Prepared for the celebration of a Torah Scroll donated to Or Shalom by the Guincher and Micner families.

When we read Torah, we don’t just want to be informed. We want to be addressed. We want Torah to speak to us personally. We want to find a hint about how God is unfolding in our lives and in our consciousness. Sometimes we want guidance; sometimes we want confirmation. But we have an expectation that we will find a teaching relevant to the questions that we are asking TODAY. And sometimes we are a little impatient. We forget that some answers take time. Some answers unfold only after a great deal of life experience and self-reflection.

The opening words of Parshat Va’era remind us to be patient.

Vayidaber Elohim el Moshe, v’amar elav: Ani Hashem – Yod Hey Vav Hey. Va’era el Avraham, el Yitzchak, v’el Ya’akov b’El Shaddai, u’shmi Hashem – Yod Hey Vav Hey – lo nodati lahem.

God spoke to Moshe, and said to him: I am Yod Hey Vav Hey, my name means Being, and you can’t tell if it means Being in past, present or future. I appeared to Avraham, to Yitzchak, and to Ya’akov as El Shaddai, the nurturing God, but my name Yod Hey Vav Hey, timeless being, I did not make known to them.

Deep, filled with possibilities, but: at the peshat level, the simple level, it’s nonsense. Crack open Sefer Bereisheet, the Book of Genesis. God appears to our ancestors all the time using the name Yod Hey Vav Hey. And even says once in a while, “Hi, I’m Yod Hey Vav Hey.” (This is the character of God in Bereisheet – personal and conversational. It’s not until the book of Shemot that God becomes ambivalent and careful about revealing.)

Does this mean that Torah is badly edited? That someone forgot to look back at Bereisheet-Genesis while copy-editing Shemot-Exodus? And generations of scribes simply copied the poor edition? I expect more from a great book of human civilization and a great book of divine revelation. So of course we are challenged to look for a deeper meaning – a meaning relevant to what is going on TODAY.

Rashi, the great 11th century scholar, offers a great suggestion. He notices that there is something odd about the grammar of God’s self-introduction to Moshe. If God were using correct grammar, God would say, Shmi HaShem – Yod Hey Vav Hey – lo hodati lahem. My name Yod Hey Vav Hey I did not make known to them. Instead, God says, Shmi Hashem – Yod Hey Vav Hey – lo nodati lahem. My name Yod Hey Vav Hey, I did not let it become known to them.

What’s the significance of this detail? Rashi says that God is saying: to your ancestors, I made a promise. They felt nurtured and comforted and supported. But they did not live to see the promise fulfilled. You will see the promise of the past fulfilled in the future. You will know that God operates across time.

Rashi particularly has in mind the promise of a homeland – an eretz Yisrael – which is still unfolding in ways we imagine Rashi could not have predicted.

But Rashi’s words also have a broader meaning, beyond the land. God is saying: The words I spoke to your ancestors contain promise. They are promising. They have potential. And in your day, that potential will be fulfilled. This point can speak to each of us personally. Words of Torah have potential, and in each of us, these words will fulfill that potential.

In his commentary on Parshat Va’era, Rabbi Ephraim of Sudlikov, a.k.a. the Degel Machneh Ephraim, a grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, says: The Torah is given without nekudot, without dots, without vowels. We add the vowels that are appropriate to our derash. We add the vowels that are appropriate to the interpretation or teaching we want to make.

At first glance, this looks like standard midrashic technique. But it is radical. Listen. First we find a spiritual teaching in our hearts and in our lives. Then we come to Torah and we see that Torah offers another way of expressing what we learned. Torah helps us articulate what we are learning as we journey through life. Torah may even refocus us, help give us insight, help us move forward.

Learning on this journey is not quick. It is not easy. And it is full of surprises. Sometimes life’s most difficult moments yield the deepest lessons about love, about giving and receiving. I don’t have to give you examples – you all have your own moments you can call to memory. And you know that these teachings can come joyfully in an instant – or they can come slowly and painstakingly, after many years of reflection and psychotherapy. At those times, it’s as if God says: Shmi Hashem – Yod Hey Vav Hey – lo nodati lahem. I did not let my fullness become known to your ancestor, that earlier version of yourself, but TODAY, I let you know: My fullness of being is with you.

This is another reason why a Torah scroll is a beautiful way to honor a person’s memory. Some philosophers (such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and me) tell us that time is ambiguous. Our experience of past, present, and future keep shifting. As we learn more about the past, we experience our present differently, and we project a new future. When we gain a new insight about the present, we reinterpret the past, and make different choices about the future.

Add Torah into this weave of time: When we understand something new about ourselves, and we experience our living present differently, Torah reads differently to us. We bring new questions, and we receive new answers. Torah becomes a channel for Hashem – Yod Hey Vav Hey – God, whose name is the verb “to be” in past, present, and future.

It’s a cliché to say that Torah is living history. Everyone says it. But everyone says it because it’s true. Clearly, Torah is living history in several physical ways. As Sofer Neil Yerman said, a scroll is made of organic materials that have a life. And, right here in the synagogue we use an ancient technology that is totally out of fashion, and we proudly enjoy reading as readers read two millennia ago. Torah is also living history in a spiritual way. It’s a living history of the soul, a poetic record of the past that helps each of us learn about our present and our future.

– Laura Duhan Kaplan, 2009

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