Parshat Va’eira

In this week’s parashah, Va’eira, God reveals to Moshe a divine name, an aspect of God’s identity, that even Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov did not know. Henceforth, Moshe and the children of Israel will know God in a way that even the patriarchs, as great as they were, did not.

The point is that new situations open up the possibility of new religious insights. Each generation has the potential — and the need — to know God in new ways. That is what we mean when we speak of Torah as a living thing, a Tree of Life. Torah grows as we grow, as we add our insights to those that we have inherited.

Often we think of religion as a matter of honoring the past, preserving ancient truths. But it is also about standing fully in the present, a place where our ancestors never stood. Our work as a community of Torah is to try to hear God’s voice where we are now, to learn what we — and only we — can learn  by virtue of the place in time where we stand at this moment.

Together, may we turn our own experience into Torah.