Torah For Our Times: Shemot – Where is God When I’m Hurting?

As the book of Genesis draws to an end, Joseph has settled his family in the affluent land of Goshen.  The reader can easily assume that life was good for the ancient Israelites in Egypt. Approximately 400 years pass between the conclusion of Genesis and the beginning of the book of Exodus.  Suddenly, in the first few verses of Exodus we learn the Israelites have greatly multiplied in number and for reasons unknown become slaves to a new Pharaoh “who did not know Joseph (Exo. 1:8).” How did this happen?

Over the centuries there have been several attempts to explain the Israelite slavery in Egypt.  Some of the ancient rabbis saw the enslavement as a punishment by God for allowing themselves to assimilate among the Egyptians.  Others suggest this was part of God’s Divine plan “to take the descendants of Abraham and teach them, through the experience of being enslaved and redeemed, to be sensitive to the oppressed in every age.”  

Among the more compelling explanations is found in the midrash Mekhilta, “Whenever Israel is enslaved, the Divine Presence-as it were-is enslaved with them.”  Rabbi Reuven Hammer explains, “At a time of human tragedy God is not passive or remote.  He certainly is not on the side of the oppressors.  Rather, God suffers with us and is in need of redemption, too.”

The late  author and voice of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel saw the same scenario play out in the Nazi death camps.  In his personal memoir Night, Wiesel relates the story of a young child in Auschwitz who is part of a scheme to smuggle food into the camp.  The Nazis uncover the smuggling ring and gather the camp prisoners  around gallows where the child and two other adults are to be hung.  Wiesel writes, “The three were placed at the same moment within the nooses. “Long live liberty!” cried the two adults. But the child was silent.

“Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked. A sign from the head of the camp. The deed was done. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. “Bare your heads!” yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. “Cover your heads!”

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. But the third, he was too light; the child was still alive. For more than half an hour, he died so slowly under our eyes. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.”

I cannot believe in a God who would use slavery as a Divine punishment, any more than I can believe in a God who would sit silent while more than six-million souls were systematically murdered.  God has given us an ethical design for living, together with the wisdom to carry it out.  When we succeed, God celebrates.  When we fail, God lifts us up.  When we suffer,  God suffers with us.

Rabbi Hammer concludes, “We may not be able to explain why the good suffer and we may not be able to answer the question, Why did God permit this?  But we can assert that God identifies with those who suffer.”

Rabbi Howard Siegel