JANUARY 11 • 2024 | 47

meaning, I was not recognized
by them in My attribute of
‘keeping faith,’ by reason of
which My name is ‘Hashem,’
namely that I am faithful to
fulfil My word, for I made
promises to them but I did
not fulfil them [during their
lifetime].” Rashi commentary
to Exodus 6:3.
The patriarchs had received
promises from God. They
would multiply and become a
nation. They would inherit a
land. Neither of these prom-
ises were realized in their
lifetime. To the contrary, as
Genesis reaches its close, the
family of the patriarchs num-
bered a mere 70 souls. They
had not yet acquired a land.
They were in exile in Egypt.
But now the fulfilment was
about to begin.
Already, in the first chapter
of Exodus, we hear, for the
first time, the phrase Am Bnei
Yisrael, “the people of the chil-
dren of Israel” (Exodus 1:9).
Israel was no longer a family,
but a people. Moses at the
burning bush was told by God
that He was about to bring
the people to “a good and
spacious land, a land flowing
with milk and honey” (Exodus
3:8). Hashem therefore means
the God who acts in history to
fulfill His promises.
This was something radical-
ly new — not just to Israel but
to humanity as a whole. Until
then, God (or the gods) was
known through nature. God
was in the sun, the stars, the
rain, the storm, the fertility of
the fields and the sequence of
the seasons. When there was
drought and famine, the gods
were being angry. When there
was produce in plenty, the
gods were showing favor. The
gods were nature personified.
Never before had God inter-
vened in history, to rescue a

people from slavery and set
them on the path to freedom.
This was a revolution, at once
political and intellectual.

THE VALUE OF HISTORY
To most humans at most
times, there seems to be no
meaning in history. We live,
we die, and it is as if we had
never been. The universe
gives no sign of any interest
in our existence. If that was
so in ancient times, when
people believed in the exis-
tence of gods, how much
more so is it true today for
the neo-Darwinians who
see life as no more than the
operation of “chance and
necessity” (Jacques Monod)
or “the blind watchmaker”
(Richard Dawkins). Time
seems to obliterate all mean-
ing. Nothing lasts. Nothing
endures.
In ancient Israel, by con-
trast, “for the first time, the
prophets placed a value on
history … For the first time,
we find affirmed and increas-
ingly accepted the idea that
historical events have a value
in themselves, insofar as they
are determined by the will of
God … Historical facts thus
become situations of man in
respect to God, and as such
they acquire a religious value
that nothing had previously
been able to confer on them.
It may, then, be said with
truth that the Hebrews were
the first to discover the mean-
ing of history as the epiphany
of God.
Judaism is humanity’s first
glimpse of history as more
than a mere succession of
happenings — as nothing less
than a drama of redemption
in which the fate of a nation
reflects its loyalty or otherwise
to a covenant with God.
It is hard to recapture this

turning point in the human
imagination, just as it is hard
for us to imagine what it was
like for people first to encoun-
ter Copernicus’ discovery that
the Earth went round the sun.
It must have been a terrifying
threat to all who believed that
the Earth did not move; that
it was the one stable point
in a shifting universe. So it
was with time. The ancients
believed that nothing really
changed. Time was, in Plato’s
phrase, no more than the
“moving image of eternity.”
That was the certainty that
gave people solace. The times
may be out of joint, but even-
tually things will return to the
way they were.
To think of history as an
arena of change is terrifying.
It means what happened once
may never happen again; that
we are embarked on a journey
with no assurance we will ever
return to where we began. It
is what Milan Kundera meant
in his phrase, “the unbearable
lightness of being.” Only pro-
found faith — a new kind of
faith, breaking with the entire
world of ancient mythology —
could give people the courage
to set out on a journey to the
unknown.
That is the meaning
of Hashem: the God who
intervenes in history. As
Judah Halevi points out, the
Ten Commandments begin
not with the words “I am
the Lord your God who cre-
ated heaven and earth,” but
“I am the Lord your God
who brought you out from
Egypt, from the house of
slavery.” Elokim is God as
we encounter Him in nature
and creation, but Ha-shem is
God as revealed in history, in
the liberation of the Israelites
from slavery and Egypt.
I find it moving that

this is precisely what many
non-Jewish observers have
concluded. This, for example,
is the verdict of the Russian
thinker Nikolai Berdyaev: “I
remember how the materialist
interpretation of history, when
I attempted in my youth to
verify it by applying it to the
destinies of peoples, broke
down in the case of the Jews,
where destiny seemed abso-
lutely inexplicable from the
materialistic standpoint …
Its survival is a mysterious
and wonderful phenomenon
demonstrating that the life
of this people is governed by
a special predetermination,
transcending the processes of
adaptation expounded by the
materialistic interpretation of
history.
“The survival of the Jews,
their resistance to destruction,
their endurance under abso-
lutely peculiar conditions and
the fateful role played by them
in history: All these point to
the particular and mysterious
foundations of their destiny.”
Nicolai Berdyaev, The Meaning
of History (1936), 86–87
That is what God tells
Moses is about to be
revealed: Hashem, mean-
ing God as He intervenes
in the arena of time, “so
that My name may be
declared throughout the
world” (Exodus 9:16). The
script of history would
bear the mark of a hand
not human, but Divine.
And it began with these
words: “Therefore say to the
Israelites: I am Hashem, and I
will bring you out from under
the yoke of the Egyptians.”

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan

Sacks served as the chief rabbi of

the United Hebrew Congregations of

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His

teachings have been made available

to all at rabbisacks.org.