The Bible for the Clueless But Curious

Joseph and all his brothers die. A new generation arises with no memory of the patriarchs, and begins rapidly to assimilate into Egypt.

There is also a new generation of Egyptians who has long forgotten Joseph's service to Egypt. The Israelites seem to be a dangerously powerful minority in Egypt. The Egyptians are fearful and jealous of them, and so they enslave them.

Through the centuries of Jewish exile, tolerance and assimilation have alternated with persecution and oppression.

In the late 19th century, the most prominent financier of Prussia's unification of Germany was a Jewish banker named Gerson Blechroder. Blechroder's children converted to Christianity and intermarried. His grandchildren were deported to Auschwitz.

In Hebrew, one word for "man" is zachar. The word for "memory" is zecher. Memory doesn't just tell us where we've left our keys. It tells us who we are. We are the sum of the experiences that have formed us. And when the Israelites forgot their ancestors, they forgot the meaning of their own identity.

After the sixth plague -- boils -- the Bible says that, "God hardened Pharaoh's heart," but this seems grossly unfair! How can God warn Pharaoh to obey and then harden his heart so he can't listen?

God doesn't want to coerce Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. He wants Pharaoh to admit he is wrong. But the plagues are so overwhelming and frightening, Pharaoh almost gives in against his will. So God hardens Pharaoh's heart to help him do what he wants to do, which is to go on saying "no."

There is another, more unsettling, explanation of God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Having been pig-headed for so long, Pharaoh loses the ability to change. If you recognize the truth and refuse to act on what you know, you dig yourself into a rut that gets deeper and deeper.

The Torah describes how each Hebrew family designates a lamb, and sets it aside. On the evening of the Israelites' deliverance from slavery in Egypt, they slaughter the lamb, roast and eat it. The lambs' blood is placed on the doorposts of their houses as a sign that Israelites live in those homes.

The name Passover comes from this offering. When God kills the Egyptian firstborn, He passes over the homes whose doors are smeared with blood.

When oppressed people become free, they are frequently just as brutal as their erstwhile oppressors. It turns out that it is not oppression they objected to. They'd just prefer to be on the other end of the whip.

Society's values implicate us unless we explicitly repudiate them. As a condition of their freedom, God demands that the Hebrews withdraw from Egypt and reject its values.

(This same idea helps explain why Noah had to shut himself up in an ark to escape the flood, and why Lot and his wife were told to walk away from Sodom without looking back.)

The Hebrews mark their separation from Egypt by going into their homes, shutting their doors, and marking them with the blood of their offering -- the sign of their devotion to God.

The Israelites travel into the desert. For three days they find no water and complain against Moses. God provides it. They journey on, find no food, and again complain to Moses. God again provides it. The Israelites travel on, and again they have no water. This time they attack Moses so viscously that he's afraid they're going to kill him!

Like the Israelites in the desert, each of us is surrounded with the evidence of God's love and care. We're alive. We can think, speak, move, breath, see, hear. But we're still filled with bitterness for things we don't have.

"If you had all your same problems," I asked, "but additionally you were blind, would it cheer you up to recover your sight?"

That's the secret of misery. Take everything you have for granted, and carefully focus on what you don't have, and you'll always be miserable.

You take your kids to Disneyland. They go on 97 rides and spend the day eating ice cream. You give them pizza for dinner and read them seventeen stories before bed. Then they ask for a cookie, and when you say no, they burst into tears.

"Don't taunt or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt... Don't cause pain to widows or orphans."

It is a natural inclination to pick on the weak. And those who have been weak and picked on are most likely to revenge themselves by picking in turn on others. The Bible warns us to exercise special protection for those incapable of protecting themselves.

People sometimes say they can't believe in God because the world is so full of suffering. But I have found that people who say that are rarely involved in stopping the world's suffering. And the people who are involved in healing the world's suffering rarely talk like that. When your life revolves around yourself, the world is a cold, sterile, and unfriendly place. When your life revolves around giving to others, you feel how wonderful it is to be alive.

Bart Stern, a Holocaust survivor, told me of the time a man in Auschwitz was robbed of his daily ration of bread. Because of the starved and emaciated state of concentration camp inmates, this was tantamount to a sentence of death. Bart gave the man some of his own bread.

He told me, "The many thousands of dollars I've given to tzedaka since the war are nothing compared to that one piece of bread."

Bart had nothing to spare, but he nevertheless found the ability to give. Perhaps because of that, he was one of the gentlest and happiest men I ever knew. Auschwitz didn't make him bitter. It made him better.

God tells Moses to build a Tabernacle, a portable temple in the desert, to be the heart of the Jewish people's national and spiritual life.

Who cares about this? Unless you're making an Indiana Jones movie, what possible relevance could this have today?

Life needs meaning. Without meaning, even the most comfortable life has no pleasure.

In his textbook, "Existential Psychotherapy," the psychiatrist Irv Yalom quotes the following suicide note:

"Imagine a happy group of morons who are engaged in work. They are carrying bricks in an open field. As soon as they have stacked all the bricks at one end of the field, they proceed to transport them to the opposite end. This continues without stop, and every day of every year they are busy doing the same thing. One day, one of the morons stops long enough to ask himself what he is doing. He wonders what purpose there is in carrying the bricks. And from that instant on he is not quite as content with his occupation as he had been before.

In a relationship with God, our actions suddenly acquire a larger context. Our choices have significance. The sense of our own being becomes enriched with permanence.

God is everywhere, but by building a Tabernacle, the Israelites created a tangible sense that God was present in their lives. The Tabernacle was a vehicle for their relationship with God.

After receiving the Ten Commandments, Moses ascends Mount Sinai and stays there for 40 days. Uncertain when Moses will return and fearful he has died, the Israelites feel lost and leaderless. They make an idol of a golden calf. Then they become drunk and have an orgy.

The music is just one part of a rock concert's appeal. The crowd is drunk or high; it's dark, and the noise is overwhelming. In that disorienting atmosphere of clamor and passion, we are briefly freed from our own fragile individuality and swept up in the power of the crowd. That sense of release is what the Israelites sought in their worship of the calf.

God tells Moses what the Israelites have done. Then God says, "Now don't try to stop Me, because I'm going to destroy the whole nation."

Moses responds, "Why should You be so angry at Your people, whom You took out of Egypt, with great power and a strong hand? Why should Egypt say, 'He took them out to kill them in the mountains and to annihilate them from the face of the earth?' Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel ... to whom You swore, and You told them, 'I shall increase your offspring, like the stars of heaven, and this entire land of which I spoke, I shall give to your offspring and it shall be their heritage forever.'" God agrees not to destroy the people (Exodus 32:7-14).

#2 of 5 in the Aish.com Bible For Clueless Series
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