Coming home: the covenantal promise

There are certain things in life we take for granted, and chief amongst these are the relationships we have built over a lifetime. So one wonders exactly what Hashem (G-d) is saying at the beginning of this week’s

portion:

“And G-d spoke to Moshe and said to him ‘I am G-d’.” (Exodus 6:2)

Why is G-d introducing Him/Her self to Moshe? Especially considering the point we are at in the story:

After seventy-nine years, at the burning bush, Moshe accepts the mission to go back to Egypt and facilitate the redemption of the Jewish people from slavery. Moshe arrives back in Egypt and things seem to be off to a good start, but something goes terribly wrong, and overnight the dream becomes a nightmare. Not only are the Jews not free, they are more enslaved than ever. In response to Moshe’s and Aaron’s request for freedom, Pharaoh has doubled the already impossible workload, and the Jews bend under the terrible burden. Moshe, in response to the people’s bitter challenge, calls out to the G-d who has promised redemption, asking:

“Why have you sent me?” (5; 22)

Where is the redemption You promised us is at hand?

And it is at this juncture that G-d decides to ‘introduce’ Himself!? What can this mean? Further, G-d seems to continue with a short history lesson:

“And I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… but my name I did not reveal to them. And I have also fulfilled my covenant to give them the land of Canaan that they once lived in.” (ibid. ; 6:3-4)

Huh? What covenant, exactly, has G-d fulfilled? They are still slaves in the land of Egypt, and their oppression is worse than ever!

Deep in the heart of the old city of Jerusalem, lies a broad wall, covered with moss, and steeped in history. Most tourists don’t seem to get that far, bypassing the corner street that leads to it, in search of better-known historical sites. It’s almost as though this wall comes to those who earn it.

Twenty seven hundred years ago, the big bully on the block was the empire of Assyria. Ashur, as it was called in the Bible, had mustered the largest army the world had ever seen: 185,000 men. And this army, commanded by Saragon, the great Assyrian general, had been waging a campaign of terror and destruction over the entire Middle East. In the Talmud, Saragon is called Sancheirev, from the language of Churban, destruction; Sancheirev was the destroyer. After destroying the ten northern tribes in a brutally violent military campaign, Sancheirev set his sights on the pearl of the Middle East: Jerusalem.

The southern kingdom of Judea was not much to speak of twenty seven hundred years ago. Encompassing some twenty or thirty square miles around Jerusalem, with little in the way of a standing army, and no natural barriers to rely on, the Jews who managed to stay ahead of the advancing Assyrian army, escaped into the old city walls of Jerusalem.

Soon, the city was overflowing with thirty thousand Jews, desperate to survive the coming onslaught. The King at the time was Chizkiahu (Hezekiah), who was also a prophet, and the Book of Kings tells how he set about fortifying the walls of the city, which had fallen into disrepair. Especially, the verses point out how he built a broad wall to encompass all the homes that had sprouted up in the northwestern corner of the city outside the walls. Indeed, in their haste to build this wall ahead of the advancing Assyrians, they built up two outer walls, throwing stone and mud inside to achieve a wide, broad wall against the Assyrian battering rams, and they built it up in some places on top of some of the homes to save time. One has the sense the last stones were in place just in time.

What must it have felt like, to see 185,000 men bent on your destruction coming up through the valley and surrounding your home?

Things soon went from bad to worse. There was no food, and the Jews were starving to death. There were no other options, so King Chizkiahu did what Jews have been doing ever since: he called the entire city together in prayer.

Understand that these thirty thousand Jews represented the entire Jewish people; there was no one else left. And they were surrounded by the mightiest army the world had ever known. Twenty seven hundred years ago, we were on the verge of the final solution to the Jewish problem.

But, any time the entire Jewish people will get together to do anything, is a moment of enormous promise. So the people pray, and Hashem performs a miracle. In the middle of the night, the entire Assyrian army falls dead before the angel of the Lord.

(Amazingly, this story which is told partly in the 19th chapter of the second book of Kings is also described in the ancient writings of Herodotus, the historian of Alexander the great, who says the 200,000 strong army of Assyria mysteriously dies of a mysterious plague outside the walls of Jerusalem.)

Today, you can see this wall, discovered courtesy of Jordanian mortar fire in the Six-Day War. You can see how the wall is built as a broad wall, rising on top of ancient homes and built exactly as the Bible describes. Carbon dated along with the Assyrian arrowheads found below it in the valley, it sits quietly triumphant, at long last rediscovered, having waited so long for her children to come home.

There are no words to describe what it feels like to stand above such a wall, listening to the wind howling through the alleys of Jerusalem. It is almost too much to take in. So you look at one stone, and you wonder where these Jews, so long ago, found the faith to build such a wall and still believe they would survive….

So what is this covenant G-d speaks of to Moshe? A thousand years earlier, this was the covenant G-d made with Abraham. Abraham, seeing himself childless at nearly one hundred years old, is promised by G-d that he will have a son who will inherit his dream. And Abraham (Genesis 15:4-6) trusts in G-d and believes in this promise. But then Abraham asks an amazing question:

‘How do I know my descendants will really inherit this land?’ (15: 8)

Incredibly, Abraham, who has no problem believing he and Sarah will have a child, though Sarah is ninety years old, does not believe G-d will give the land to the descendants of that child?

So G-d makes a covenant with Abraham, promising him that his children will one day be strangers in a strange land, and they will suffer there, but that they will eventually come home, and that He will give this land, the Land of Israel, to his children.

Rav Soleveitchik, one of the great rabbis of the last generation, explains this puzzling sequence of events. You see, Abraham misunderstood the nature of our relationship with G-d. Abraham assumed our relationship was one of contract, or chozeh. G-d teaches Abraham that our relationship is really one of Brit, or covenant.

A contract is an agreement whereby both parties agree to a list of mutual conditions, which bind them to certain commitments. But if one side violates the conditions, the agreement is no longer binding on the other side. This is how Abraham understood our relationship with Hashem. As long as we do our bit, Hashem will do his. But if we violate our end of the bargain, then Hashem need no longer be committed to his. Abraham was confident that he could keep his end of the bargain, but how could he guarantee that his descendants would do the same? And when they violated their end of the bargain, how could Hashem promise they would still deserve the Land of Israel?

Hashem explains to Abraham, however, that our relationship with G-d is not one of contract. We are bound by a covenant. And a covenant, unlike a contract, can never be broken. Kind of like the ‘agreement’ we enter into when we have children. You can divorce a wife, but never a child. They will always be your children.

Hashem promises that, no matter what happens, one day we will come home. That is our covenant; our promise.

And this is precisely what Moshe and the Jewish people needed to hear, specifically now, when things seemed so dark. Bending under the backbreaking labor, enslaved for over two hundred years, without even straw to make bricks, laughed at by Pharaoh and the Egyptians, Moshe and the Jewish people are reminded in their darkest moment of that same covenant.

In fact, this is what the name that G-d ‘introduces’ Himself as really means: the same letters that form the root of Hayah, Hoveh, and Yehiyeh, Hashem was, is, and will be. This is the name of G-d that represents the fact that Hashem transcends time and nature. That we need to remember, when things seem so challenging, that Hashem promised so long ago, that just because things don’t make sense, indeed may never make sense from our perspective in this world, that it is all a part of our journey, begun so long ago. And that one day, somehow, Hashem will bring us home.

The Jewish people, after two hundred years of darkness in Egypt, were so lost. Hashem tells Moshe: you have to remind them of who they are, and of all they can be.

Right above this ancient broad wall, sits a playground, where the Jewish children of the old city of Jerusalem come to play and laugh in the sunshine.

Twenty five hundred years ago, amidst the flames of the destruction of the Temple, the prophet Zechariah (8:4-5) issues an amazing prophesy:

“There will come a time, so says the Lord of Hosts, when the old will yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem, leaning on their walking sticks from length of days, and the city streets of Jerusalem will be filled with the sounds of the children, playing in her alleyways.”

These children, playing in that playground, above that wall, are the fulfillment of a twenty five hundred year old dream. The Jewish dream has never been about armies marching in; our dream has been that one day the children will come back to play.

After two thousand years of wandering, we are home.

And if you come to visit, and walk through the alleys of Jerusalem, you can see it, too, this incredible twenty seven hundred year old wall, waiting for so long for all of her children to come home to play….

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem,

Binny Freedman

Rav Binny Freedman, Rosh Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem’s Old City is a Company Commander in the IDF reserves, and lives in Efrat with his wife Doreet and their four children.