A word of Torah:
We ended the book of Genesis with the death of Joseph. We fast forward as the descendants of Jacob multiply greatly, finally fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in heaven. There is change for the Egyptians as well. A new king arises who does not know Joseph (Yosef). The new ruler warns the Egyptians that these multiplying Hebrews could join (nosaf-echoing Joseph’s name) with Egypt’s enemies. Pharaoh calls on his people to oppress the Israelites through slavery to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Faced with change, one response is to try to freeze things as they were. It’s like the song “Tradition” in Fiddler on the Roof. The people in the shtetl sing about tradition even as they admit they don’t know its rationale. It is not surprising that as the world changes drastically around them, they are passive in their response.
Another response to change is to blame someone or some group as being responsible for the problem. Taken to the extreme, as in Egypt, this leads to drastic measures in dealing with the other, the Israelites. “If we can disenfranchise them enough both they and the problem will disappear.”
Instead, God models a different response to change. At the burning bush, Moses is told to go tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Moses asks God: who should I say sent me? God does not give the expected answer—I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, thereby reconnecting God and the people to a (hopefully) remembered past. Instead, God answers: ehyeh asher ehyeh—I will be what I will be. (Ex. 3:14).
A mistake often made by religious people is thinking of God as unchanging. In the past, it was a reassuring notion, distinguishing monotheism from the pagan gods who were perceived to be fickle and unpredictable. For some it is still an anchor to hold onto in a rapidly changing world. Yet, the God of the Exodus tells Moses not to think that there is one fixed notion that describes God. The God of Exodus is the God of freedom, which by definition requires an understanding of God as ever-changing. God says, “I will be what I will be,” and so can you. The world is a world of possibility and change.
Judaism is at its heart a revolutionary tradition that seeks to challenge rather than uphold the status quo. Despite how Judaism is sometimes presented, its purpose is not to preserve the Jewish past. It is a call for change. It questions what is. It reminds us that Jews were slaves and were liberated and that is the beginning of our story. We are to make our story every person’s story; that is, a story of the freedom to exercise choice.
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