Where in the World Is Moses? Parshat Tetzaveh, Haruki Murakami, and the Pilgrimage of the Unnamed Self

Where in the world is Moses?

Let me save you some time. You won’t find a mention of his name in this weeks portion of Tetzaveh. Some background is in order. After Moshe realizes that G-d is not in forgiveness mode, in the aftermath of the golden calf fiasco, he changes tactics, issuing a bold ultimatum. “Either cut them some well deserved slack, or remove my name from the entire book.” G-d blinks and forgives, but doesn’t allow the insolence, good intentions notwithstanding, to go unanswered. The rebuke, is directly in line with the threat. Though his name remains, it is removed from one whole section of Torah.

The irony is, that the absence of his name only serves to highlight his presence in the text. The eighth section of the book of Exodus, opens with an unnamed leader, who is more himself than when he is identified by name. It seems as if the absence of his prior identity is more liberating than restrictive. The removal of the name, if anything, functions more like a prompt, a cue to begin pursuing an alternative version of being by clearing an internal restraint that blocked out an untapped inner territory. G-d seems to have unleashed a Moses who rises higher than how he was when identified by name, flush with a newfound vitality, wielding an authority that is nondescript yet distinct.

Though it seems punitive at first glance, can there be more to what we see on the surface? Is this G-d as “Gheppetto”, looking to cut off the strings that bind him to his “Phinochio like” leader? Did G-d feel like Moses was not in a position to identify with his people as long as he was clearly identified with G-d? Did G-d sense the need for a leader of humans to more closely resemble them, to not appear puppet like? Could there be something as of yet unborn in him that needed to be staged, to facilitate that birth?

The timing of this reading, always in the month of Adar, seems to suggest a strong association with Purim. Could it be that the text of the Megilla is a Divine mimicking of this very experience? Could the absence of G-ds name in the Megilah point to a similar recurance of this dynamic of quiet power, emerging in the space of the lowered volume of

G-ds conventional power? If so than the Book of Esther, (the name Esther comes from the root of Hester, Hebrew for hiddeness) is G-ds Tetzaveh moment.

One of Haruki Murakamis most touching literary moments, sheds some light on this for me. The protagonist, Tsukuru Tazaki, recalls one of the only moments of tenderness he has ever experienced from a father who was mostly absent from his sons life. His father, A succsesful businessman who fully expects his son to succeed him at the helm of his business one day, is comforted, strangely, by the name of his son who has decided to pursue his own dream of building, and refurbishing railroad stations in Tokyo.

“The name that I gave you“ says the father, “means to build; so I must have named you well. The irony is that this realization only comes about at the end of his "Pilgrimage.” His entire struggle centers around his abandonment by a group of childhood friends. Each of their names contained references to different colors. In this group he was “colorless.” As a result his name functioned as a reminder of his sense of “emptiness” and was an ongoing source of shame until he learned how to see himself through his own eyes, and not through the way he imagined others saw him.

For me it seems like this weeks Torah text, and its parallel in the Megilah, are indeed Narratives designed, (not to be punitive, but rather ) to highlight the ways that shifting circumstances need not be catastrophized. With mindfulness, lifes upheavals can be re experienced, not as misfortune, but rather as a personal invitation from the cosmos to expand the ways we see ourselves.

Tsukuru Tazakis banishment from his group of friends, is his “Tetzaveh” moment. His pilgrimage is the journey he must undertake, in order to escape the limitations of his name. He too regains his footing in the pain of a void. Only afterwards is he able to hear his name and associate it with his higher self.

Perhaps this moment marks the beginning of the pilgrimage that Moses needed to undertake as well. Though his name is re inserted in the following portion, its a different Moses. Perhaps the meaning of His name, deriving from his rescue from the Nile river as an infant “for he was drawn out of the water” was the source of a block for him, and the root of his “colorlessness”? Was the unamed Moses, the part of him that wasn’t rescued, and remained submerged in the murkiness of the Nile?

If so then this portion provides the setting for Moses to own his unnamed self. A pilgrimage undertaken in the void of a suspended identity, that is at heart a call for Moses to rescue himself. Only in the cutting of the strings, and the subsequent saving of himself, does Moses finally become the mentor of a people who are trapped in the same waters. The rescuing of the infant Moses by Batya the daughter of Pharaoh, must be followed by Moses cultivating the ability to be his own savior.

Only then does Moses have the credibility to demand the same from his people. They too, like Moses, had been saved, but slavery had also enslaved their ability to imagine and envision their own destiny—they had yet to develop the capacity to mastermind their own freedom.

If so, then that is our calling this week as well. This portion becomes Torah for us this week, to the extent that we allow it to be. The space of the emptiness we claim as our own, as we briefly let go of whatever we have been named, is merely setting the stage for us to rename ourselves. This is our cue to connect the dots between the characteristics of our identity that best match the corresponding aspects of the names we have been given, but might never have truly received.

Much Love,

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Yossi