Parshat Shemot

This Shabbat we begin reading from the second book of the Torah, the book of Exodus.  The parsha this week continues to tell the story of the Jewish people.  We learn that after the generation of Joseph and his brothers  a new Pharaoh comes to power in Egypt.  This Pharaoh, the Torah tells us, did not know Joseph and all that Joseph had done in Egypt.  He feels threatened by the Jewish people and he comes up with the idea to enslave them.  This is how the story of the Jewish people's slavery in Egypt begins.  The story from this point forward will begin to describe the Jewish people's miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt through the leadership of Moses. 
    Moses had grown up in the house of Pharaoh.  Pharaoh decreed that all male Jewish babies be killed at the time of their birth.  Moses' mother saved him by putting him in a basket and sending it down the Nile River.  Pharaoh's daughter found the basket, adopted baby Moses, and raised him as her own.  Many years later, while witnessing the cruel treatment of a Jewish slave by an Egyptian taskmaster, Moses killed the Egyptian taskmaster.   Afterwards he fled Egypt, got married, and lived for many years outside of Egypt as a shepherd.  While out with the flocks one day, God spoke to Moses from a bush that was burning but not consumed.  This is when God tells Moses that he will go back to Egypt, free the Jewish people from slavery and lead them out of Egypt. 
    During this event Moses asks God, "When I will say to the Israelites, 'the God of your fathers has sent me to you;' and they will ask me, 'what is his name?' what will I say to them?"  God's answer to Moses is, "Eheyeh asher eheyeh," which literally means, "I will be what I will be."  There are numerous explanations of what this means, and numerous ideas and meanings have been attached to them, with different and even contradictory interpretations.
    I would like to share one interpretation with you.  Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin in his classic work of Jewish mysticism, Nefesh Hachaim, describes the role of human beings in the world and our relationship with God.  He explains that when the Torah says that man was created, "in the image of God," it is not referring to a physical image.  Rather, his explanation is that just as God is the creator, human beings are to be partners in creation.  Rabbi Chaim spends a lot of time describing how every one of our actions, big or small, have an impact on the world.  Human beings' actions, good or bad, allow for God to make the world a better or worse place. 
    It is in this vein that he translates the line from our parsha¸"eheyeh asher eheyeh," to mean, "I will be with you as you are with me."  Meaning, if you have faith in me and believe in me as a God, I will be with you accordingly.   Implied in this interpretation according to Rabbi Chaim, is that human beings should consider their relationship with God as a reciprocal relationship.  Not that the relationship is entirely reciprocal in the same way it is with other people, but the idea is that it is helpful for our religious growth to think about it in that way. 
God is abstract, and often it's hard to feel God's presence during our everyday life.  As a result, many of us tend to prioritize many things over our relationship with God and cut corners in our religious life.  If we were to consider that the way in which we prioritize God is consistent with how we would want to be treated by God, it's possible that we will be motivated to act differently.  We should try to make our relationship with God a reality in our lives, and part of that is to make the same considerations that we would in a relationship with a loved one.  We would not expect  a loved one to care about us and make an effort to be close to us if we never put any effort into that relationship.  Therefore, we should expect the same dynamic in our relationship with God.  Rabbi Chaim is teaching us that the lesson from this line in our parsha, "eheyeh asher eheyeh," is that our attitude about our relationship with God should be consistent with how we would want God to behave towards us.