Tailor Made Truths and Wonders of Wonders

In this week’s holy sedrah, Parshat Shemos, we zoom in on the Redeemer of the Israelites; Moshe Rabbeinu has been brought into the Palace of Pharaoh.

The verses read:

Now it came to pass in those days that Moshe grew up and went out to his brothers and saw their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man of his brothers. He turned this way and that way, and he saw that there was no man; so he struck the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out on the second day, and behold, two Hebrew men were quarreling, and he said to the wicked one, “Why are you going to strike your friend?” And he retorted, “Who made you a man, a prince, and a judge over us? Do you plan to slay me as you have slain the Egyptian?” Moshe became frightened and said, “Indeed, the matter has become known!” (Shemos 2:11-14)

Rashi, our favourite medieval French commentator, comes and asks a very simple question on the verse

“What’s ”the matter”?

(Nothing, Rashi. What’s the matter with you?)

What does Moshe mean when he says that “the matter has become known”??

Rashi explains to us based on Midrashic interpretation that up until this point in the narrative Moshe had been puzzled as to why the Israelites needed to be subjected to and forced to endure such immense labour, such paralyzing pain, such overwhelming avodah?

Where was God going with this gzeira (edict)?

Why had they not yet been redeemed?

Now, Moshe finally understood.

Seeing that there were informers among them,

Seeing that they spoke Lashon Hara and not love poems and lullabies to one another

Seeing that they had dropped the moral compass of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov in the sand dunes of Time,

Moshe saw that this people were not deserving of salvation.

He saw that they were not committed to Persistent Passionate Service of the One True God

He saw that they had lost sight of their mission to build and be a Divine Dynasty

“The matter was now known”

With this new-found insight, Moshe flees from Mitzrayim and moves to Midian;

Essentially, alienating, and disassociating himself from his brethren,

Moshe no longer wants to be included among his people and their flawed philosophies.

The next pesukim read:

“And it came to pass in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died; and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God from the labour. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Avraham, with Yitzchak, and with Yaakov. And God saw the children of Israel, and God knew”(Shemos 2:25)

What new idea is being included and introduced here?

Of course, God saw their plight. Of course, God knows.

G-d sees everything. To quote the Rambam, God is the Knowledge, the Knower and the Known.

That’s kind of His Job description. Why do we need these verses?

Rabbi Soloveitchik points out that at this point, rather suddenly, there is an interruption in the narrative and we are schlepped off to Midian, where Moshe is grazing his father-in-laws sheep.

In a burning bush, the Almighty says to Moshe:.

‘I have surely seen ( רָאֹה רָאִיתִי) the affliction of My people that are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their pains (Shemos 3:7)

Why does the Almighty use the double lashon, the double language, ra’oh raiti, when speaking to Moshe at the burning bush?

 

When reading these words this week, I was reminded of a passage I once read by George Bernard Shaw

In which he describes the only man he knows who behaves sensibly; his tailor.

“He takes my measurements anew each time he sees me.

The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them”.

 

I don’t know about you, holy reader,

But I am not George Bernard Shaw’s tailor.

My measurements are often fixed and rigid.

I assume my assessments of Others are accurate,

I think I can read the depths of their desires, the lengths of their longings,

I think I can estimate the dimensions of their deservedness, the magnitude (or minuteness) of their middos.  

I believe myself to be a wise enough tailor to size up the Souls of others, and expect them to fit.

And perhaps more saddeningly, I believe myself to be a wise enough tailor to measure the size of my own Soul.

We hear of individuals suffering from Body Dysmorphic Disorder,

Where they fixate on the flaws of their physicality.

Perhaps some of us have developed a kind of Neshama Dysmorphic Disorder

We have been disillusioned to think our Divine dimensions have been forever damaged,

That our sins stain us permanently

That our Soul seams have unraveled beyond repair.

We are not tailors who measure each visit anew, we remain rigid in our limited understandings of our Souls.

Some days, in the sands of our own Mitzrayims, we think our Soulsize has plateaued

That our Middos measurements are minimal

That this world is not fit to clothe the King

We think we see us. We think we see the world. We think we see the measurements of mankind and that we know,

But what if we have only measured once and simply expect the world to fit?

 

In Hebrew the word for a cut dress pattern is a גְּזִירָה (gizra)

Remarkably similar to the word  גְזֵרָה (gezeira) which means an edict or decree

Mah HaKesher? What’s the connection?

Just as the tailor must change the dimensions of their dress pattern if the customer has grown,

So too a gezeira, a decree of enslavement, of challenge, of Mizrayim,

Can change if the people go up a size.

If they burst through the Soul seams,

If their Emunah gets enlarged, their Bitachon gets bigger,

If their Egos get emaciated, if their Safek shrivels.

We need to see and know that we can expand.

That the gzeira and the gizra are not fixed

That the Holy Tailor takes our measurements each moment anew.

Rabbi Soloveitchik explains to us that in saying רָאֹה רָאִיתִי “ra’oh raiti”, the Almighty is making an indictment against Moshe Rabbeinu.

It is a direct attack on Moshe’s earlier statement “Indeed, the matter has become known”.

As if God is saying:

You think you see the people around you accurately, Moishele?

You think you know the dimensions of the Divinely designed People?

You think you even know yourself, My Child?

Raoh raiti,

I, the Sublime Seamstress, use double lashon

I capital S, See. I See.

I update my measurements.

I refresh the page that is You constantly.

I hear the thoughts of all people’s hearts,

I know the wants behind their worries, the desires beneath their fears,

I See, I See them.

I See, I See you.

For I am constantly measuring

While you,

You, my Moishele, you measured them but once.

כי לא מחשבותי מחשבותיכם ולא דרכיכם דרכי

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. (Yeshayahu 55:8)

I know my Children .I know they are worthy of Wonders of Wonders.

Moshe, it is now your task to awaken and teach them this Truth

Go teach Bnei Yisroel that I will not abandon them, that I do not measure them but once.

Go to Mitzrayim and tell my beloved children that I see them, I see them for who they truly are, who they are not, and who they still have a lifetime to become”.

This message is not just for Moshe but for all of us and I pray that we all take some time to meditate this Shabbos on the intricacies of its implications;

May we know with complete certainty that the Almighty is measuring us each and every moment anew, that He is refreshing our pages, that He is Seeing, Seeing us.

May we know that we can always patch up that which within us has torn, we can re-sew our seams, we can revel in the expansiveness of our Soulsize by standing before the Tailor humbly.

May we let go of our static measurements of Others, measuring instead again and again the volume of their vessels that simply hold and reveal the Infinite Light.

May we prostrate ourselves before the Tailor of Truth at the Beis HaMikdash, draped in garments of splendor, bringing Him only Happiness from all that has been crafted through us, b’meheira beyameinu.

Gut Shabbos.