By Talia Rodwin

This week's parasha tells a well-known tale. Shemot comprises the beginnings of the Pesach story. As the Israelite children multiply, Pharaoh feels threatened. He orders all male babies to be killed but one woman, Yocheved, tries to save her son by placing him in a basket of reeds and sending him down the Nile. This is, of course, Moses. Moses is raised by Pharaoh's daughter but forced to flee Egypt after he kills an Egyptian. Moses talks to God via burning bush and returns to Egypt to ask Pharaoh to Let His People Go.

I would like to focus on the burning bush as I examine this week's parasha. The burning bush is the part of the story that has always stuck out to me as miraculous and implausible (I guess there's the plagues, too, but those come later on). Throughout the rest of this parasha, characters seem motivated by obvious human rationales: Yocheved tries to save her son because she loves him, Moses flees Egypt out of fear for his life. Yet when Moses speaks to God in the burning bush, their interaction is motivated by faith.

As a radical skeptic, faith has always seemed like a hard thing to swallow. It speaks in a metaphorical language, the language of beliefs and leaps. Faith has never seemed to hold actual weight in the tangible world.

In thinking about this parasha, however, I've started thinking that faith might be a necessary component in creating change. Faith means having a vision and believing it is possible. Faith seems like an essential starting point, otherwise we are without drive. Realism alone doesn't create radical action. Action begins with the faith in the possibility of change and then, with added organizing and personpower, change can become more tangible.

Moses came from a long line of Jews whose interactions with faith drove them forward (Abraham followed God's orders to form the covenant, Jacob encountered God in a dream). We, too, as Habonim Dror, are in a line of people whose faith and vision drove them forward. Once can look at generations of chalutzim, the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, and thousands of other Habo activists who have harnessed idealism (read: faith) to create change in their world.

Maybe the burning bush isn't so out of place after all. True, it is metaphorical and bizarre. But it also presents us with a mode of thinking that is more complex than pure reason. Maybe there really can be miracles when you believe. If Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston think so, then that's legit.