Parashat Tetzaveh and Shabbat Zachor, our readings just before Purim, together offer a simple but urgent charge. Remember who you are. Remember whom you serve. Remember why you were redeemed. And do not forget.

In Moses’ day the heartfelt donations were used to construct a special place for Adonai to dwell with his people as they continued on their journey. Today, instead of giving precious materials to construct a physical dwelling we are learning to live less for our own worldly successes and physical desires and more to become one with the Spirit of God.

When we first moved to Ann Arbor, more than forty years ago, there was a Chinese restaurant nearby with a giant lobster in a tank in its foyer. The creature was nearly three feet long and must have weighed close to twenty pounds. No one knew for sure how old it was—perhaps seventy-five years, give or take. So why am I talking about lobsters and what does it have to do with our parasha?

Each time we stand before the open ark, we stand again at Sinai. We repeat Israel’s ancient pledge, affirming that all God has spoken, we will do. Parashat Yitro reminds us that this pledge demands more than belief. It demands shared leadership, covenantal responsibility, and lives shaped by service.

In the modern world, no text has spoken more profoundly to people about their potential to achieve freedom. The message to Israel for all time is clear. The God who has raised you up in fulfillment of his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will not forget his promises to you.

In Parashat Bo, a portion filled with plagues, Pharaoh, and Passover instructions, we are reminded that woven into the fabric of our history, God has provided tangible, sensory traditions that remind us of who he is and who he called us to be.

Just as Israel experienced an initial redemption in Egypt even while still enslaved, so we, too, are invited to live within the redemption God has already enacted in Messiah. Our life is shaped not only by anticipation, but by participation: learning to recognize what God has done, what he is doing now, and how we are to live as his redeemed people today. Our ransomed life is now.

It is only after Moses turns aside that God speaks. Moses first hears God through the miracle of the bush that burns without being consumed. Only then does he truly listen—by pausing, turning, and giving his full attention to what is unfolding before him.

Among the many lessons to digest from the story of Jacob’s life is the critical importance of the relationship between parents and their children. More pointedly between a father and his son; and in Jacob‘s case between a father and his sons, plural. Nothing, it seems, is unidimensional in Jacob‘s life.

The idea of a long process toward a distant goal feels daunting unless we’re rewarded along the way. What happened to perseverance—to enduring hardship so that, when we look back, we can see how much stronger we’ve become because of it?