Spirits in a Material World (Va'era, Rabbi Sacks on Covenant & Conversation)

The Rabbi Sacks Legacy

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to Rabbi Sacks' commentary on the weekly Torah portion. This series of Covenant & Conversation essays explores the theme of finding spirituality in the Torah, week by week, parsha by parsha. You can find the full written article on Va'era available to read, print, and share, by visiting: https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/vaera/spirits-in-a-material-world/ The new FAMILY EDITION is now also available: https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-family-edition/vaera/spirits-in-a-material-world/ For more articles, videos, and other material from Rabbi Sacks, please visit www.RabbiSacks.org and follow @RabbiSacks. The Rabbi Sacks Legacy continues to share weekly inspiration from Rabbi Sacks. This piece was originally written and recorded by Rabbi Sacks in 2016. With thanks to the Schimmel Family for their generous sponsorship of Covenant & Conversation, dedicated in loving memory of Harry (Chaim) Schimmel.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spirits in a material world. The Torah sometimes says something of fundamental importance
0:07.0	in what seems like a minor and incidental comment. There's a fine example of this, near the beginning of today's parish.
0:16.0	Last week we read of how Moses was sent by God to lead the Israelites to freedom and how
0:22.1	his initial efforts met with failure.
0:24.8	Not only did Pharaoh not agree to let people go, he made the working conditions of the
0:29.7	Israelites even worse.
0:31.9	They had to make the same number of bricks as before, but now they had to gather their own
0:36.1	straw.
0:37.1	The people complained to Pharaoh, then they
0:39.1	complain to Moses, then Moses complained to God. Lama harriota, Lama Aze. Why have you brought
0:45.4	trouble to this people? Why did you send me? At the beginning of this week's parish, God
0:51.6	tells Moses that he will indeed bring the Israelites
0:55.0	to freedom and tells him to announce this to the people. And then we read this. So Moses told
1:01.2	this to the Israelites but they didn't listen to him because their spirit was broken and because
1:07.2	the labor was harsh. This phrase seems simple enough that people didn't listen to Moses
1:12.8	because he'd brought the messages from God before
1:15.7	and they'd done nothing to improve their situation.
1:19.0	They were busy trying to survive day by day.
1:22.5	They had no time for utopian promises
1:24.8	that seemed to have no grounding in reality.
1:29.6	Moses had failed to deliver in the past. They had no reason to think he'd do so in the future, so far, so straightforward. But there's
1:37.8	something more subtle going on beneath the surface. When Moses first made God at the burning bush,
	...

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