The word אלקים (Elohim) is the name for the Divine One first encountered in Torah at creation. This is the God of the big bang, of the cosmos and the laws of physics, and indeed of all laws, mathematical, physical and carmic. This God is the prototypical Judge, or more properly, since אלקים is plural, the embodiment of a kind of divine court or tribunal which both examines souls and occasions solemn oaths (see Exodus 21:6 for one example of this usage, which Rashi points out.) This name invokes the aspect of remote, absolute and almost platonic Justice — of wisdom and order beyond human comprehension, history or desire. This is the Maimonidean God to which humanity has scant access and whose footprints and other leavings in the world (“actions” per the Rambam) are as close as we humans are permitted to approach.
The unutterable word י־ה־ו־ה, often abbreviate to יי and most frequently pronounced Adonai or HaShem, refers to the imminent, moral God of human history and worldly affairs. This is the God which we resemble, and who resembles us. This is the Divinity that needs us, and whom we need. This is the God to which we ascribe (or analogize) the aspect of mercy (רחמים) and authority (מאלכות). This is the jealous God, the loving God, the eminent God residing in agriculture, human invention and endeavor, fate, love, pity and the full drama of human and collective destiny.
In the tales of Torah there are two primary mediators between the Israelites and God/King Pharaoh: Joseph and Moses. Though Joseph, Egypt and Israel alike are redeemed from the scourge of famine, and in particular Jacob and all of his descendents live peacefully within Pharaoh’s borders. By contrast through Moses Egypt is humiliated by plagues of earthy pestilence and subsequent military catastrophe. In the second verse of our parshah God states both God’s intention and means quite clearly — the judgement on the Egyptians will be both harsh and public, and will be brought down upon them for the purpose of establishing that they (or perhaps he — since the target seems to be Pharaoh himself) are no match for God.
Two emissaries, two diplomatic resolutions. Joseph and Moses. One salvific, communal, exhilic. The other uncompromising, bloody, principled, legal (Pharaoh is given ten plagues, just as Israel will be given ten commandments) and indeed proto-Zionist. There is an obvious association between the aspects of God described above and these two definitive stories. One would think that it was surely Elohim who delivered Israel, destroyed Egypt and gave us law — since these seem like the actions of a divine Judge concerned more with what is cosmically right and wrong than with the almost operatic Joseph narrative. Just so, it surely seems as though HaShem/Adonai should have brought about the peace of Joseph in all of its human complexity, deep intimacy and delicacy.
But how wonderful and how strange that this is not so. For in the texts we read that the God of Joseph is אלקים (Elohim) — and by this name did Joseph identify the power of his dreams. And it was יי (HaShem/Adonai) who led Moses and Aaron in their campaign to liberate Israel, defeat Pharaoh and establish the covenantal law. A God of Judgement clothed in the garment mercy, a God of Mercy clothed in the robes of the judge. We learn here that when Israel dwells in exile, as at least half of us do today, we should pay careful attention to the shifting nature of the divine, and to attend to which aspect is active in our world at any particular point in our story.
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Israel has long struggled with these matters. In Ketubot 111a we find the early Rabbis wrestling with the nature of their own exile (and to some extent assimilation) in Babylon. Some, like Rav Yehuda bar Ezekiel, opposed aliya, arguing that “since the Babylonian exile was imposed by divine decree, permission to leave Babylonia for Eretz Yisrael could be granted only by God.” Rabbi Zeira, for his part, thought this argument (and the verse from Jeremiah that supports it) referred not to people but to Temple articles that had been removed to Babylon. He therefore saw no problem, and moved to Jerusalem immediately. Exile and integration vs. aliya and separateness. Compromise and humanity vs. justice and uniqueness. The Rabbis, too, found that a sense of contradiction or reversal dwelt in the heart of their version of this question.
From he same daf of Talmud, we read:
Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Ḥanina … said: Why are these three oaths (Song of Songs 2:7, 3:5, 8:4) needed? One, so that the Jews should not ascend to Eretz Yisrael as a wall, but little by little. And another one, that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the Jews that they should not rebel against the rule of the nations of the world. And the last one is that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the nations of the world that they should not subjugate the Jews excessively.
All three of these verses from Kohelet are identical, and read:
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the gazelles or by the does of the field, Do not stir up nor awaken love Until it pleases.
In other words, compromise!
Do not stoke the fires of justice so much that Jews cannot thrive as world citizens, or indeed as emissaries into the world — seekers of divine presence everywhere. But neither extinguish the fire entirely — let it emerge when it pleases — ie when God wills it or it is destined to. Rav Yehuda bar Ezekiel forbade aliya to all who followed him — students, children and associates. Others sought it uncompromisingly, supposing that true Jewish life could only occur in the Land. As Jews we assume this dual posture at all times — we are simultaneously members of the human family writ large — subject to the same human dynamics we share with all of our brothers and sisters — and we are uniquely and uncompromisingly attached and bound, at a core level beyond any understanding, to the absolute order of the universe — to Elohim our ultimate source, and to the inexorable magnetism that the Land of Israel exerts on each of our hearts. In our exile, we face Jerusalem each time we pray and one final time at the end of life, when we are buried.
Rabbi Yosei’s three oaths make sense in this context:
- make aliya like Moses tried to or Rabbi Zeira did, but not too dramatically or en masse (as a “wall”)
- do not rebel against the nations — following Joseph or Rav Yehuda, but never abandon our Jewish souls, just as they did not
Remarkably, Yosei’s third oath applies not to Israel, but to our hosts, the nations, who are commanded not to refrain from repressing us entirely, but only excessively. This too is a compromise of sorts, for it was widely supposed that this was not, perhaps, their natural inclination.
To compromise is to achieve a reversal, a turning — in fact a teshuvah. When we look into our own deepest inclinations and find room for the coexistence their opposites, we repent from a kind of moral absolutism. We are commanded. Make aliya, but not violently. Do not revolt, but do not deny your heart. Expect to be oppressed (we are realists here) but never crushed. God’s dual nature is embedded in each of these oaths. What we are shown here is how to look into our hearts and see not only our own deepest nature, but the moderating influence of the other side of the divine coin. Our inner Joseph is moderated by the absolutism of an inner Moses. And our striving inner Moses is softened by the diplomatic Joseph, intimate of Pharaoh. As Jews, we are forever suspended between these poles: between Babylon and Jerusalem, Egypt and Sinai, the exlie and the Land.
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The great Tzaddik and Rabbi Levi Yitzok of Berditchev shed light on these matters in his extensive commentary on Bo. He begins by observing that the word itself, בא, means “come” and is used here in contrast to an alternative — לא — that more specifically means “go”. In other words, why do we here not לא אל פרעה but בא אל פרעה? Do we (Israel) approach a worldly ruler boldly, with demands (go) or do we approach them as supplicants (come.) Do we come bearing redemption (like Joseph), or do we come wielding justice (like Moses)?
The Berditchever references an old Talmudic tradition of uncertain origin represented clearly by Babya ben Ahser ibn Halawa (commentary on Bereshit), an influential Spanish Talmudist and Kabbalist who writes:
You should know that wherever the name of G’d (the four-lettered one, even) appears in a reverse order such as here when the respective first letters in the four words ‘הארץ ומשם הפיצם ה appear, the Torah means the attribute of Justice. This is just one of the examples of this rule. In every one of the numerous instances where we encounter the use of the four-lettered name of G’d where we would not have expected it, the addition of such a reverse allusion as we have shown here makes it plain that the Torah had the attribute of Justice in mind.
The unutterable name of the God who we resemble, the eminent God concerned with people, when reversed, signals the presence of God’s other, more absolute אלקים-nature. Mercy cloaked in Justice. And this is not the only reversal to be found. Once we look to the alef-bet for signs of this kind of inversion, we begin to see it everywhere. We see it in תשרי (tishrei), the name of our holiest month and the occasion for our deepest encounter with the Ineffable Judge during the days of awe. Eliyahu Munk points out that to spell this word is to write the Hebrew alef bet in reverse order from the end — ת-ש-ר. (The functional equivalent in English would be the sequence Z-Y-X.) We start at the end and proceed backwards — we reverse ourselves. And in so doing we encounter the aspect of God most removed from our own familiar humanity.
(The month of אב, by contrast, which precedes both תשרי and אלול, represents the opposite. To spell that month, we begin the alef bet in its normal order, from the beginning.)
And finally let us observe what the mystics knew well — that the name of our parshah itself is also a reversal. It is “av” written backwards. In English it would be written B-A … a reversal of the alphabet’s beginning. The name בא is a signal that אלקים-Justice is afoot, even though that name for God is entirely absent from the Parshah.
