Photo: Gary Ellis (on unsplash) - There’s a call ... - For me? - Not specifically. It’s more of a cry, really, a crying out. - A cry? A crying out? Well ... - You’ve been expecting it ... - I have? - Yes, for four hundred-odd years. -Oh ... that’s quite a while! Wonder what kept them? I better go down. ------------------------------- Na'aseh v'nishma. At the beginning of Shemot these words are a long way off. Here it is words and names that come first, what is said more important than what is done. Who are you? What's your name? What if they don't believe me? Why me? Send someone more eloquent, I stutter! Moses is a skeptic, impressed by the pyrotechnics, but not by God's words. In exasperation God gives him magic tricks to perform to make believers out of his own people. They've been cut off too long. It is not only Pharaoh who doesn't remember Joseph. Year in, year out they bear the drudgery and abuse, because in spite of all the hard work they keep hav
Just what it says: a little midrash, a filling in of some of the lacunae Torah leaves in the lives of its characters. The stories lay no claim to being right, but they do explore what is possible. Texts don't sit still long enough to have fixed meanings; too often we assume that Torah is done and finished. It is never finished.