By R Lord Jonathan Sacks
The first question Moses asked God was Mi anokhi. Not “who are you?” But “who am I?”
At a simple level Moses was asking a simple question. Who am I to stand before Pharaoh? Who am I to lead the Jewish people? What makes me worthy of this task? Moses was already showing that aspect of his character that made him the unique leader he became. He was modest, “more humble”, as the Torah later states, “than anyone else on the face of the earth”. He had no sense of personal grandeur, no driving belief in his own destiny. He led not because he thought he was great but because the task was real, the need undeniable, the hour pressing and the call inescapable. He led because God left no choice other than to lead. He had, in Shakespeare’s words, greatness thrust upon him.
But at a deeper level Moses’ query was a different question. Who was Moses? How would a biographer have described him at that point? He was found and adopted by an Egyptian princess, raised in Pharaoh’s palace and brought up as an Egyptian Prince. When, after the events that led to his flight to Midian, he rescued Jethro’s daughters, the report to their father was, “an Egyptian rescued us.” In appearance, manner, dress, speech he was an Egyptian – not Hebrew, an Israelite, a Jew.
Moses’ question, therefore, cut to the core of identity. Perhaps it is a question asked in some form or another by every adopted child. Who am I? Am I the child of those who brought me up? Or am I the child of my biological parents, Amram and Jochabed? Am I an Egyptian or an Israelite? A prince or a slave? Where do my loyalties lie?
In Moses’ case it was no ordinary question. The implications were vast. Was he one of the rulers or the ruled? One of the powerful or powerless? Did he belong to the prosecutors or the persecuted? The alternatives could not have been more extreme. Before him later, on the one hand, a life of ease and honour; on the other, an uncertain fate fraught with suffering and pain.
Nor was it made easier by Moses’ first experience of the Jewish people. Intervening to save one of them from the brutality of an Egyptian taskmaster, the next day he found himself pilloried by the very people to his defence he had come. The first recorded words spoken to Moses by an Israelite were, “who made you ruler and judge over us?” Not yet a leader, he already found his leadership being challenged. It was the first intimation of what was to become a recurring theme of the Mosaic books. The Jewish people is not an easy people.
Perhaps Moses thought he could avoid the question. His flight to Midian was an escape from physical danger. He had killed an Egyptian officer. He faced a capital charge and a warrant was out for his arrest. But it was also an escape from the psychological burden of choice. Midian was neutral space. In Midian you do not have to decide whether you are an Egyptian or an Israelite. Moses was simply – as he said at the birth of his first child – “a stranger in a strange land.” Not an Egyptian or an Israelite but an outsider, someone who could have been either, whose origins were obscure but perhaps no longer relevant.
What Moses discovered, alone with his flocks of the mountain, was that there are choices from which we cannot hide. Almost the first words God says to him are, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” God is not here telling Moses who God is. The answer to that question comes later, in one of the most haunting, enigmatic statements and religious literature: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, “I am who I am.” Or, “I will be who I will be.” In his earlier speech God is not telling Moses who God is but who Moses is. He is the son of his father, the descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is not a prince of Egypt child of Israel. And being a child of Israel, he cannot, may not, be indifferent to their fate.
In a very real sense, Moses is a symbol of our time. New Zealand is our Midian – a place untouched by the tyranny of the Holocaust, the Egypt of the 20th century. Midian is somewhere else, neutral space, where the question of identity is no longer so pressing, where in the fullness of time a Jew can forget that he or she is a Jew.
Can we? Can we forget and still be honest with ourselves? Today, in an age of post-modernism and deconstruction, there is an assumption that identity is no longer fixed, absolute, given. We can be whatever we choose to be, and for however long or short a time. Cultures are no longer monolithic. We inhabit diversity. We can try out any of the world’s literatures or cuisines or faiths. Already through the Internet – the so-called multi-user domains – we can embark on a series of relationships in fictitious or simulated roles. Virtual reality will make this an even more convincing experience. Post-modern identities, Michel Foucault argued, are not discovered but invented. We are who we decide to be.
But there comes a moment for each of us, as it did for Moses, when the question of Mi anokhi, “who am I?” Is inescapable. There is only one answer. Imagine Moses, having asked the question, hearing the following words by way of reply: “You are whoever you choose to be. You can be an Egyptian and live the life of a prince. You can be a Midianite and spend the rest of your days as a shepherd, untroubled and obscure. You can be an Israelite in exile, dreaming distant dreams. Or you can go back to Egypt and take your place among the slaves. Feel free to choose. Remember: nothing matters except what you want. Don’t let me influence you in any way.”
We know, without having to be told, that this cannot be the voice of God. It is the voice of fantasy, in which nothing exists except our desires. Increasingly we are building a cultural fantasy. Reality is not fantasy. It is that which exists regardless of our choices. Objects are real because they impede our movement. People are real because they have wills of their own. Reality is the world we did not choose to enter. And we discover our place in it, ultimately, by learning who did choose that we should enter it, and why; by reflecting on who our parents are, and where they came from, and what their story is.
That is why Jewish identity is a given at birth – and why Pesach is the oldest and most profound answer to Moses’ question, “who am I?” For I learned who I am by hearing my ancestors’ story and knowing that I am one of its characters. I enter it midway, and whatever I choose will itself be part of that story, and I can opt out of it only at the cost of being false to my past and to myself.
That is the fundamental significance of the Haggadah, and why the seder service begins with questions asked by the child. On the surface, the Haggadah answers the question, “what is this?” What is Pesach, matzoh and maror? But beneath the surface the real question is, “who am I?” The greatest gift we can give our children is to tell them the story of where we came from and who our ancestors were. For we discover who we are, not by an outward journey into the culture and society that surrounds us, but by an inward journey into who gave us birth, and who bore them, and what happened to them to make them what they were.
God gave Moses his identity when he told him that he was a child of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The story was his, and the time had come to write a new chapter. In that – no less – is what we give our children on Pesach. “This is your people and it story. Take it and make it yours. A hundred generations have each added their chapter. And there is one which bears your name, and only you can write. This is the past which you are the future. This is who you are.”
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