Parashat Sh’mot
Rabbi Dr. Y. Luchins
Missing Pieces
What is NOT stated in p’sukim can be as significant as what is stated, but unless we are attuned to the absent “missing piece,” that significance can pass us by unrecognized. The opening of Parashat Sh’mot contains (or, more accurately, does NOT contain) a prime example.
Consider the description of Moshe—then not yet Rabbainu; a shepherd, but not of people—tending his father-in-law’s flocks in the Sinai wastelands. He turns aside to investigate an ongoing blaze burning brightly with undiminished intensity, seeking to make sense of the strange phenomenon. The curiosity that drove him—which led to a mission that is still now, thousands of years later, shaping world history through Matan Torah—is the uncommon curiosity that seeks beyond the obvious for that which is often well hidden, seeking to understand the unobvious cause of what most everyone else takes for granted.
The pasuk (Sh’mot 3:2) tells us that it was a “Malach HaShem—an agent of HaShem” that was making itself apparent to Moshe in the flame of the bush, and Moshe’s curiosity was piqued. And then (3:4) “HaShem saw that he turned aside to observe” the phenomenon…initiating the process of Geulah from Mitzrayim. What had been missing from HaShem’s plans for the future Geulah of all of humankind through the ’Am HaTorah was a qualified human seeker of the “missing piece.” Such a seeker was needed for the mission of shepherding the ’Am HaTorah through its birth at Sinai and of thoroughly training our Nation in the teachings and techniques of Torah. In turning to seek the “missing piece” in the puzzle of the burning bush, Moshe showed himself to be the human “missing piece” in Hashem’s plan.
The four-letter Name, yud-kay-vav-kay, the Name of Being, is the Name of Rachamim, of mercy. It is so closely associated with HaShem that it is the Name to which we refer when saying “HaShem—the Name,” when speaking not of a particular attribute of HaShem but of Hashem’s very being. That Being is one of tender loving mercifulness, the ultimate Source of All, of all that is good and loving (even if that love is sometimes necessarily expressed as “tough love,” in ways we perceive as negative).
When that Name is missing from the narrative of history, the history being described suffers from Hester Panim, from a lack of the overt, active participation of HaShem’s tender loving mercies—such history is predominated by the workings of Din, inexorably exact judgment. The first 48 p’sukim of Parashat Sh’mot, all the p’sukim from the beginning until the “Malach HaShem” of the burning bush (in 3:2), are devoid of the four-letter Name “HaShem.” And HaShem Himself does not appear in the narrative until Moshe turns to investigate, seeking the “missing piece” from the scene before him, and thereby bringing forth the ultimate “Missing Piece” out of Hester Panim back into B’nai Yisrael’s history.
Indeed, “HaShem” is already missing from the Chumash narrative of our family’s history well before the beginning of Sh’mot. The last appearance of the Name of Mercy in the early drama of our sojourn in Egypt was at the start of Yosef ’s long stay in prison (B’raisheit 39:23). From that point in Parashat Vayaishev, over 400 p’sukim and over 230 years pass in a state of Hester Panim, without a mention of “HaShem.” (There is a single exception, B’raisheit 49:18, which is not descriptive of the then-current history, but is, rather, Ya’akov Avinu’s long-range prayerful prophecy for the tribe of Dan in the future time of Shimshon.) Additionally, the tragedy-filled decade that preceded Yosef ’s descent to Egypt is extremely sparse in appearances of “HaShem”: From Ya’akov Avinu’s heartfelt t’filah to Hashem before re-encountering ’Aisav (B’raisheit 32) until the cluster of eight mentions of “HaShem” all positively associated with Yosef ’s initial experiences in Egypt eleven years later (B’raisheit 39), “HaShem” appears in the historical narrative only with respect to the Divinely punitive deaths of two of Y’huda’s sons, events that actually took place in K’na’an years after Yosef was sold. (But for the few p’sukim-exceptions noted, “HaShem” is absent from fully the latter third of B’raisheit.)
The two centuries of Galut Mitzrayim were devoid of the overt tender loving mercies of HaShem’s active role in our history. Many took the then-current situation of Galut as the way things obviously were and always would be. Moshe, seeker of “missing pieces” beyond the obvious, ended that Galut-acceptance and became forever “Rabbainu,” the masterful teacher showing us to ever seek beyond the obvious. And through Moshe Rabbainu and his thorough teachings, we have HaShem’s Torah that provides proven tools for us to seek, identify and utilize life’s many “missing pieces.” May we do so unto and into the coming Geulah!
