Exodus Cycle Five Vaera

Vaera

Softening the Heart

This is the interesting observation about Vaera. God appears to Moses and says quite clearly that he’s appearing differently. He’s not appearing (to him) like the God of his fathers. The God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob is not as defined, a lot more distant, not really active in the lives of the Israelites. This God though is closer-in, much more involved and present in the day to day stresses and actions of His people. He’s more visible to human eyes. He’s even a conversationalist. 

However even with this new-found intimacy and (the repetition of) the covenant,  the focus of this whole parashah is not on the Israelites. It's on convincing the Pharoah to allow the Israelites to leave Egypt. 

Let’s put it this way. Moses has tried to convince the Israelites of his God-given power. He’s tried to convince the Pharoah. Both entities have raised their eyebrows at this hair-lipped ex-prince who seems to have just appeared from herding the sheep. Even with his brother standing by him, no one believes.

The work though that follows is not with the Israelites. Moses doesn’t sit down and speak with them trying to convince them he is the prophet. He doesn’t try to lead mind-direction, heart-direction, soul-direction or body-direction seminars. He doesn’t try to inspire them with his personal-spiritual bank account with God. He doesn’t give a detail by detail vivid and picturesque publication and transmission of the burning bush. He doesn’t find some interesting herb to feed them or concoction to pour down their throats in the hope to numb their fears. He doesn’t bribe them, cajole them, stalk them or create a paper trail to convince them. Nor does he have such an overwhelming need to be liked that he bends backwards to ingratiate himself to them. He doesn’t strategize like a politician or a university professor.  He doesn’t bring bowls of chips or free pizza to town meetings. He doesn’t beg them, promise fireworks or gourmet food, or play the flute like the Pied Piper.

Even though God says quite clearly that He will show Moses how to win them over, God also tells him he will win over the Pharoah. And the rest of the parashah does not focus on us (as we like to see ourselves) but on  the darkest parts of us, the chain-gang master, the slave driver, the cynic and skeptic that keeps us stuck in the mud, the gigantic shadow that hangs over the entire hemisphere hiding not only the sky and the sun but trees and earth, the inflexible administrator, the reigning ego, the  fear-and-doubt bugs that can eat us to the bones,  our abundance turned into knife-like rain crashing down from the sky.

 In other words, the rest of the parashah focuses on the miraculous use of tools of darkness to subjugate the center of darkness. And Moses seems to be convinced that once that center is hit, really hit hard, it will eject the Isrealites, the true Israelites, the pure kind compassionate loving patient Israelites. In other words, not only will the energy of the shadow propel us far from its disgusting gut, but we will lose all traces of shadow once we are in propulsion. 

This we learn later is far from fact. 

There must be a reason though why Moses focuses on the Pharoah though and not on the Israelites. I think we can all learn from his action.  He is performing a certain alchemy, no doubt, taking the energy of the Pharoah and molding it into a catalyst of freedom.

As we read in Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer,  for every plague that God brought upon the Egyptians, the Pharoahs magicians also produced the same plague  until God brought upon them the boils and  the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils (Exodus 9:11). Here we see that both light and darkness create tools to get to the dark-core-center. As the tools drill their way in though the layers are disposed-of or destroyed along the way. Alchemy is never a simple process. 

  

But often it is the only process.

After all, we can’t get rid of darkness. But we can use it to our benefit. Sometimes therefore when faced with an abundance of assault weapons, rising mental health issues, a rising number of vets, meth addiction, any addicts, abuse, brilliant manipulators and the tiniest seemingly inconspicuous doubt, instead of attempting to amputate it off of our paradigm forever (an impossible thing to do anyway) we may be wise to use these tools to get to the real core of the problem in our society: ourselves. We may be wise to face-up to the alchemy that needs to happen within our minds and hearts.

Yes, the Softening.