God, Politics and the Personal: Three Thoughts at Sinai

'פָּנִים בְּפָנִים דִּבֶּר ה' עִמָּכֶם בָּהָר מִתּוֹךְ הָאש'. (דברים ה ד)  

“Face to face did God speak with you on the mountain, from the midst of the fire” (Deut. 5:4)

1.

Jews usually flee whenever God is the topic. Religious or secular, it’s best not to speak too much about God. But in an election year, when every other televised address ends with “God Bless America”, and with the looming question of whether God has been an overall positive idea in history, the way we talk about God is a very real and potent topic. This week’s Parsha, Yitro, marks the foundational moment of God’s revelation to the Israelites: “I am the Lord your God” rings the voice from Sinai, an apt opportunity to discuss what that vision continues to mean to us today.

Feminist theoreticians have done a good job showing why we cannot leave the field of God vacant. As Carol Christ writes:

Because Religion has such a compelling hold on the deep psyches of so many people, feminists cannot afford to leave it in the hands of the fathers. Even people who no longer "believe in God" or participate in the institutional structure of patriarchal religion still may not be free of the power of the symbolism of God the Father.... (Carol Christ, Why Women Need the Goddess)

Or in the words of Mary Daly:

If God in "His" heaven is a father ruling “His” people, then it is the nature of things and according to divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male dominated. (Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father )

For agents of change, the discourse of God is a powerful tool to change assumptions about power and structure. Changing the language we use to talk about God is a way to change how people conceive of the world, whatever our field of activism is.

2.

This political perspective seems to make sense especially if you assume that “He” is simply a projection of human needs, not an actual Existence. But for the Rabbis of the Talmud the idea of using versatile language about God is not about what we project onto God, but rather emanates from the fact that God reveals himself (herself!) in different ways based on our human needs. A midrash about the Revelation at Sinai exposes this radical idea:

Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said: The fact is that God appeared to them in a guise appropriate to each and every place and time: At the Red Sea he appeared to them as a mighty man waging wars, At Sinai he appeared to them as a school teacher, as one who stands upright in awe when teaching Torah; In the days of Daniel, He appeared to them as an elder teaching Torah, for the Torah is at its best when it comes from the mouths of old men; In the days of Solomon He appeared to them as a young man in keeping with the youthful spirit of Solomon's generation – "His aspect is like Lebanon, young as the cedars" (Song of Songs 5:15).

The Holy One said to Israel: Come to no false conclusions because you see Me in many guises, For I am He who was with you at the Rea Sea, And I am He who is with you at Sinai: "I am the Lord your God".

PesiktaDeRab Kahana, 3rd Century Midrash; Piska 12 pg 249

א"ר חייא ברבא: לפי כל עסק ועסק וכל דבר ודבר היה נראה להם: נראה להם בים כגיבור עשה מלחמותיהם של ישראל; נראה בסיני כסופר שהוא מלמד תורה ועומד ביראה; נראה להם בימי דניאל כזקן מלמד תורה שכך נאה לתורה להיות יוצאה מפי זקנים; נראה להם בחור בימי שלמה לפי מעשיהם של דור מראהו כלבנון בחור כארזים (שה"ש ה טו); אמר להן הקב"ה: לא בשביל שאתם רואים אותי בדמוייות הרבה אלא אני הוא שבים, אני הוא שבסיני - "אנכי י"י אלהיך"

R. Hiyya’s God is a dynamic God, acutely aware of his audience, striving to be continually relevant, a master educator encountering his pupils where they are at. This midrash would suggest that just as God reveals herself in different ways based on our needs, so we must find new paths and metaphors for God that are based on our authentic experience of her. A dynamic and ever relevant God, I shall be what I shall be, as God calls himself, is a crucial way we continue the conversation with God over the generations.

3.

Zelda

Too much talk about God is not a good idea either. “To you, silence is praise” says Psalms 65. At the end of the day prose and philosophical tractate are simply not the right genres in which to discuss God. Midrash and poetry are better, perhaps because they include more room for silence. Zelda, one of Israel’s first prominent religious poets, captures this in a short poem, which is perhaps the closest we can get to Sinai these days:

I Am a Dead Bird

I am a dead bird,

One bird that has died.

A bird cloaked in a gray coat.

A scoffer mocks me as I walk.

Suddenly Your silence envelops me,

O Ever-living One.

In a teeming market, a dead fowl sings:

“Only You exist.”

In a teeming market, a bird hobbles

With a hidden song.

אני ציפור מתה – זלדה

אֲנִי צִפּוֹר מֵתָה
צִפּוֹר אַחַת שֱמֵּתָה.
צִפּוֹר עוֹטָה מְעִיל אָפֹר
בְּלֶכְתִי, לֵץ מַפְטִיר לְעֻמָּתִי.

פֶּתַע אֲפָפַתְנִי שְתִיקָתְךָ -
חַי עוֹלָמִים
בְּשוּק שוֹקֵק עוֹף מֵת יָשִיר -
רַק אַתָּה קַיָם.
בְּשוּק שוֹקֵק מְדַדָּה צִפוֹר עִם שִיר
נִסְתָּר.

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Bronfman Fellowships | Yitro 2012 | Text and the City

Leaving Egypt: The Long Path which is Short

Rabbi Yehoshua said: Once I was walking along the path, and I saw a child sitting at a crossroads. I asked him: Which path will lead me to the city?He said: One path is short and long, and one path is long and short.I took the short and long one. Once I arrived at the city, I found the passageway blocked off by meandering gardens and orchards.I turned back, and said to the child: My son! Didn’t you describe this path as short?“Didn’t I also say it was long?!” he retorted.(Talmud Bavli Eruvin 53b)

At the opening of Parashat BeShalach, as the Israelites are being led out of Egypt, God faces a similar “Cheshire cat” dilemma: Which path to take to the Promised Land?

Now it was, when Pharaoh had sent the people free, That God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, Which indeed is nearer, For God said to himself: Lest the people regret it. When they see war, and return to Egypt! So God had the people swing about by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds. (Exodus 13:17-18)

וַיְהִי, בְּשַׁלַּח פַּרְעֹה אֶת-הָעָם,  וְלֹא-נָחָם אֱלֹהִים דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ פְּלִשְׁתִּים, כִּי קָרוֹב הוּא. כִּי אָמַר אֱלֹהִים: "פֶּן-יִנָּחֵם הָעָם בִּרְאֹתָם מִלְחָמָה--וְשָׁבוּ מִצְרָיְמָה."  וַיַּסֵּב אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָעָם דֶּרֶךְ הַמִּדְבָּר, יַם-סוּף... (שמות יג: יז-יח)

This internal monologue of God as “Trip Planner” makes it clear how tangential the whole Exodus process was. God is well aware of their weaknesses, and eminently nervous about how on board they are with the entire project. It is clear that the Exodus is a slow-cooking process, a journey which requires time. It is a long path that is short. God’s decision, to go by way of the Red Sea, sets up the main scene of this week’s Parsha: the parting of the Sea, the final conquest of the Egyptians, and the incredible song and promise that comes from it: ה' ימלוך לעולם ועד -  “Let God be King for ever after”.

It is tempting to wax poetic about the importance of taking the long path, the path which doesn’t shy away from long term struggle, doesn’t look for instant solutions. In a world of instant gratification, technology and information at our fingertips, who has time for process? But let’s be honest – we’re tired, and work hard. It would be nice to get a short path every once in a while, and not to discover that it turned out to be one of those “short but long ones”…

On a different level, I find the “path to the promised land” dilemma to serve as a powerful metaphor for two different orientations towards life: the desire for tranquility and the desire for challenge and tension.

The most powerful text on this question is a scathingly critical footnote hidden at the beginning of Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik 1944 essay “Halakhic Man”. It is a dense piece, which I disagree with for many reasons, but which I find “good to think with”, as Foucault would say. For Soloveitchik:

…the position that is prevalent nowadays in religious circles, whether in Protestant groups or in American Reform and Conservative Judaism, [is] that the religious experience is of a very simple nature – that is, devoid of the spiritual tortuousness present in the secular cultural consciousness, of psychic upheavals, and of the pangs and torments that are inextricably connected with the development and refinement of man’s spiritual personality. This popular ideology contends that the religious experience is tranquil and neatly ordered, tender and delicate; it is an enchanted stream for embittered souls and still waters for troubled spirits. The person “who comes in from the field, weary” (Gen. 25:29), from the battlefield and campaigns of life, from the secular domain which is filled with doubts and fears, contradictions and refutations, clings to religion as does a baby to its mother and finds in her lap “a shelter for his head, the nest of his forsaken prayers” and there is comforted for his disappointments and tribulations. […] This Rousseauean ideology left its stamp on the entire Romantic movement from the beginning of its growth until its final (tragic!) manifestations in the consciousness of contemporary man. Therefore, the representatives of religious communities are inclined to portray religion, in a wealth of colors that dazzle the eye, as a poetic Arcadia, a realm of simplicity, wholeness, and tranquility. […]This ideology is intrinsically false and deceptive. That religious consciousness in man’s experience which is most profound and most elevated, which penetrates to the very depths and ascends to the very heights, is not that simple and comfortable. On the contrary, it is exceptionally complex, rigorous, and tortuous. Where you find its complexity, there you find its greatness. The religious experience, from beginning to end, is antinomic and antithetic. The consciousness of homo religiosis flings bitter accusations against itself and immediately is filled with regret, judges its desires and yearnings with excessive severity, and at the same time steeps itself in them, casts derogatory aspersions on its own attributes, flails away at them, but also subjugates itself to them. It is in a condition of spiritual crisis, of psychic ascent and descent, of contradiction arising from affirmation and negation, self-abnegation and self-appreciation. […] Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging clamorous torrent of man’s consciousness with all its crises, pangs, and torments.

There is much to say about Soloveitchik's position here. Among others, I find the denominational criticism to be ironic, since so much of Orthodoxy today is exactly about observant Judaism as a tranquil Arcadia from secular life’s upheavals. I also struggle with the value of self-abnegation, since it is easily abused to become a rallying cry against basic moral tenets.

But I am continuously inspired by Soloveitchik’s commitment to the struggle, his criticism of the "short path" to tranquility and his complex, challenging vision of identity as a scene of crisis and opportunity, ascent and descent. There is more to unpack in this piece about the place of religion in western identity, but for now, I take Soloveitchik as a motivational piece: When I need some encouragement to take the “long path which is short”, I return to Soloveitchik’s "footnote 4", as it helps me take up the struggle again, as I walk the narrow path towards the Promised Land.


Rabbi Mishael Zion | Bronfman Fellowships | Beshalach 2012 | Text and the City

At the Doorway: Kafka, Blood and the Passover Sacrifice

A few years ago I attended the Samaritan paschal sacrifice. Numbering 745 members, the Samaritans are an ancient non-Jewish ethnic group, split between Nablus and Holon, who continue their version of Biblical traditions. On Passover this includes joining together on the 14 of Nissan dressed in white with lambs at their side. The orally recite the Biblical Exodus narrative, and then summarily slaughter their lambs and roast them in large pits. The lambs are to be eaten precisely at midnight, the very hour the Israelites left Egypt oh so long ago.

I came expecting to be troubled by the violence of the slaughter. What I experienced instead was a strong embrace of mortality. The sight of blood is troubling not only because of its violent and ethical dimensions, but because it reminds us of our own vulnerability. No wonder we associate with it feelings of disgust and refuse. Witnessing this gory but powerful ritual was transformative. I was raised a devout believer in Maimonides’ theory of sacrifices being a “phase” the Jewish people had to grow out of. While I still believe in some version of Maimonides’ post-sacrificial narrative, I was deeply moved by the rawness of the sacrifice: I was in awe of the inescapably real presence of blood.

I think of the Samaritans as we read in this week’s Parsha, Bo, of the Israelites preparing to leave Egypt. They are commanded to not only slaughter a lamb but to smear the blood on their lintels and doorposts:

Pick out, take yourselves a sheep for your clans, and slay the Passover-animal. Then take a band of hyssop, dip it in the blood which is in the basin, And touch the lintel and the two posts with some of the blood which is in the basin. […] God will proceed to deal-blows to Egypt, And when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two posts, God will pass over the entrance… (Exodus 12:22-23)

מִשְׁכוּ, וּקְחוּ לָכֶם צֹאן לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתֵיכֶם--וְשַׁחֲטוּ הַפָּסַח. וּלְקַחְתֶּם אֲגֻדַּת אֵזוֹב, וּטְבַלְתֶּם בַּדָּם אֲשֶׁר-בַּסַּף, וְהִגַּעְתֶּם אֶל-הַמַּשְׁקוֹף וְאֶל-שְׁתֵּי הַמְּזוּזֹת, מִן-הַדָּם אֲשֶׁר בַּסָּף; וְאַתֶּם, לֹא תֵצְאוּ אִישׁ מִפֶּתַח-בֵּיתוֹ--עַד-בֹּקֶר. וְעָבַר יְהוָה, לִנְגֹּף אֶת-מִצְרַיִם, וְרָאָה אֶת-הַדָּם עַל-הַמַּשְׁקוֹף, וְעַל שְׁתֵּי הַמְּזוּזֹת; וּפָסַח יְהוָה, עַל-הַפֶּתַח, וְלֹא יִתֵּן הַמַּשְׁחִית, לָבֹא אֶל-בָּתֵּיכֶם לִנְגֹּף. (שמות יב:כב-כג)

The blood on the doorpost separated between life and death. The embrace of vulnerability and mortality, through a public act of blood, differentiated the Israelites from their persecutors, and granted them the key to redemption.

We no longer smear blood on the doorpost, but a strange little custom continues to re-create a sense of vulnerability on Passover: First born children traditionally fast on this day. They should have been killed with the other first-borns that night. The fast is a way of entering Passover not as victorious winners but through a humble recognition of the vulnerability of life.

In his Hasidic commentary of the Torah, the “Sfat Emet”, Reb Yehuda Leib Alter of Ger, also reads this moment as an embrace of vulnerability. He notices that the blood on the doorposts is applied by a “band of hyssop” – which the midrash considers a “most lowly brush”. The primal mixture of blood and brush represents the embrace of mortality, which in turn enables the promise that is to come:

  

Even though they went out from Egypt with great victory, God wanted Israel to be in their own eyes like that band of hyssop, to know that they were just at the open doorway, hoping to truly come inside. As if God says to them: “Make an opening as wide as a needle’s eye, and I’ll open it up for you like the entrance-way to a palace.” This took place at the Exodus from Egypt, just like the opening of a doorway.

Then it is written: “The king has brought me into his chambers” (Song of Songs 1:4), referring to the giving of Torah.

Standing at the doorway of the Exodus, a modern reader might be reminded of Kafka parable, Before the Law, which starts like this:

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” The gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try going inside in spite of my prohibition. But take note. I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I cannot endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside.

The man ends up wasting his life away at the doorway of Law never daring to enter for fear of the dangers inside. The Exodus’ doorway, on the other hand, covered in lamb’s blood, serves as a reminder that an embrace of vulnerability and danger is what allows one to move forward despite the dangers that will surely ensue.

I return often to that day with the Samaritans, reminded of the symbolic power of blood as a symbol of vulnerability, which opens a doorway to growth and purpose. In a world where blood is quickly absorbed, meat arrives in nylon wrapped packages and our sick and dead are sent away to the outskirts of town, we desperately try to do away with our mortality. But the gateway to purpose and meaning (=Torah) is a doorpost smeared in blood. As weird as that sounds, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Bronfman Fellowships | Bo 2012 | Text and the City 

I Believe in the (Flawed) Promised Land: Springsteen, the Exodus and Faith in Politics

“We still believe, or many of us do, what the Exodus first taught about the meaning and possibility of politics and about its proper form: First; that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt; second; that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land; and third, that the way to the land is through the wilderness. There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.”

In “Exodus and Revolution”, whose closing paragraph is quoted above, Michael Walzer shows how the idea of the Exodus was the rousing symbolic framework through which many of the political movements of the modern era have found meaning: from the Huguenots through the Puritans and the Founding Fathers, to MLK and the civil rights movement. Thanks to those movements, the ideas of Egypt and Promised Land are sewn deeply into the tapestry of the American narrative. For Walzer, the “meaning and possibility of politics” in the West will always turn on the belief in the basic categories of Egypt/Promised Land.

It is rousing to see how the narratives of the Torah continue to provide categories through which people make sense of their reality. This year, in which so many stood up to demonstrate against the Egypt that their countries had turned into (in Tunisia, Syria, Israel, the US, and – of course – Egypt itself), and as the Torah portions cycle back to the story of the Exodus, we should revisit the role that the concepts of Egypt and the Promised Land play in our own quest for change.

In this week’s Torah portion, VaEra, God gives one of the most rousing speeches of the Torah, naming Egypt, Exodus and Promised Land:

“Say to the Children of Israel: I am Adonai, I will bring you out From beneath the burdens of Egypt I will rescue you From servitude to them, I will redeem you With an outstretched arm, with great acts of judgement; I will take you for me As a people And I will be for you As a God; And you shall know That I am Adonai your God, Who brings you out From beneath the burdens of Egypt. I will bring you into the land… I will give it to you as a possession, I Adonai.”

לָכֵן אֱמֹר לִבְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל: אֲנִי ה’. וְהוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלֹת מִצְרַיִם, וְהִצַּלְתִּי אֶתְכֶם מֵעֲבֹדָתָם; וְגָאַלְתִּי אֶתְכֶם בִּזְרוֹעַ נְטוּיָה, וּבִשְׁפָטִים גְּדֹלִים. וְלָקַחְתִּי אֶתְכֶם לִי לְעָם, וְהָיִיתִי לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים; וִידַעְתֶּם, כִּי אֲנִי ה’ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, הַמּוֹצִיא אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלוֹת מִצְרָיִם. וְהֵבֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם אֶל-הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נָשָׂאתִי אֶת-יָדִי לָתֵת אֹתָהּ לְאַבְרָהָם לְיִצְחָק וּלְיַעֲקֹב; וְנָתַתִּי אֹתָהּ לָכֶם מוֹרָשָׁה, אֲנִי ה’.

The belief in the Promised Land creates the possibility of revolution, of being taken out of our current reality, of redemption. Its greatest enemy is cynicism: disbelief in the possibility of change. And indeed, the cynical Israelites shrug their shoulders:

“Moshe spoke thus to the Children of Israel. But they did not hearken to Moshe, Out of shortness of spirit and out of hard servitude.” (Exodus 6:6-9)

וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה כֵּן, אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה, מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ, וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה. (שמות ו:ו-ט)

The Israelites were not wrong to be wary of the possibility of change. We know the Promised Land isn’t really all that it is made up to be, and Egypt has its benefits too... We’ve read our history books and we know that the Promised Land often promises war, discord, corruption, idolatry and immorality. Too often yesterday’s Promised Land turns out to be todays Egypt. No one is clearer about this danger than Moshe’s successors, the prophets of the later books of the Bible. There is perhaps no greater Egypt than the work of politics itself. Indeed, the very Egypt/Promised Land dichotomy is a dangerous one, for a messianic Promised Land can be seen as an end that justifies all means, and a community disillusioned with the notion of a Promised Land can become alienated and apathetic.

These realizations makes many of us avoid politics or social change, and avoid great visions of Promised Lands, focusing instead on our personal spiritual redemption, our 401(k), or on local acts of charity.

What is needed to mediate this tension is a more nuanced vision of the Promised Land: not an end to all problems, but an opportunity to play out the old problems on a new playing field. That would allow us to be a bit more forgiving to the Promised Lands that have let us down – alongside galvanizing us to fight for their identity and not write them off.

In this more nuanced vision, however, we must not lose sight of the power of the Egypt/Promised Land dichotomy. Rather, a “second naiveté” must be embraced, a return to simple dichotomies which despite their unrealistic nature allow us to shout out revolutionary cries and wax poetic about a “New World”, a “Redemptive Homeland” or a “City on the Hill”.

Judaism has embedded the story of the Exodus into its collective memory and identity for exactly that purpose, if at times without the nuance: at the Passover Seder, in daily prayers, in learning and icons, we retell the story of breaking out of Egypt and journeying towards the Promised Land, refreshing our political imagination and prompting us to jump to action in fighting against our contemporary Egypts.

Judaism did it first, but America’s optimistic culture is where the naïve belief in the Exodus reached a peak of influence as a category of political and social change. One American in particular epitomizes both the Promise and the nuance: The Boss, the singer whose tours President Obama described  as “Not so much concerts, but communions”. The dichotomy is prevalent throughout his work, but Bruce Springsteen is nowhere more explicit than in his 1978 song, “The Promised Land” (from Darkness on the Edge of Town). It’s second verse reads (you should really watch it here http://youtu.be/ekdXmPlCBOY )

I've done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this whole town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

The dogs on Main Street howl
'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land

(for the full lyrics: http://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/ThePromisedLand.html).

Springsteen describes a young man working in his “daddy’s garage” in a Utah desert, trying to do the right thing, when reality suddenly reveals itself to be an Egypt – eyes go blind, blood runs cold. There is a (violent) desire to break free, to do what “men do”, and head out for the Promised Land. In his performances, that last line gets repeated again and again, becoming a mantra, a battle cry, a prayer: I believe in a promised land. He knows he is just “chasing some mirage” – that the dichotomy ain’t so simple, that the Promised Land is flawed, and yet he can’t allow himself to stop believing in it.

Listening to the song, the listener regains belief in the message of the Exodus, as summarized by Walzer’s closing words: “We still believe… First; that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt; second; that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land; and third, that the way to the land is through the wilderness. There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.”

Thanks to my friend Stephen Hazan Arnoff, who taught me how to listen to The Boss - and so much more. Check out Stephen's Blog post on Springsteen's recent single or his article on the topic in "Reading The Boss".

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Bronfman Fellowships | VaEra 2012 | Text and the City

"Love the Questions": The Burning Bush and the Western Myth of the Hero

Western culture loves it heroes. As Freud’s student Otto Rank showed in his classic “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero” (1914) Western culture is deeply founded on the myth of the hero (from Oedipus and Jesus to Harry Potter and most Hollywood films). A child (male) with special powers, born in dangerous circumstances, returns to receive his deeper calling and consequently conquers evil and redeems the world. Having been bred on those stories as children (whether it is through canonical sacred texts or the incessant reading of hero-centered fantasy books), we learn to identify ourselves as the “heroes of our own lives”, holders of unique powers and a solid destiny. We learn to expect that we have an answer to the world’s question.

Moshe’s life is the defining Biblical hero journey, and the burning bush is the canonical Western text of a person who receives a divine destiny, moving from refusal and denial to embrace and action. In contemporary leadership talk Moshe is committed to a vision and exists to turn that vision into a reality.

Unless you are the reader Yehuda Amichai.

Yehuda Amichai, in a short poem that spans Moshe’s entire life, draws a an anti-hero, a person not motivated by the mission God provides him at the bush as much as by a deeper longing, an unanswered question in his soul.

Amichai notices that at the moment of God’s revelation to Moshe at the burning bush, Moshe does something very strange: he hides his face, afraid to gaze upon God. This leads him to offer the following reading of Moshe’s journey:

Moses, our teacher, only once saw God’s face And forgot.  He did not want to see the wilderness Nor, even the promised land, but only God’s face. He struck the rock in the fury of his longings He climbed Mt. Sinai and descended; he shattered the two Tablets and made a Golden calf; he searched In fire and cloud; but all he could remember was God’s strong hand and his outstretched arm But not his face; and he became like a person who yearns To remember the face of their beloved, but cannot. He made for himself a ‘mug shot’ taking from the face Of God, the face of the burning bush, and the face of Pharaoh’s daughter leaning over him as an infant in the basket And he circulated the picture among all the tribes of Israel And throughout the wilderness. But no one had seen And no one recognized.  And only at the end of his life, On Mt. Nebo he saw and died in a kiss from the face of God.  Yehuda Amichai | Patuach, Sagur, Patuach translated by Steve Sager p.29, #5

משה רבנו ראה רק פעם אחת את פני האלוהים ושכח. הוא לא רצה לראות את המדבר ואפלו לא את הארץ המבטחת, אלא רק את פני האלהים. הוא הכה בסלע בזעם געגועיו הוא עלה להר סיני וירד, הוא שבר את שני לוחות הברית ועשה עגל זהב, הוא חפש באש ובעשן, אבל הוא זכר רק את יד האלהים החזקה ואת זרועו הנטויה ולא את פניו והיה כמו אדם שרוצה לזכר את פני מי שאהב ולא יוכל. הוא עשה לעצמו קלסתרון מפני האלהים ופני הסנה הבוער ופני בת פרעה שנרכנה מעליו כשהיה תינוק בתבה, והפיץ את התמונה בכל שבטי ישראל ובכל המדבר, אבל איש לא ראה ואיש לא הכיר. ורק בסוף חייו, על הר נבו ראה ומת בנשיקת פני האלהים. יהודה עמיחי, "פתוח סגור פתוח"

Moshe can be seen here as a tragic figure, oblivious of the great achievements of his life as he is caught up in his own existential search. But perhaps Amichai’s Moshe is not an anti-hero, but rather an inspiration to a deeper type of leadership. Amichai is suggesting that a deeper motivator for our action in the world is not the belief in some aggrandized calling, but rather a longing, a broken heart, an embrace of our existential journey.

I hear this same troupe in the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke.  Writing to a young impatient wannabe poet in his “Letters to a Young Artist”, Rilke writes:

July 16, 1903

My dear Mr. Kappus: I have left a letter from you unanswered for a long time; … As I read it now, in the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life…
I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Reading the burning bush in light of Rilke and Amichai, the inextinguishable flame of God’s burning bush becomes the inextinguishable devotion to questions, journey and yearning. Stay attuned to the yearning, not the heroic calling, says Amichai. This is perhaps the key to Moshe’s humble leadership, which got him known in the tradition as the “faithful shepherd.” It might even be the key to a new, meek but committed, Western heroism. “Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”