Burn baby burn

There’s a strange scene at the beginning of the Jewish story of freedom. Moses is out in the middle of nowhere, tending sheep, when he notices a bush on fire. A thorny, scraggly bush in the desert. And the strangest part isn’t even the fire, it’s the fact that the bush doesn’t burn up.

That’s where G-d speaks to Moses and gives him the mission that will change Jewish history.

The rabbis ask the obvious question: Why there? Why not a beautiful tree, or a holy mountain, or a place where people actually live? Their answer is simple and simultaneously radical: to teach that there is no place in the world where G-d is not present. Even a thorn bush, and even in the desert.

Most of us don’t experience life as a mountaintop moment. Life looks more like that bush, messy and unimpressive. Work stress, family tension, bills, health worries, and unanswered emails are not exactly “holy” territory. And yet the message of the burning bush is that G-d doesn’t wait for your life to become polished before showing up. He’s already there.

What’s even more powerful is that the bush doesn’t turn into something else. It doesn’t become a rose garden, it stays a bush. G-d doesn’t erase reality in order to be present in it, He enters it as is.

That’s an important corrective to how many of us think about Judaism and spirituality. We often assume that to be “connected,” we need to change who we are entirely; that we need to be more religious, more knowledgeable, and more perfect. The Torah suggests something quieter yet more demanding: don’t run from where you are, start there.

This is how Judaism understands Torah itself. The Torah isn’t reinvented every generation to fit the mood of the times. It doesn’t need rebranding to stay relevant. The world changes, people change, and even values shift. But the core of Torah remains steady.

That can sound rigid or uncomfortable, especially in a culture that treats flexibility as the highest virtue. But think about it practically. Imagine if the definition of honesty or human dignity changed every few decades. What would that do to trust and to continuity?

The Torah’s consistency isn’t about control, it’s about reliability. It’s about knowing that some things are solid enough to lean on, especially when everything else feels unstable.

At the same time, Judaism has never been frozen. There’s room—actually, a responsibility—for interpretation and growth. Every generation learns Torah in its own voice. But there’s a difference between uncovering depth and rewriting foundations. It’s like mining: you don’t invent the gold, you dig it out.

The rabbis say that even the greatest scholar must always see himself as a student. Not because he lacks knowledge, but because humility is the condition for truth. The moment someone decides they’re bigger and smarter than tradition, or entitled to reshape it in their own image, that’s when things start to unravel.

In real life, we see this all the time. Growth only happens when we stop pretending we have it all figured out.

The burning bush reminds us that meaning doesn’t require perfection. You don’t need to escape the desert to find G-d. You just need to notice that the bush is already burning, and not being consumed.

And maybe, if we’re paying attention, we’ll hear a calling there too.