Discovering the Divine at the Burning Bush

Rabbi Arthur Waskow​ (The Shalom Center Blog, 12/28/2015)

As Moses faces the unquenchably fiery Voice Who is sending him on a mission to end slavery under Pharaoh, he warns the Voice that the people will challenge him: “Sez who?” And the Holy One, the Wholly One, answers: “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, I Will Be Who I Will Be” –- a fitting Name for a universe that is always Becoming. A universe in which the powerless poor can be empowered and the pharaoh’s power can dissolve like powder into the Sea of Reeds. Then God adds, “But that’s a mouthful. You can use just ‘Ehyeh, I Will Be,’ as my nickname, if you like.”
“And oh yes, you can also call me ‘YHWH.’" But we actually can’t. There’s no way to “pronounce” those letters, with no vowels. And for a couple of millennia, Jews have been strictly taught not even to try pronouncing it but instead to say “Adonai.”

Rabbi Arthur Waskow is a contemporary Renewal rabbi, thinker, author and activist.

.....YHVH indeed states that he will always be present, but at any given moment as the one as whom he then, in that given moment, will be present. He who promises his steady presence, his steady assistance, refuses to restrict himself to definite forms of manifestation ; how could the people even venture to conjure and limit him ! If the first part of the statement states : " I do not need to be conjured for I am always with you ", the second adds : " but it is impossible to conjure me "..... In the revelation at the Burning Bush religion is demagicized. ......

Moses is first instructed, by an exceptionally daring linguistic device, to tell the people " Ehyeh, I shall be present, or I am present, sends me to you ", and immediately afterwards : " YHVH the God of your fathers sends me to you ". That Ehyeh is not a name ; the God can never be named so ; only on this one occasion, in this sole moment of transmitting his work, is Moses allowed and ordered to take the God's self-comprehension in his mouth as a name.

Again and again, when God says in the narrative : " Then will the Egyptians recognize that I am YHVH, " or " you will recognize that I am YHVH, " it is clearly not the name as a sound, but the meaning revealed in it, which is meant. The Egyptians shall come to know that I (unlike their gods) am the really present One in the midst of the human world, the standing and acting One ; you will know that I am He who is present with you, going with you and directing your cause.

From Martin Buber, Moses, on God’s name

“From Moses’ own idioms, we understand that he experiences an excess of ‘feelings and thoughts,’ a kind of congested intensity, as sealing his lips… the irony is that Moses who cannot speak can articulate so powerfully a fragmented state of being…..desire and recoil inhabit his imagination. An inexpressible yearning can find only imprecise representation. Language is in exile and can be viscerally imagined as such. This both disqualifies him and, paradoxically, qualifies him for the role that God has assigned him.”

Moses, A Human Life, Aviva Zornberg (2016)

"Still overwhelming silent, Moses arrives at the Mountain of God, where a bush burns without being consumed. Fascinated, in soliloquy, he then says, "Let me turn aside to see this great vision" (Exodus 3:3). When God calls him by name-- twice -- he responds, "Here I am". But throughout God's long speech, in which he promises salvation for "my people" and commissions Moses as his delegate in delivering the Israelites from Egypt, Moses utters only two questions: "Who am I?" he asks (Exodus 3:11) and, "If they ask me, what is his name, what should I tell them?" (Ex. 3:13). Both questions express a desire to know mysteries: his own identity, God's identity; questions within questions. But in both cases his desire is framed by the need to explain himself to others. His concern, it seems, is largely with how he will be received by Pharoah and by the Israelites, who now represent fragments of his split identity (his "grandfather" Pharaoh, on the one hand, and his newly perceived brothers).

Again, Moses listens silently to God's long speech, commissioning him and foretelling the narrative of the Exodus. Only in Chapter 4, after a scattering of brief questions, does Moses begin to speak his mind: "they will not believe me, nor will they listen to my voice" (Exodus 4:1). Repeatedly, he speaks of his inability to speak: "Please O God I have never been a man of words, either yesterday or the day before, or now that you have spoken to your servant; I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue" (Ex.4:10). In a sense, he is never as eloquent as when he invokes his speech disability, the weight he carries inside his mouth. Ironically, this is his most expressive moment so far, when he puts something of his inner life to words. Aviva Zornberg, Moses: A Human Life, Pages 109-110

Blessing at the Burning Bush

You will have to decide

if you want this—

want the blessing

that comes to you

on an ordinary day

when you are minding

your own path,

bent on the task before you

that you have done

a hundred times,

a thousand.

You will have to choose

for yourself

whether you will attend

to the signs,

whether you will open your eyes

to the searing light, the heat,

whether you will open

your ears, your heart

to the voice

that knows your name,

that tells you this place

where you stand—

this ground so familiar

and therefore unregarded—

is, in fact,

holy.

You will have to discern

whether you have

defenses enough

to rebuff the call,

excuses sufficient

to withstand the pull

of what blazes before you;

whether you will

hide your face,

will turn away

back toward—

what, exactly?

No path from here

could ever be

ordinary again,

could ever become

unstrange to you

whose seeing

has been scorched

beyond all salving.

You will know your path

not by how it shines

before you

but by how it burns

within you,

leaving you whole

as you go from here

blazing with

your inarticulate,

your inescapable

yes.

—Jan Richardson From The Painted Prayerbook