive, from a state of lachatz-oppression and stress, to an experience of zav-flow.[8] Making brachot develops our ability to move from narrowness to expansiveness. It’s a thankfulness practice that reminds we’re not at the centre of the universe, but one tiny part of an intricate and marvellous universe; that we’re connected to Creation and the earth (adamah); and that we’re dependent on forces, and a force, much greater than ourselves.
What is that force? The last five verses of today’s story (vv.11-15) teach us a new name for God. Eh’yeh Asher Eh’yeh, meaning ‘I-will-be-however-I-will-be’, or ‘I-will-become-what-I-will-become’. God has no lock of habit, but unfolds moment by moment. Perhaps we, being made in the image of God, can imitate the Eheyeh Asher Eh’yeh principle, and choose, more often, to be deeply and fully present to whatever is around us in order to discern what is needed, both for us, and from us. God commissioned Abraham, and the Jewish people, with a single purpose: “Veh’yeh brachah – Be a blessing!” (Gen. 12:2) How do we do that? We wake up, show up, take the locks off our habits in order to come nearer to here and now, and to be able to bring our best response to whatever presents itself to us. Let’s get to it – let’s take our shoes off!
Footnotes
[1] Many ancient commentaries point out there is no pause after the first Moshe, unlike when Abraham, Jacob or Samuel are called.
[2] The ancient name by which each of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs knew God.
[3] The kind and loving aspect of God.
[4] Sifre Devarim 357, 3rd century commentary
[5] Exodus Rabbah 2:5
[6] ‘Light on Hanukkah’, talk, Nov 2009, https://www.jewishrenewalhasidus.org/light-on-hanukkah/
[7] There is another encounter between Moses and God that I believe can be understood as a model for prayer / davenen. I have written about this in another d’var: “Let me see Your glory!” Davenen through the Four Worlds.
[8] This is central to the inner psychodrama of Pesach (Passover). In verse 7, the Israelites cry out from mitzrayim-narrowness. In verse 8 God promises to bring the people to a land of urchavah-spaciousness. Pharoah is the archetype that oppresses people into narrow places. Moses, our archetypal hero, is sent to the narrowest, most difficult place, to bring us out to the expansive place. This internal journey is made more explicit in Ps. 118:5 “Min hameitzar karati Yah, anani bamerchav Yah – From our mitzrayim-narrowness, we cried out; God answered with merchav-expansiveness.” Freedom is at the core of our origin story of escape from Egypt – not only commemorated once a year at Pesach, but remembered every week on Shabbat, and every day in our prayers. Our ethical codes flow from the instruction to “remember that you were slaves”. Freedom brings expansiveness, freedom to serve God, to exercise responsibility, to choose repeatedly between blessing or curse.