G-d, I Hope I Get It

“G-d, I Hope I Get It”
Parashat Vaera, Rabbi Andrew Kaplan Mandel, January 24, 2025

If you are dealing with disappointment, defeat, or disaster,
it can be easy to feel aimless or powerless or even pointless.

So, at a moment when their world was being ruled
by someone on a mission
to destroy their families and their way of life,
Moses and Aaron received an incredible gift from G-d:
parts to play.

In Chapter 7 of Exodus,
G-d acts as a casting agent and says:
Moses, I am giving you the role of G-d
in front of the audience of Pharaoh.
Aaron will be appearing in a supporting role,
on the same level as Pharoah’s magicians.
This allows Moses to announce the coming of a plague,
and for Aaron to hold up a rod to signal its start,
so there will be no doubt
that blood and frogs and the like
are not flukes,
but rather a result of coordination with Adonai.

It’s a remarkable and maybe even confusing moment.
When I’ve given out parts for a skit at the seder,
I always chuckle when I ask, “who wants to be G-d?”
Much of the point of Judaism — the whole one G-d idea —
is that the job is already taken.
We don’t presume we can claim divinity ourselves.

But here is Hashem,
naming that Moses is the G-d stand-in.
And Moses is perfect for this part –
because he reluctantly accepts the mantle,
claims he’s not worthy because he can’t speak well,
and continually cites G-d as the One
who is actually controlling the plagues,
rather than claiming credit himself.

Yet as humbled as Moses is,
he is also empowered.
When Moses told the Israelites that G-d was going to save them,
the Hebrew slaves did not listen, their spirits crushed.
They had no sense of hope or agency.
But for Moses and Aaron,
rather than the plagues happening around them,
they were able to participate in their liberation.
Once he gets warmed up, Moses really comes alive
And seems not even to need Aaron as his spokesperson.

We know that G-d could have implemented the Exodus alone;
G-d had no trouble creating the universe unilaterally,
Or destroying the world with a flood,
Or turning Sodom and Gomorrah upside down.

But by recruiting human actors for the 10 plagues,
perhaps G-d is in the midst of a long-term strategy.
In a new book, titled The Triumph of Life:
a Narrative Theology of Judaism,
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg argues that,
throughout different eras in our history,
G-d has been increasingly and intentionally less directly involved,
that G-d has made more and more space for our participation.

Through this lens,
we might view this Biblical moment in Exodus,
of asking Moses to play G-d, of providing a script and props,
as a milestone –
As the start of training wheels for the world we live in today,
a time when we are expected
to step up rather than rely on divine intervention.

This can be the hardest of pills to swallow.
Monday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
You’d be hard-pressed to think
of an era in recent history
where so many people lacked so much power over their lives.
While we praise G-d in our prayers extolling miracles,
Menachem Rosensaft, born in a DP camp to two survivors,
recently published the book
Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai After Auschwitz,
in which he asks: where was G-d during the Holocaust?
He doesn’t blame G-d for the mass murders,
but he does achingly question G-d’s absence.
I understand this.
And, in a recent interview, Rosensaft also had this to say:
“There was a divine presence within every Jew
who helped another Jew in a barrack,
who comforted, who shared some bread,
who told a joke, who cradled someone…There was the Divine Presence within every non-Jew
who risked their life to help [a] Jew.”
When I hear stories like that of Gino Bartali,
the Italian Tour de France winner
who was tapped during the war by a secret interfaith network
to hide false identity documents in the tube of his bicycle 
to transport them to Jews who needed to escape,
I can’t help but think of this week’s verse from Exodus:
I am giving you the role of G-d.

Of course, anyone can think they’re G-d;
Pharoah seemed to conceive of himself as divine. We are to beware of anyone who does so.
Our prophetic tradition reserves such a designation
for the pursuit of peace, justice, and human dignity.
When we see those values in jeopardy,
then we can intuit that we’re getting a casting call.
In fact, when we declare in synagogue that
G-d frees the captive or heals the sick,
Rabbi Greenberg sees it as an invitation for us
to leverage that which we have received.
G-d provides the example, the instructions, the tools.
We are to realize that we have been given
the actual physical talent, or time, or resources
to be used for the uplift of others,
like the people in Asheville
making sure their neighbors have space heaters this winter,
like the woman in downtown Los Angeles
who organized a free boutique filled with donated clothes
in the wake of the California fires,
like the three recently released hostages
whose sheer resilience inspires so many around the world.

The amazing truth is that
we are always in a situation
crackling with possibility,
We don’t need to be facing a national or international crisis.
Might we view each moment as one in which we are invited
to step forward and play a role?

Rather than the parlor game
“who might play me in the movie of my life,”
might we ask “who will I play in the movie of this moment?”

If you’re waiting for G-d to tap you on the shoulder,
look toward the stairs in the subway station
and see if there’s a parent struggling with a stroller;
look up from your phone toward a child who is looking to be seen;
look after neighbors who are trans and show them you care about them;
look toward the person who is alone during the Shehecheyanu
and be the one to invite them to sway with you.
I like to believe that G-d is right there, in that moment,
eager to bestow a special Oscar nomination.

There’s a song in the musical, A Chorus Line,
where the dancers auditioning for the director sing,
“G-d, I Hope I Get It. I Hope I Get It! How many people does he need?”
Not to worry.
There are enough parts for all of us.
Perhaps our most fervent prayer each week
might be to ask the Divine
to help us emerge from Shabbat
with new insight into the role we might play
— and the strength to give the performance of our lives.