The name of this week’s Torah portion is Bo, meaning either to come or to go. It is God’s command to Moses to confront Pharaoh and once again to ask for our people’s freedom. Bo is one of my favorite inflections in the Hebrew language. Spelled with the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet – Bet, Aleph – it is the command of parent to a child who is struggling with an assignment, or of a friend reaching out when you need a hand. It is also, incidentally, what we say on Friday night during the L’cha Dodi prayer to beckon the Shabbat bride into the room. We sing in the feminine, “Boi Kalah, Boi Kalah,” “Come, Bride, Come Bride.” Here it is God offering support to Moses for the most difficult task he is about to perform. “Bo,” God is trying to say to Moses. “I know it is not easy, but you will be able to accomplish it and I will be there every step along the way.”
This week, I heard an interview on NPR with Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the members of the Little Rock Nine, who helped integrate the Arkansas school system in 1957 describing the harrowing experience of her first day at the new school. Chased by a mob of angry protestors she and mother feared for their lives, unsure of where to turn.
This is how she described the moment, “my grandmother always said, if you’re ever in a really tight place, understand that at every moment of your life, God is as close to you as your skin. You have but to pray, and he will show you that he’s there, and he will help you… And so I – you know, I started to pray. And I prayed out loud, as loud as I possibly could, hoping that this would facilitate God’s hearing me. And I thought, how is he going to, you know, fix this? Because we couldn’t call the police – we knew that. What would the police do? They would help the other people. And so I thought, well, how will we get past this? And it was that – this was an unpaved sidewalk, and there were all sorts of bushes and branches and things across the walkway. And whereas we saw these two things, I suppose the gentlemen behind us, who were so angry, with their ropes in the air and their – you know, they didn’t. And so they fell. And just for an instant, that gave us one instant to get to the car.”
Like Melba Pattillo Beals on that day in 1957, we all want God to be as close to us as our skin. We could all use a little “Bo” in our life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex