I Will Be What I Will Be - Multiple Path’s to God’s Presence

This week we begin reading from the second book of the Torah, Exodus, or in Hebrew, Shemot. In Jewish tradition, the title of both a book of a Torah and a chapter are named after the first significant word in those texts. So, this week’s parsha is also called Shemot. Shemot means “names,” and this parsha picks up where we left off in Genesis, listing the names of Jacob’s descendants who came down to Egypt after Joseph. The family grew, and overtime increased to become a people. There then came a Pharaoh who did not remember Joseph, and who enslaved the Israelite people out of fear. This is why Moses is born a slave with a destiny to be a future great leader of the Jewish people.

These first chapters of Exodus are rich with narrative storytelling, as the story quickly jumps through Moses’ early life and explains how an Israelite baby becomes a child of Egyptian royalty. We see how Moses must flee Egypt after protecting an Israelite slave and killing an Egyptian guard, and how he settles and begins to find himself as a shepherd in the land of Midian. While tending to the sheep, God appears to Moses from a burning bush and calls out to Moses, instructing him to return to Egypt to free his people, the Israelite slaves. Moses, fearful, asks God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘By which name?’ what shall I say to them?" "And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, I will be what I will be.” Often, we translate Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh as “I am what I am”, but this does not fully encompass the name of the Divine.

God has been called many names up until this moment in the Torah. In Genesis, Chapter 2, God is named Adonai Elohim, Eternal God, and Genesis 14 introduces us to El Elyon, God Most High. In Chapter 16, Hagar gives God the name El Roi, God Who Sees Me, and then in Chapter 21, the Divine appears before Abram with the name El Shaddai, God Almighty. Moses seems to understand the power of God’s name is important in convincing the Israelites themselves to follow him. But the Divine does not seem to want to be nailed down to one fixed reference, a single name. Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, I will be what I will be, pushes the boundaries of who and what God is to humankind.

In Judaism, there are many paths to understanding God’s presence in our world and our lives. We all have an ever-evolving connection to the world and to the Divine. In a class once, my classmates and I studied a list of 102 different names for God, choosing which names resonate for us and our connection. Even with a list that long, many of us added additional names onto the list. At different moments in our lives, we may resonate with different language: Source of Life, Presence, My Rock, Ruach (wind or spirit), or Merciful God. We may even see God as Question, grappling with our connection and the names we may use. God will be different to each of us as we expand and evolve. Just as Moses grows on his journey in Shemot, and how his ancestors changed through their lives as well, the multiplicity of Divine names, God being what God will be, makes room for each of us to encounter the Divine honestly and authentically, wherever we are in our lives.

Shabbat Shalom,

Eden Anolick, Rabbinic Intern