Va-'era' (Exodus 6:2-9:35) and Haftarah (Ezekiel 28:25-29:21): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary

by Jeffrey K. Salkin

Overview

Va-'era' (Exodus 6:2-9:35) and Haftarah (Ezekiel 28:25-29:21): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary shows teens in their own language how Torah addresses the issues in their world. The conversational tone is inviting and dignified, concise and substantial, direct and informative. Each pamphlet includes a general introduction, two model divrei Torah on the weekly Torah portion, and one model davar Torah on the weekly Haftarah portion. Jewish learning--for young people and adults--will never be the same.



The complete set of weekly portions is available in Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin's book The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary (JPS, 2017).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780827613720
Publisher:	The Jewish Publication Society
Publication date:	08/01/2018
Series:	JPS Study Bible
Pages:	24
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin serves as the senior rabbi of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Florida. He is the author of Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah, winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for the best religion book published in the United States, and The Gods Are Broken: The Hidden Legacy of Abraham (JPS, 2013).
 

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Torah

Va-'era': Exodus 6:2–9:35

It was not as if Moses had no experience with the God of the Israelites. He had first met that God in the form of a burning bush. Now it was time for Moses to meet God again. The last time that Moses met God, God was "the God of your father the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (3:6). This time, God has a "new" name — a name that is mysterious and unpronounceable.

God reassures Moses that God has noticed the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt, and that it will be Moses's job to appeal to Pharaoh to let them go. But Moses isn't so sure about that. He tries to get out of this job; he protests that he's got a speech impediment and doesn't talk very well. And so, Moses's brother, Aaron, becomes his spokesperson.

They approach Pharaoh and demand that the Israelites be freed — with a little help from some old-fashioned snake tricks. But Pharaoh isn't impressed; he doesn't get it. He needs a wake-up call. That's how the plagues started — turning the Nile into blood, bringing on frogs, swarms of insects, cattle disease, boils, and hail. Throughout it all, Pharaoh remains stubborn, and refuses to let the Israelites go.

Summary

• God reveals a new divine name to Moses — YHVH (Yud Heh Vav Heh), which Jews now pronounce as "Adonai." (6:2–13)

• Moses insists that he has trouble speaking, which will make it very difficult for him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. (6:30)

• Moses and Aaron get into a war of magical powers with the magicians of Egypt to see who has the most power — the God of the Israelites, or the gods of the Egyptians. (7:8–18)

• God brings the first plagues upon the Egyptians. The Nile turns to blood; frogs appeared, lice, swarms of insects, cattle disease, boils, and hail. Throughout it all, Pharaoh's heart is "hardened," which means that he is unable to make the wise decision to let the Israelites go — though, at times, he gets pretty close to figuring that out. (7:19–9:34)

The Big Ideas

• We can never know God entirely. God reveals a new name to Moses — Yud Heh Vav Heh. But the name is mysterious, and perhaps even unpronounceable. In the ancient world, to know someone's name means to have some kind of power over that person, and you cannot have power over God.

• Disability does not mean that you have to be helpless. Even though Moses has trouble speaking, he's still able to be a leader of his people. Disabilities need not keep people from doing great and important things.

• Only God is God. The plagues were not just nasty acts that God performed against the Egyptians; they were acts aimed against the gods of Egypt. The whole purpose of the plagues was to give Pharaoh a lesson in God's power.

• Everyone (except for Pharaoh) has free will. God "froze" Pharaoh's ability to think for himself, so that he would not let the Israelites go. If he had in fact done so, then Pharaoh would have been the agent of freedom, not God.

Divrei Torah

God's New Name

A teenager (perhaps you) applies for a special summer program. The application asks: "name of father." The kid writes: "Dad."

It's a sweet and understandable error. But, in fact, "Dad" is not your father's name. Well, it is to you. His real name is (let's just say) Harold Schwartz. You call your father Dad, but his boss might call him Harold. The person who works at the bank might call him Mr. Schwartz. Your mother might call him Hal, or at times "honey," "dear," or other affectionate nicknames. His siblings might refer to him by his childhood nickname Hally. So, the truth is: your father has many names — simultaneously. You probably do as well.

In this Torah portion God tells Moses that the Patriarchs knew God as El Shaddai. A midrash says: "God said to Moses: Many times I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but they never asked My name nor questioned My ways! Yet You ask my name?" In fact, there are many different names for God, and you already know some of them, like Elohim, Adonai — and on the High Holy Days, Avinu Malkheinu.

God's "new" name is YHVH, Yud Heh Vav Heh. For two thousand years, Jews have pronounced it Adonai — "my Lord," though some people simply translate this as "the Eternal."

All those "names" for God are just guesses. We don't know how to pronounce God's "real" name; maybe we never knew it. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies in the ancient Temple and say God's name. But, somehow, the vowels of God's name got lost — along with the real pronunciation of God's four-letter name. Is it pronounced "Yahweh"? Is it Jehovah (as in the Christian missionary group Jehovah's Witnesses)? We not only don't know how to say it; it is considered bad form to even try. That's why some Jews simply refer to God as ha-Shem (the Name).

YHVH seems to be related to the Hebrew verb root heh-vav-heh, which means "to be." YHVH could mean "that which causes to be," which would be a pretty good way to describe God.

The contemporary theologian Arthur Green believes that YHVH is a simultaneous rendition of the Hebrew root "to be" in its past, present, and perfect tenses: "As though it really was 'Is-Was-Will Be.' It is a verb caught in motion."

So, God's name is something like "iswaswillbe." It is impossible for us to say God's "real" name. As it is impossible to really know God's nature, although we strive to imitate God's ways. That's the problem and the challenge.

Moses, Speak Up!

It's called being tongue tied. Some people call it stuttering. Others call it stammering. Whatever you want to call it, it's difficult and annoying. And yet, many people overcome speech impediments like this one, and they become great leaders.

Take Moses, for example. In fact, Moses has two kinds of speech problems. But they are very different, and they tell us a lot about who Moses really is.

One of these impediments has to do with the way that Moses actually speaks. Moses refers to himself as being kaved peh and kaved lashon (4:10), which is translated as "slow of speech and slow of tongue." Moses is either not an orator, or he has a speech defect. Just as Jacob was wounded and limps, Moses is also "wounded" and "limps" with his speech.

How did that happen? An ancient legend says that when Moses was an infant, Pharaoh placed before him a gold vessel and a live coal. If he reached for the gold, he would have proven himself to be a future threat. If he went for the coal — no problem. A midrash tells us, "The infant Moses was about to reach forth for the gold when the angel Gabriel came and moved his hand so that it seized the coal, and he thrust his hand with the live coal into his mouth, so that his tongue was burnt, with the result that he became slow of speech and of tongue."

So maybe that is how Moses developed his speech defect. More likely, he was simply born with a problem or failed to develop typical language skills. But the Torah also says that Moses is aral sefatayim (6:12). While most translations say that this means "impeded speech," it really means that he has "uncircumcised lips" (or "uncircumcised language").

Uncircumcised lips? What? When the Bible says that someone is uncircumcised, it may not mean physical circumcision. To be arel or aral, "uncircumcised," can also mean that someone is a foreigner. Moses was not really an Israelite. Having grown up in the royal court, Moses would have seemed foreign to the Israelites. They would not have accepted him as their leader. Perhaps Moses is saying that he doesn't know Hebrew because he has been so cut off from his people. That also would have created a problem in communication.

Another interpretation — this one from a Hasidic sage, Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Ger. "As long as there are those who will listen, then there can be those who speak, because the power of the leader issues from the people. For this reason, if the children of Israel listen to Moses, his mouth would be opened, his speech would be fluent, and his words would reach Pharaoh. But if they don't want to listen to him he would be made into one of impeded speech." Moses has a hard time not only getting Pharaoh to listen, but also his very own people to listen.

How often we see this happening! It's not enough for the leader to be able to speak, to be eloquent and forceful. People have to listen. Sometimes that's the hardest part of all.

Connections

• Can you think of examples of people who had disabilities or physical challenges and were still able to do great things? What do you think made them successful at what they did?

• Have you ever been a leader, or tried to lead? What have been some of your challenges in doing so?

• Were there any times when you had difficulty being understood, or understanding someone else? What was that like? How did you overcome it?

• Another interpretation of God's Name, YHVH, is that each Hebrew character is "open — yud on the left-hand side, heh on the bottom (there is a space between the two prongs of the letter), and vav on all sides. What are you open to learning, experiencing, and doing?

CHAPTER 2

The Haftarah

Va'era': Ezekiel 28:25–29:21

Some people say that the prophet Ezekiel was, well, crazy. He had all sorts of wild visions, including imagining that God was traveling across the heavens in a chariot. But one thing is for sure: he really understood the international situation in the world he lived in. Ezekiel was a prophet who started making prophecies in the final days of the kingdom of Judah, and who went with the Judeans into exile in Babylonia. The people of Judah hoped that if they made an alliance with Egypt they would avoid destruction at the hands of the Babylonians.

Ezekiel knew that this was the wrong decision. He knew that Egypt was an untrustworthy ally, and that it would itself be destroyed. So, he engaged in a loud, bitter rant against the Egyptians. But here's the interesting part: when Ezekiel was screaming about the Egyptian problem of his own day, he was thinking about another earlier Egyptian problem — the arrogance of the ancient Pharaoh in the time of the Exodus from Egypt. So, we can read this haftarah not only as a criticism of the Egypt of Ezekiel's time, but also a criticism of the Egypt of the time of Moses.

Jerk Alert

Yes, I know "jerk" is a strong word, and I do not take name-calling lightly. But do you know any jerks? You probably do. And what, exactly, is a jerk? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "jerk" as "a stupid person or a person who is not well-liked or who treats other people badly."

If you read the Bible, here is what you will discover: the overwhelming majority of non-Israelite kings are jerks. (And, to be fair, there are also a few kings of Israel who fit that description). King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who destroyed the ancient kingdom of Judah during Ezekiel's time, certainly treated people badly. In the Bible he was not well liked and is portrayed as not only evil, but, despite his power, also as a helpless, pitiful, broken man.

Then there's King Ahasuerus, in the book of Esther and a famous character in the Purim story. He is hardly the brightest candle in the menorah. In fact, the Rabbinic tradition refers to him as ha-melekh ha-tipeish, "the foolish king." He is something of a buffoon and party animal who fortunately has the good sense to listen to Esther.

But, the winner of the Greatest Biblical Jerk Contest is none other than Pharaoh, king of Egypt. The Pharaoh portrayed in the Torah portion is a guy who simply cannot get it right. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that he should be letting the ancient Israelites go, but he simply cannot do so. God has hardened his heart, and then he hardens his own heart — which does not mean an overdose of cholesterol, but implies a stubbornness so severe that he is actually unable to do what is right. That's why God has to bring the plagues on Egypt.

It turns out that "jerkitude" ran in the Pharaoh family. Centuries later, the prophet Ezekiel yells at the Israelites: Don't put any trust in Egypt! And then, to make it even better, Ezekiel turns his attention on the Pharaoh of his time and disses him, big time. "In the tenth year, on the twelfth day of the tenth month, the word of the Lord came to me: O mortal, turn your face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him and against all Egypt. Speak these words: Thus said the Lord God: I am going to deal with you, O Pharaoh king of Egypt, mighty monster, sprawling in your channels, who said, My Nile is my own; I made it for myself" (29:1–3).

In particular, what disturbs Ezekiel about this Pharaoh? (You might rightly ask at this point: have we ever met a Pharaoh that we've liked?) Ezekiel compares Pharaoh to a crocodile, a reptilian creature that prowls the Nile. That is bad enough, but what else does Ezekiel say about this Pharaoh?

When Pharaoh said, "My Nile is my own; I made it for myself," he is saying that he is a god — and that he created the Nile — for himself! Like the original Pharaoh this ruler is clueless. The guy simply doesn't understand the words of Proverbs: "Pride goes before ruin; arrogance, before failure" (Prov. 16:18).

But even more than that: you can read the Hebrew version of Pharaoh's boast, "I made it [the Nile] for myself," as meaning "I made myself." When you think that you are so great, so powerful, so successful, that you have made yourself — you are so full of yourself, so arrogant, that you will care nothing for others. As Rabbi Andrea Carol Steinberger teaches: "It is as if the haftarah is warning Pharaoh: 'Do not see yourself as the definer of life, of what is possible and impossible to do.'"

Ezekiel compares Pharaoh to a monster, and that's bad enough. But Ezekiel's audience would have known that in the story of creation, God created the great sea monsters; they didn't create themselves. If only the Pharaohs of history knew that, that nobody is God and nobody creates themselves. A little humility can go a long way.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Va-'era' (Exodus 6:2-9:35) and Haftarah (Ezekiel 28:25-29:21): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary"
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Copyright © 2018 Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents

General Introduction
Va-'era': Torah Commentary
Va-'era': Haftarah Commentary

Editorial Reviews

“This is fantastic! It’s a game-changer for b’nai mitzvah, their parents, and their teachers. Salkin’s fresh insights remind us how transformative this experience can be.”—Rabbi Aaron Miller, Washington Hebrew Congregation

Rabbi Aaron Miller

“Rabbi Jeff Salkin has enabled b’nai mitzvah to learn and teach Torah with a commentary that is wise, helpful, and brilliantly clear.”—Rabbi David Wolpe, senior rabbi at Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, and author of David: The Divided Heart

Rabbi David Wolpe

“This is a fantastic resource . . . clear, coherent, and easy to understand. It encourages readers to grapple with real issues in the Bible that are relevant to them. It will be incredibly valuable not only to teens preparing to become bar/bat mitzvah but also to adults in navigating, challenging, and connecting to the biblical text.”—Rabbi Danielle G. Eskow, co-founder of onlinejewishlearning.com

Rabbi Danielle G. Eskow