02 Jan SHEMOT: SOULS ON FIRE- THE STORY OF A THIRST NEVER QUENCHED

Irritation,
Aggravation, and
Misery
A boy asks his
father to explain
the differences
between irritation, aggravation, and
misery.
Dad picks up the phone and dials a
number at random. When the phone is
answered he asks, “Can I speak to
Ralph, please?”
“No! There’s no one called Ralph
here.” The person hangs up.
“That’s irritation,” says Dad.
He picks up the phone again, dials the
same number and asks for Ralph a
second time.
“No–there’s no one here called
Ralph. Go away. If you call again I
shall telephone the police.” End of
conversation.

“That’s aggravation.”
“Then what’s ‘misery’?” asks his son.
The father picks up the phone and
dials a third time:
“Hello, this is Ralph. Have I received
any phone calls?”
The Vision
The inaugural vision in which Moshe
was appointed to become the molder
of the Jewish Nation and its eternal
teacher, we should assume, contains
within it the essence of Judaism.

Moshe, shepherding his father-in-
law’s sheep in the Sinai wilderness,

suddenly sees a blazing thorn-bush.
“G-d’s angel appeared to Moshe in a
blaze of fire from amid a thorny-bush,”
we read in Shemos. “He saw and
behold! The bush was burning in the
fire but was not consumed. Moshe said
to himself, ‘I must go over there and
gaze at this great sight—why isn’t the
bush burning up from the flames.’”

When Moshe
approaches the scene,
G-d reveals Himself to
him, charging Moshe
with the mission of
leading the Jewish
people to redemption.
What was the spiritual
and psychological
symbolism behind the
vision of a burning
bush?
Human Trees and Bushes
“Man is a tree of the field,” states the
Torah. All humans are compared to
trees and bushes. Just like trees and
bushes, we humans contain hidden
roots, motives and drives buried
beneath our conscious self. Just like
trees and bushes, we also possess a
personality that is visibly displayed,
each in a different from and shape.
Some human beings can be compared
to tall and splendorous trees, with
strong trunks enveloped by
branches, flowers and fruits. Others
may be compared to bushes,
humble plants, lacking the stature
and majesty commanded by a tree.
Some individuals may even see
themselves as thorn-bushes,
harboring unresolved tension and
unsettled turmoil. Like a thorn,
their struggles and conflicts are a
source of constant irritation and
frustration, as they never feel
content and complete within
themselves. All people—all trees
and bushes—are aflame. Each
person has a fire burning within
him or her, yearning for meaning,
wholesomeness, and love. Just as
the flame of a candle is forever
licking the air, reaching upward
toward heaven, so too each soul
longs to kiss heaven and touch the
texture of meaning and eternity.
Yet, for many human trees the
longing flame of the soul is satisfied
and ultimately quenched by their
sense of spiritual accomplishment
and success. These people feel
content with their spiritual
achievements; complacent in their
relationship with G-d, satisfied

with the meaning and love they find in
their lives. The human thorn-bushes,
on the other hand, experience a
different fate. The thorns within them
never allow them to become content
with who they are, and they dream for
a life of truth that always seems
elusive. Thus their yearning flames are
never satisfied. Their thirsty palates
never quenched. They burn and burn
and their fire—their longing, passion,
and thirst—never ceases. Since the
ultimate peace they are searching for
remains beyond them, and the ultimate
sense of oneness eludes them, their
internal void is never filled, leaving
them humbled and thirsty, ablaze with
a flame and yearning that is never
sated. With the sight Moshe beheld in
the wilderness, he was shown one of
the fundamental truths of Judaism:
More than anywhere else, G-d is
present in the flame of the thorn-bush.
The prerequisite to Moshe’s assuming
the role of the eternal teacher of Bnei
Yisrael was his discovery that the
deepest truth of G-d is experienced in
the very search and longing for Him.
The moment one feels that “I have
G-d,” he might have everything but
G-d. When Moshe observed this
spiritual truth, he exclaimed: “I must
depart from here and go over there and
gaze at this great sight—why isn’t the
bush burning up from the flames.” This
vision inspired a transformation even
in Moshe himself. This saintly man,
the greatest prophet in history,
recognized the infinity one encounters
only in the void, in the longing, in the
hunger, in the fire that never ceases to
burn, because the thorns refuse to
quench the flames.