Jan 15/05 — Shabbat Bo

Commentary by Rabbi Larry Pinsker

After seven devastating plagues and Moses’ warning of an eighth, Pharaoh's advisors say: "How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go to worship their God!” (Ex. 10:7) Pharaoh tells Moses to go with the men to “worship your God” (Ex. 10:8), but Moses wants the elderly, children, and flocks to go as well—which Pharaoh rejects—so the plagues of locusts and darkness fall.

Now Pharaoh tells Moses that everyone may go, but without flocks and herds. Moses declares that not a single hoof will be left behind: everything must be taken because, "We do not know with what we must worship the Lord until we get there.” (Ex. 10:26)

This remark is not simply a bargaining strategy. Rather, it is one of the most profound truths in Judaism: whenever we go forth to meet God in the world, we have to go with everything we’ve got.

As we experience the world through trial-and-error, through uncertainty in decision-making and through leaps of faith, we meet God as He has chosen to be in the moment of our meeting. The poet Peter Meinke refers to the God of Israel as “the God Who Surprises.” We cannot always expect God to meet us as we would like God to be.

How do we live with this way of thinking about God? The nineteenth-century Hasidic master Rabbi Chayim Halberstamm of Sandz was teaching a group of his students. To one he said: "What would you do if you happened upon a wallet full of money on Shabbat, when we aren’t permitted to handle money? Would you pick it up?"

"Of course not!" his disciple replied.

"You are a fool!" Reb Chayim snapped.

He asked a second student: "And what would you do? Would you pick up the wallet and take it?"

Having heard his master’s reprimand to the first student, the second replied, "Oh yes!"

"You are a sinner!" the master said sharply.

Turning to a third, Reb Chayim said: "And you? What would you do?"

The third student said, "Well, I do not know. On finding the wallet full of money, I would struggle with myself in deciding whether or not to take it. I hope I would be able to make the right decision, but right now I cannot say what I would do."

Reb Chaim turned to his students and said, "At last we have the real answer: truly, we shall not know how to worship God until we get there." Time and events are the real test of our faith, and we cannot always know how we will respond.