Bo
What’s calling us?
Reflection by Or HaLev teacher Zac Newman:
"One way of reading Torah is to see which words or phrases seem to stand out, reaching off the page towards you. In this light, reading this week’s parsha, what really strikes me is the name itself:
בֹּ֖א
Bo. Come. It’s often said that the Torah comes to meet us and offers what we need. The Torah calls to us. This week it does so literally, saying Bo, come.
Come…to what? What is the Torah calling us to?
For Moshe, the call is into the hardened heart of the tyrant:
`And the Divine said to Moshe: Come to Pharaoh` (Ex. 10:1)
God is in Pharaoh, says the Kotzker Rebbe, as much as everywhere else: thus the divine call is `come`, not `go`. Come, for I am here too; even here.
What’s calling you, beckoning you, whispering lovingly: Come?
Like Moshe, we might be called to a challenge. But for each of us the shape may be very different at different times. We might be called to make space in our hearts for other people. As David Whyte says, to put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation.
We might be called to make space in our hearts for ourselves.
Maybe we are called to let our hearts be joyful and hopeful, to allow joy and hope to be real and full and deep, even though they are not the only real things we feel.
Are we called to recognize that we are no longer in Egypt? To admit the simple everyday straightforward and countless ways in which we are blessed. `This, which God has done for me` (13:8), we read this week. In this I am blessed. Despite the complexity, we are called to come and see the beauty right before our eyes, to step into the light, to take in what is vivid and bright and ceaselessly alive in this moment right now.
Maybe the Torah is calling us finally to do the thing we’ve been postponing, to let go of what is holding us back, to come home, or to set forth, or to admit that we’re just not sure, and breathe freely in the uncertainty.
We are called by the Torah to Shabbat. To stop. To Earth, space, rest, peace. Sweetheart, come."