D'var Torah

Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then, I contradict myself./ (I am large, I contain multitudes.) — Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

This week’s Torah portion, Va’era (literally, “and I appeared”), opens with an auspicious act of self-revelation:

“God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am Adonai. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by name Adonai, I was not known to them.” (Exodus 6:2-3)

Except … wait. If this D’var Torah were a TV show or podcast, right after these verses, the record would scratch. What do you mean, God didn’t use the name “Adonai” with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Isn’t that name actually ALL OVER the book of Genesis — and don’t those characters sometimes use it to refer to God? 

Through the millennia, Jewish commentators have had two basic approaches to these questions. One approach, favored in modern academic study of the Bible, is to note that the Torah does frequently contract itself, especially when it is trying to capture moments when human beings try to connect with something greater than ourselves. This approach sees these internal contradictions as an intentional literary device, not a mistake (and also not something we need to try to explain away).  And so we have two creation stories, two flood stories, multiple stories of Abraham making a covenant with God, two versions of the Ten Commandments … and even multiple stories of the first time someone knew God by the name “Adonai.” Perhaps, much like some storytellers today, the final editors of the Torah thought there was something valuable in each of the stories they preserved — a value that went beyond coming up with one definitive account. We learn something from each of these stories — especially as they represent experiences that are hard for human beings to wrap our minds around, let alone communicate in words. 

The medieval commentators, slightly less sanguine about the idea that the Torah might contain internal contradictions, had a different approach, working to harmonize seeming discrepancies. Sometimes, their efforts can feel a little far-fetched, but sometimes, they contain insights of great beauty. The medieval commentaries on this week’s Torah portion (and specifically, Exodus 6:3) are, for me, one such example. 

Rashi and Ibn Ezra both draw our attention to the particular phrase “by my name, Adonai, I was not known to them,” and argue that if it meant that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob truly didn’t know God’s name, the verse would have instead read “I did not tell them my name, Adonai.” Instead, the passive voice (“my name was not known to them”) opens up the possibility that the verse can be read less literally — maybe it’s not so much that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob didn’t sometimes use the name Adonai (since of course, they did), as it is that they never fully experienced the attributes of God that the name Adonai represents. 

Rashi, following a tradition that different names for God represent different aspects of the divine, said that “Adonai” was associated with the attribute of “keeping faith.” Moses knew God by this name, this attribute, in a different way, because Moses met God when God came to free the Israelites from hundreds of years of slavery — God was keeping faith with them in a totally different way than anything Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could have experienced. Moses (and the people of his time) knew God by this name in a deep and powerful — and unique — way. 

What are the names by which we know God, or that which is greater than ourselves? What are the names by which we know each other? For me, Rashi’s read on this verse is a powerful reminder that there is always more for us to discover about the world, and about each other — and we can learn a great deal (maybe even connect to God in new ways!) both by having new experiences, and by talking with (and hearing the stories of) people whose experiences and perspectives are different from our own. Together, we can weave a tapestry of the world — that which is known to us, and that which is beyond our comprehension — more intricate and beautiful (and wide, and deep) than anything we might have seen or imagined alone.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Alexandra Stein