January 5, 2024 /24 Tevet 5784
Yesterday afternoon, our Sheva class (7th graders) spent half an hour gazing at a fire. We frequently work together building fires, but this week our task was to look, listen, feel, smell, and taste (yes taste) a fire that was already going in BAI’s backyard. My educational goal was to teach something about mindfulness and the art of awareness. And I had an ulterior motive. I wanted our Sheva students to put themselves in Moses’s shoes (so to speak) to imagine and perhaps even understand his experience at the burning bush. With the help of the Torah’s text and a few choice paintings of the scene, they got it.
The Torah’s description of the moment begins with these words: Now Moshe was shepherding the flock of Yitro his father- in-law, priest of Midyan. He led the flock behind the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, to Horev. [Exodus 3:1] ‘Behind the wilderness’ is the intriguing phrase. Translator Everett Fox notes that “the word seems to convey a certain mystery. Fairy tales often portray the hero’s going deep into a forest and the like.”
19th century commentator Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (known as Netziv) spells it out: Moses was trying to direct the flock to a place ‘even more wilderness’ than the wilderness; his purpose was to ‘experience solitude and to investigate the nature of Divinity.’ Stunning! Moses didn’t just happen upon a bush engulfed in flames; he was in search of God. And quite dramatically, he finds what he’s looking for.
The Midrash powerfully narrates the sequence of events: “He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed.”Another interpretation: since the Holy One had spoken with Moses and he had not sought to step away from his work, God showed him something in order to turn him so that he would see and speak with Him. Thus you find at the beginning: “an angel of the LORD appeared to him,”and Moses did not go. When he stepped away from his work and went to see, immediately it says, “and God called to him out of the bush.” [Exodus Rabbah 2:5]
Moses in search of God in search of Moses!
Soon to be Rabbi Lilliana Shvartsmann (JTS Class of 2024), writing on the Seminary’s website this week, poses the question ‘Moses the Mindful?’ My answer (JTS Class of 1990) is a resounding YES. Brava to Rabbi Shvartsmann for raising the question, and bravo to our Sheva students who saw it and proved the point!
Shabbat Shalom
