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I have gone slowly so far to lay a sufficient foundation for what we are now about to do, take up actual texts in the Torah and show how they stamp the essential experience of being Jewish. I will only remind you that I do not build my claims on any one text, but on the concatenation of them; if you think my reading of a particular text is not as unequivocal as I claim, there will be others to make up for that failure. As you read, also, we will be trying to see what these texts tell us about who we are meant to be, how we are meant to approach and interact with the world, not just the narrower question of which rituals or recitations these texts do or do not obligate.

Today, we will take our first text from the Torah, with three more to come, all of which speak of memory, of that which should be present, always or continually, in a Jew’s consciousness. The first is the Torah’s demand that we remember the Exodus from Egypt; in upcoming posts we will discuss the similar need to hold the experience at Sinai, the Song of Haazinu, and the first two paragraphs of Shema in our consciousnesses, and the ramifications of having those texts and ideas so prominently in our thoughts.

I am assuming, I recognize, that the Torah’s insistence that Jews continually keep a memory in mind sets that as more central to its worldview than any explicit statements about value or importance. Since we are what we do and say, since behavior is belief, the repeated and constant focus on these ideas means the Torah sees them as formative of the Jewish psyche. It is no surprise, then, that these texts and memories outline a minimal Orthodox theology. As we will see, too, this minimal theology figures prominently in all the further sources we will discuss.

All the Days of Your Lives: Remembering the Exodus

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 16:3 tells us that the annual observance of the Paschal sacrifice, with the attendant weeklong abstention from leavened bread, was ordained to insure that Jews remember “the day of your leaving Egypt all the days of your life.” From here, Rabbinic tradition understood that the Torah obligated a verbal recounting of the bare facts of the Exodus morning and night.(1)

I recognize that halacha limited this obligation to men; while women are welcome to articulate memory of the Exodus, they are not required to. That does not exclude women from the verse’s hope, however, since the verse does not say “the only way to remember the Exodus is by reciting verses about it morning and night.” Rather, the verse says the purpose of the Paschal celebration is to stimulate daily memory throughout the year. For men, that memory must take a certain form; for women it need not.

I believe this model—that men are obligated in certain practices, while women are only obligated in the fundamental ideas or consciousnesses underlying them—explains many of the distinctions in the Torah’s assigning obligations to men and women. It will be easiest to show that, however, in several posts from now, once we get to Rambam’s discussion of the mitzvot that regulate an ordinary Jewish life (sixty for men, forty-six for women). Here, we can stick with noticing that while men are required to recite their memory of the Exodus, women can stop at just remembering that event.

How God Made a Mockery of the Egyptians

That memory might be the minimal idea that God took the Jews out of Egypt, but Shemot (Exodus) 10:2 expands its purview. God explains to Moses that He has allowed Pharaoh to resist releasing the Jews in order to extend the process, to allow time for more and greater miracles. Those miracles, the next verse tells us, are intended so that Jews throughout history will tell their children and grandchildren how God toyed with the Egyptians, and the various signs of power God placed upon them.

Strikingly, this is one of only two cases where Scripture speaks of telling grandchildren in addition to children (we will see the other in the next post). God records in the Torah that the Exodus was enacted as it was at least partially in order to create a lasting memory to pass down throughout the generations, a memory of God’s might and His intercession on our behalf in visible and identifiable ways.

Were we to stop here, we would already have much that is supposed to characterize a Jewish worldview (and mission). The requirement that we remember the Exodus all the days of our lives forces Jews to repeatedly imbibe basic theological assumptions such as: that there is a God; that that God is at least sometimes actively involved in history; that that God developed a special and lasting relationship with the Jewish people (with responsibilities on both sides) through the experience of the Exodus; and that that God can, at least sometimes, radically change the course of Nature, in ways miraculous beyond human comprehension.

In a world where few if any of those truths are recognized, the requirement of daily memory becomes a matter of mission as well. The Orthodox Jew, at the very least, takes for granted an understanding of how the world works that is often countercultural, and needs to cling to that worldview in the face of whatever pressure arises to change it. When I refer to holding fast to a worldview, I should note, I do not mean that the Jew says this as a formal recitation, but that the Jew asserts such faith and allows it to determine as many areas of his or her life as possible. Repeat memory should mean that these events become foundational truths in a Jew’s life, the warp and woof of how he or she experiences the world.

To believe something, in other words, is not to be willing to mark it off on a survey, it is to recognize it as an animating force. I believe in gravity and therefore will not walk off a high ledge unless I have a death wish; my belief in God and the Exodus should, ideally, shape my approach to the world in equally strong ways. The impact on the world that would result from Jews living their lives molded by this perspective is a first part of the Orthodox mission.

Providence Today: No Simple Matter

Some might argue that the Exodus proves only that God once did so, not that God could or might do so again. Aside from the weight of thousands of years of Jewish opinion taking the continuing possibility (or actual presence) of miracles for granted (2), I also see the Torah’s insistence that Jews remember these events is meant to show us that they were paradigmatic rather than one-time wonders. The simplest construction of being told to daily recall what God did to the Egyptians is that that memory bears lasting relevance, even if those kinds or levels of miracles do not appear in our lifetimes.

I remind readers I am trying to be as minimalist as possible, in the name of articulating that which is most demonstrably unequivocal. I might have claimed that the Exodus tells us that God is always involved in the world, in some direct way, but that is not proven by the verses in question. We will have cause to consider Providence again when we get to Haazinu and the second paragraph of Shema, but for now I note only that while many Jews will speak of God’s Hand in comfortable contexts—happy events, a recovery from ill health, political events—they and others roundly reject the possibility when they find the ramifications of such a conclusion distasteful.

A clear and important example is the general rejection, in certain circles, of the possibility that the natural disasters or new plagues we experience today could extend from Divine Providence. One reason for that resistance, I fear, is that some of those who do see God’s role in events give the endeavor a bad name by offering explanations that are simplistic, under-nuanced, and that point fingers at others towards whom they are already ill-disposed.

Given the flaws we each of us bear, to point a finger at others’ sufferings and ascribe it to the particular sins of which I might be free is often too smug an endeavor to be part of a relationship with God. That is not the same as empathizing with the suffering of the unfortunate, taking all possible steps to alleviate that suffering, and then suggesting that there may be a lesson to be learned from such tragedies, not just for those ‘others,” but for ourselves. In any attempt to understand Providence, humility has to be central.

More important, though, is that we can and should differentiate believing in Providence as a possibility—which leads believers to be on the alert for it, to wonder whether particular events are a function of direct divine intervention—from becoming overbearingly or arrogantly confident that we know when God has altered world events and why. If a lesson of the Exodus is that God sometimes ruptures the order of Nature to alter the course of history, there is a value in that lesson independent of whether we can ourselves ever unequivocally identify an instance of its happening or the reason behind it.

Such an approach means that we may individually or in groups come to be convinced that a certain event is a function of Divine Providence despite our inability to prove it, while others would point to other such events. It is not the particular insight that is vital here, but the awareness of Providence as a general concept and the interest in seeing if and when it affects the world. The reminders of the Exodus tell us of the possibility of Providence, not any particular perspective on when and how that Providence expresses itself (outside of “ordinary” Nature, which is itself always a matter of divine grace).

To my mind, a striking example of a person recognizing Providence, an example of faith in action, is R. Yoel Bin-Nun’s decision, in the early 1990s, to accept ceding land in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians. Despite being a founder of Gush Emunim, a group dedicated to keeping hold of those territories, he took the Israeli failure to succeed at establishing a firm hold of those lands as a sign of God’s Will. Many disagreed with his analysis (and would see later events as proving them right), but the example of faith pushing him to change long-held political views (at great personal cost) is remarkable and too rare.

Much as the Exodus offers all those ideas (and more, but these seem the easiest to insist on as a base picture of the event), the Torah institutes other memories as also part of the constant or daily rhythm of Jewish life, and we need to see those to get a full sense of what the Torah defines as a bare minimum experience of Judaism. With continuing gratitude to Webyeshiva for hosting these discussions, I look forward to your comments and reactions, and to seeing you here again soon.

(1) Berachot 1:5.
(2) Some moderns, particularly academics, will claim that Rambam and other reputable rationalists did not believe in miracles. Rambam is always a problem in discussions like this, because much of academe has accepted readings of his writings that traditionalists (and I, myself) find untenable. I will try in these posts to stay away from those pointless arguments, since minds are closed on both sides, and cite Rambam only when his meaning and intent seems most unarguable.