Torah Portion - January 3, 2008

 

Many people have been making New Year’s resolutions this week. One of the wonderful things about the Reconstructionist view that Jews live in “two civilizations” means that we get not one, but two chances to revisit our lives in the past year, and make plans to become better people in the new one.

 

People it is very fitting, then, that this week we reread the story of the Exodus from Egypt. This master narrative of the Jewish people is also read twice each year. At the Passover seder, we are supposed to act and to feel as if we, personally, experienced the liberation from slavery. We also study the wondrous tale of our people’s independence in detail when the pertinent Torah portions come around in the annual cycle. The Hebrew month in which Passover appears, Nisan, is called in the Bible “the first month.” Celebrating the Exodus, then, is considered another Jewish New Year of sorts.

 

And this week’s Torah portion also contains New Year’s resolutions of sorts. When God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites that God has promised not only to liberate them but then to enter into a covenant with the newly freed Israelites, and to bring them into the Promised Land. Instead of responding enthusiastically and eagerly to Moses’ announcement, however, what do the people do? Of course—the kvetch!

 

Why are the slaves reluctant to work diligently and happily toward their freedom? The text says:  “Moses spoke to the Israelites [as God had instructed him], but they did not hear Moses, because of kotzer ruach and too much hard work” (Exodus 6:9).

 

I left kotzer ruach in Hebrew because it is a difficult phrase to translate.  Literally, it means shortness of spirit. It might mean, then, a sprit that has been cut down. Rashi, the great medieval commentator, says that it refers to occasions when “someone is in a distressed state, his breath (ruach) and his soul (neshama) are shortened, so he is unable to “lengthen his breaths.” This means that he is unable to lengthen his soul.  

 

The Israelites were so degraded and demoralized by slavery that each individual was literally cut off from their very soul. It became impossible to hear Moses’ message from the Divine, although it was a statement of immense hope.  Indeed, it was a message that would change their lives and the lives of all of their ancestors---and yet, they were too worn down and filled with self-deprecation to hear the optimism in Moses’ promise.

 

Unfortunately, it does not take events as devastating as slavery to make us feel cut off from our souls; to shorten our spirits and prevent us from breathing. Just take a look at any magazine at the supermarket counter and it’s clear that kotzer ruach, or shortness of sprit, is rampant in our society. Every day we are warned of the dangers of stress, and are presented with a variety of methods for reducing it.

 

This week’s Torah portion offers a remedy that costs much less than a trip to the spa, fortunately. So does our daily prayer service. We must do some of the work, however, just as our ancestors did. We must take time every day to lengthen our sprits; to take long breaths. It also helps to take a weekly “day spa for our souls” by resting on Shabbat.  Such actions (or, perhaps, inactions!) will enable us to remember that liberation of the spirit is a life-long, and joyous, project.