January 28, 2012 | 4 Shevat 5772 | Exodus 10:1 – 13:16

Where do you find God? When do you feel the presence of the divine or that the Holy One has passed by? Is it in a religious service? In a contemplative moment? Amidst the serene beauty of nature?  In the aftermath of a destructive storm? Where do you find God?

Our parasha shares one answer with us, an answer God intended our Israelite ancestors to invoke if anyone ever asked them the question I posed to you.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharoah. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your children and of your children’s children how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them – in order that you may know that I am the Lord. (Exodus 10:1-2)

According to the opening of our Torah Reading, God inflicted horrible plagues upon the Egyptians for three reasons – so that God could display God’s unique power to the Egyptians, so that we would have something to say at our Passover seder table each year (“that you may recount…) and so that the Israelites would recognize God.

That last reason is most interesting. To the Author of Exodus, the Israelites were supposed to recognize God’s presence and power in the unparalleled plagues that befell the Egyptians – blood, frogs, lice, beasts, blight, boils, hail, locusts, darkness and killing the first – born. In other words our ancestors were to recognize God’s presence in large scale suffering, pain and untold misery.

Of course, this is not the Torah’s only word on experiencing God’s presence. God displayed God’s self to our Patriarchs/Matriarchs and to Moses in visions and conversations. God’s presence was manifest at the Red Sea when the Israelites walked across on dry land while the waters were held at bay. But the phrase, referring to the Israelites, “…in order that you may know that I am the Lord,” appears in none of these instances. In the Torah it is linked with “supernatural” acts that lead to suffering and, ultimately, God’s end.

How long did the consequent awareness of God following the plagues last?  How long did it last after the Israelites experienced God’s wonders at the Red Sea when, amidst crossing the Sea, “...the people feared the Lord: they had faith in the Lord and in God’s servant Moses?” (Exodus 14:31).  How long did this awareness of the divine presence last? About as long as it took the Israelites to offer the “Song of the Sea” (Exodus 15) and complain about the bitter drinking water (Exodus 16:24). In other words, not very long.

Is it possible that the Torah itself raises doubts about the way it answered the question concerning experiencing God’s presence at the beginning of our parasha at the beginning of Exodus 10?

There are many potential answers to the question, “Where do you find God?”  But seeking to find God amidst disaster that wreaks havoc on people, whether they are the Egyptians of the Torah or any other people even in our own day, may not be one of them.

Shabbat Shalom.