Parashat Vaera: On the Ability to Hear

In the beginning of this week’s parsha, Moshe tells the people that God will redeem them. But they can’t hear it. Velo shamu el Moshe mikotzer ru’ah ume’aovodah kashah. “They did not listen to Moshe because of a shortness of spirit (or breath) caused by hard work” (6:9).

Pharaoh can’t hear Moshe either; the Torah tells us numerous times that velo shama aleihem, “He [Pharaoh] did not listen to them [Moshe and Aharon].” And so, what God does for these hard-of-hearing folk is to invent a new method of communication, one based not on the subtleties of words but on the clearer medium of the ot, the “sign,” a physical visual event which defies the ordinary laws of nature. To such otot, both the people of Israel and Pharaoh will at least eventually listen.

The fact is that in last week’s parsha, the people did listen when Moshe and Aharon reported God’s promises. The difference is that there Moshe and Aharon not only spoke, but also performed some otot , turning the staff into a snake, making a hand leprous and then healed again, and turning water into blood. There, the people listened, but here in our parsha, when Moshe tries to just report God’s words, without the aid of signs, the people cannot hear him.

And so, the redemption will come about not through words, God decides, but through many, many otot, all the wonders of the 10 plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea.

Such miracles and wonders are a new mode of communication for God. God did not communicate in this way with the avot, the patriarchs Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov. For them, simple words and promises were enough, and they believed. They were able to hear the words and find in their lives the subtle signs of God’s special care and protection. Nachmanides says that this difference is what is meant by the strange reference at the beginning of this parsha to God’s appearance to the patriarchs using one name, El Shaddai, and His current appearance to Moshe and the Israelites using a different name, the tetragrammaton. The change in names symbolizes a change in method of communication, from words and subtle signs within nature to miracles.

The change is not an entirely happy one. The midrash reports that God says to Moshe concerning the patriarchs and their trusting ways: haval al de’avdin vela mishtakhin. “It is a shame about those who are gone and no longer here.”

The change is a sad one, but not a permanent one. This new miraculous mode of communication is only a temporary tool to break the Israelites out of the blocked hearing they have developed in the course of their bondage. The ultimate goal is to open up the people’s ears to subtler modes of hearing God’s presence in the world. Listening, after all, is what they must do at Mount Sinai (although there, too, God aids their listening with some spectacular sound and light effects). No wonder tradition counts it as a great stride forward that they are now able to say, na’aseh vinishma, “We will do and we will listen!”

What about us? Where do we stand in this spectrum? Can we hear God’s words? Can we hear and see His presence in the world like the patriarchs did? Or our ears closed like the Israelites in Egypt, closed up from the stress of too much hard work? Such stress gives us kotzer ru’ah, shortness of breath and of spirit, so that we lose the peace of mind that is required to really hear one another and God, to really see the redemptive moments and opportunities that present themselves.

We don’t have the option of otot from God, and so we must learn to listen more subtly. The Hasidic master Sefat Emet says that ever since Mount Sinai, the divine voice has never ceased, and that it is our permanent task now to open ourselves to hearing it, as we declare each day with the Shma, the call to “hear.” Before we recite the Shma, though, he points out, we must first leave Egypt, first leave behind the life and work stresses that close up our ears to the subtle sounds of redemption.