Shemot

Shemot – Deborah Kahn Harris

Deborah Kahn-Harris is a member of the rabbinic team at Southgate and District Reform Synagogue. She also teaches Bible at LBC-CJE and is working part-time on a PhD is Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield.

"These are the shemot, the names, of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob". So begins Parashat Shemot, a parasha whose storytelling moves at such breakneck speed that it will be quite impossible to do it any real justice in a mere 500 words. So I will pick just one small piece to consider.

In Exodus 3:13, according to Midrash Leviticus Rabbah 11:5 (a traditional rabbinic narrative compilation), Moses approaches God "with a lack of directness". Moses is concerned about the reaction of the children of Israel to the task that God has set for him, so Moses asks: "Behold, when I come to the people of Israel, and shall say to them, The God of your ancestors has sent me to you; and they shall say to me, What is its name, what shall I say to them?" One wonders immediately, as the Midrash alludes to, whether this question is really one that Moses supposes the Israelites will ask or whether this question is really Moses' own question, but one that he is too polite or nervous or deferential to ask outrightly.

In any case, God gives Moses an answer. God says in Ex. 3:14 God's name is "e'hyeh asher e'hyeh", a name of the most outstanding mystery. Even if you don't understand a word of Hebrew, just the sound of the name said aloud is enough to convey something. E'hyeh asher e'hyeh sounds so slight, so devoid of consonantal sounds, the very voicing of it seems to slip away as soon as it is released from the mouth. E'hyeh asher e'hyeh is hardly anything at all and yet in its meaning, it is everything.

E'hyeh asher e'hyeh is normally translated as something like, "I am that I am", but in English the subtleties of Biblical Hebrew grammar is lost. E'hyeh is the first person singular imperfect of the root hey yod hey, the root having to with "being". E'hyeh asher e'hyeh means something more like "I continue to be that which I continue to be". Alongside its vocalisation the phrase seems to convey a sense of the ethereal infinity that is God.

Commentators and the Midrash alike try to find some philosophical sustenance in this name, but I prefer to leave it enigmatic. For many months my young son, Kobi, when asked whether he was a boy or a girl would simply reply, "I am a Kobi", in a persistent struggle to avoid classification. God, too, defies even the act of naming - I am what I am, like it or lump it, but don't try to trick me with indirect questions.

And so e'hyeh asher e'hyeh retains a sort of magical quality, one which is preserved in Talmud Baba Batra 73a:
Rabbah said: Seafarers told me: The wave that sinks a ship appears with a white fringe of fire at its crest, and when stricken with clubs on which is engraven: 'I am that I am, Yah, the Eternal One of Hosts, Amen, Amen, Selah', it subsides...
One can just imagine those ancient seafarers, clubs in hand, beating back the waves with the words e'hyeh asher e'hyeh inscribed upon them, the mystery deepening at every strike of the club.