Freedom to Serve

This week’s Torah portion is Va’eira, which means and He appeared. It begins with a repetition of God’s name, yud, hei, vav, hei. God then makes five magnificent promises to Moses, that we will be taken out of Egypt and given our own land. Moses doubts that he will be able to influence Pharaoh but God sends him with Aaron to begin the cycle of the ten plagues. Seven plagues occur in this portion. There is a well-known phrase that appears six times in the Torah, “Send out my people that they may serve me.” Sometimes it is translated, “Let my people go, that they may bring offerings.” (Ex. 7:16, 26; 8:16; 9:1, 13; 10:3) It’s important to realize that we were not just being let go. We were being freed for something: for service.

The Etz Chayim commentary also stresses this. The power struggle between Pharaoh and God was about who we would serve. It is said in the text that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart, but in the first few interactions, the Torah reports that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. How did he do this? By not being willing to cede any of his power. We know that God met power with power: Pharaoh’s use of his power came back at him like a boomerang, to mix cultural references. Moses knew that he himself had no power, and he became God’s servant. This is what God intended for the Israelites: to become God’s servants rather than Pharaoh’s, but Pharaoh believed we should serve him. By beginning the portion with God’s name, which means Being, Existence, God introduces to Moses only, and through him to us, the idea of universal moral law. God tells Moses to say, “Send out the people that they may serve me”; but perhaps we should read this, “Send out the people that they may serve me,” and not you. God wants Pharaoh, Moses, the Egyptians, and the Israelites all to realize that God is not only a higher and more powerful power, but that God is natural law and moral law. God is gravity, in the physical realm, and also goodness and freedom in the moral realm.

Pharaoh does not seem to grasp the principle of moral cause and effect, which the Torah teaches us near the end of Leviticus, where it says, “the same shall be done to you.” (Levit. 26:16) The Israelites’ God was such a threat to Egypt because God’s presence meant the end of the Absolute Monarchy and also a threat to immoral authority. We know that there are no chiefs in Judaism, only the rank and file. There are no rulers in Judaism, only servants. Had Pharaoh ceded his power to God, he would have become just another servant, a king no more.

An interesting detail is that Pharaoh asks Moses to speak to God for him. Pharaoh can’t have an honest relationship with God because Pharaoh is playing chess with power, manipulating and twisting the truth. He doesn’t understand the power he is trying to wield. God doesn’t want us freed in order to win. God wants our service to change the world.

Moses asks Pharaoh to let us go that we may bring offerings, only that doesn’t happen. We are the offerings; it is ourselves that God desires, for what Abraham Joshua Heschl called, moral grandeur and spiritual audacity. When Heschl walked with Martin Luther King and stood by him, they, and so many others, stood for God’s higher authority. In ancient Egypt it was a very special time in history, when God made plans to introduce the understanding of natural law and moral truth: that human power has limits because it must serve that which is greater than itself. If it benefits only a few, it is false, If it benefits the whole, it comes from the Divine.

When we exploit people and try to keep them down, taking away rights and opportunities, we use power dishonestly, twisting the truth. When we promote each other’s welfare, freedom, and prosperity, taking their plight as our own, we do God's work. May we serve the greater good as did Dr. King and those who he inspired to go with him. May we keep in mind that we are here for service: for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity, to make this world a better place. Each of us has a role to play in the unfolding of goodness, in ourselves and in the world. May those who have served before us be our examples and may we work with God’s power in the universe, and not against it.