Wow it's been awhile since I last wrote.... Quite a bit has flown by in the past three months, an Israel trip, moving across the country to start school at an incredible university, and all that ties into that. But alas, this blog is a forum to discuss ideas not my autobiography.
So at Brandeis, I'm taking a course called Idea of G-d. It's a philosophy course taken with Palle Yourgrau, who is a brilliant mathematician and philosopher (funny how the two go together). Anyways, we were discussing on Monday the presence of G-d through the Torah and he brings up an age old question: what does G-d mean when he tells Moses "I am who I am"?
Although we are a class of between 35 and 40 on any given day, this class is completely discussion based and the ideas people were coming up with were quite intriguing.
One person said on a literal level that G-d was just introducing Himself considering we don't necessarily know how to say yud kay vav kay. This idea was quickly shot down by Yourgrau. "Uh, that means we have His name. Next thought." Dissed and dismissed. Then one guy and I started formulating an idea between the two of us. And of course I used linguistic terms from Miss Shaw, "Well using the terms signifier and signified, the signifier being the name of that which is being signified, I think G-d is showing he is beyond any sort of representation. What if He is just stating that He is more than anything else? That defining Him puts limits on Him?" Sarhan then expanded on this idea, "Ya, that G-d is just explaining that He is being and nothing else. That by putting a name on an object differentiates it from all other equal objects, but since He IS G-d, there is nothing equal to Him and therefore G-d just explains that He is Being." Yourgrau liked this idea, " Being with a capital B. I like that."
I am leaning toward this concept, but what else is there? I mean, the Talmud goes back and forth on all sorts of ideas, and there are all sorts of rabbinical commentary on all sorts of questions in Judaism, but what does G-d mean by telling Moses "I am who I am"?
Two ponderings:
ReplyDelete1. I'm not sure I like your translation. The aheyeh indicates future tense (I will be what I will be) and so that is a valuable part of the translation
2. While not always a Rashi fan, I think Rashi's comment (been there in past suffering and will be there in future sufferings) suggest a permananence to the world that is perhaps beyond our comprehension but is rooted in our understandings of the world, namely that our constant question of why do bad things happen to good people is also part of G-ds realm and that we shouldnt forget about him in those moments when it is so easy to doubt.