Standing Barefoot on Holy Ground

There is a question we all ask ourselves in moments of crisis or calling. It rises from somewhere deep within us, often in the form of “why” or “how” questions, but often with a much deeper intention. The question seems simple really, but carries tremendous weight, Who am I?

Moshe asks this question at the burning bush. “Who am I,” he stammers to G-d, “that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” We read it as humility, perhaps even false modesty. But I think it’s something more profound, more painful. It’s the voice of a man who genuinely doesn’t know who he is.

And why would he? He was born Hebrew but raised Egyptian. He killed a man and fled. He’s spent forty years as a shepherd in Midian – anonymous, invisible, exiled from his people and his past. When he tries to speak, the words catch in his throat. כבד פה וכבד לשון – heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue. He is, in every sense, a man who has lost himself.

What does G-d show such a man? Not a miracle, but a mirror.

The Torah tells us that Moshe turns aside to see את־המראה הגדל הזה  which is most often translated as something like “this great vision.” But the Hebrew word מ-ר-א- ה carries a double meaning. Yes, it means vision, something seen. But it also means a mirror, something that shows you yourself. The letters are the same: מ-ר-א- ה. External and internal seeing collapsed into one word.

So, what if the burning bush was also both?

The Sefat Emet, a Polish Chasidic master of the late 19th century, teaches us that there are two kinds of fire.

– There is the external fire, אש שמבחוץ ולמטה, the consuming fire that destroys.

– And there is the internal fire אש הפנימי, what he calls the אספקלריא המאירה, the clear lens, the illuminating fire that clarifies without consuming.

The external fire is Egypt’s furnace. It’s the flames that try to burn you up and reduce you to ash. But the internal fire? That’s Sinai. That’s Torah. That’s the fire that illuminates your soul without destroying it. That’s the fire that reveals rather than erases.

And here’s the unfortunate secret, says the Sefat Emet:

You cannot reach the second fire without passing through the first.

The burning bush shows both fires at once. It burns but is not consumed. It suffers the external flame while carrying the internal flame. And when Moshe sees this, the midrash tells us, it’s “כדי ללבבו, in order to encourage his heart.” Not just to catch his attention, but to draw him into recognition. To make him understand: This is you.

There’s a midrash in Shemot Rabbah that we often hear of as children. Toddler Moshe, reached for Pharaoh’s crown. The advisors panicked about his long term desire for power and devised a test: place before him gold and burning coals. If he reached for gold, it would be taken as a sign of dangerous ambition. If he reached for coals, he would be viewed as a simple child.

Moshe reached for the gold, but an angel pushed his hand toward the coals, which he grabbed, and, as children do, put it in his mouth. And this, the midrash tells us, is why Moshe grows up “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue.”

I used to read this as a winsome explanation for Moshe’s impediment. But now I read it as Moshe’s first passage through fire.

That coal was the external fire that burned him, marked him, scarred him. It took something from him: his fluency, his ease of expression, his confidence. But here’s what the midrash knows that we often forget: Moshe survived it. The fire burned him, but did not consume him. It left its mark, but Moshe carried on.

Years later, when Moshe stood before the bush and saw it burning without being consumed, he really saw his own story reflected back to him. He saw the truth that he had thusly been unable to name: I have already passed through the consuming fire. I bear its marks. But I was not destroyed.

The scar on Moshe’s tongue was not evidence of disqualification. It’s testimony to survival. It’s proof that he has already made the journey that he will be asked to lead others through.

And then G-d says something that might be the most important line in the entire narrative: “Remove your shoes from upon your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”

We assume that we know what this means. Moshe is approaching the Divine Presence in the bush, so the ground nearby becomes holy. Take off your shoes…You’re entering sacred space.

But notice: Moshe isn’t at the bush yet. He’s still some distance away. So what makes this ground, the ground beneath Moshe’s feet now, holy?

Rashi, when commenting on Yaakov leaving Be’er Sheva in Bereishit quotes a midrash that offers us a key. When a tzadik is in a city, Rashi writes, “he is its glory, he is its splendor, he is its beauty. When he departs, its glory and its beauty depart with him.”

Do you hear what this is saying? The tzadik doesn’t just receive holiness from places. The tzadik radiates holiness into places. A righteous person sanctifies the ground they stand on.

What if G-d is telling Moshe: Remove your shoes not because you’re approaching My holiness, but because you need to recognize your own? Take off the barrier between your feet and the earth. Feel it. The ground is holy because you’re standing on it. You carry the inner fire now, Moshe. You sanctify space. You don’t just enter sacred ground; you create it.

This is the deepest level of the mirror. The bush is burning because it carries Divine fire. But Moshe, scarred, uncertain, heavy of tongue, is also burning with Divine fire. He just can’t see it yet. He needs to remove the shoes. He needs to feel the truth through the soles of his feet:
You are holy. You make holy. The fire didn’t destroy you; it refined you into something radiant.

This is the answer to ‘מי אנוכי’ “Who am I?”

You are someone who has passed through the consuming fire of the coal and emerged bearing its mark but not destroyed by it. You are someone who now carries the illuminating fire, the fire that clarifies rather than erases. You are someone who sanctifies the ground you stand on not despite your scars but because of them. The impediment that makes you feel inadequate is actually your credential. The burn that marked you as different marked you as chosen.

You are qualified to lead the people through Egypt’s flames precisely because you’ve already survived your own.

I think about this teaching now, in this moment of our own history, and I realize that we’re all standing before burning bushes. We’re all asking Moshe’s question: Who am I? Am I adequate for this moment? And we all carry the coal’s scar, some visible, some hidden: the traumas we’ve survived, the fires we’ve passed through, the marks that make us stumble over our words, hesitate, doubt ourselves. We look at those scars and think they disqualify us. We assume that to lead, to matter, to serve, we must be unblemished, untouched, whole.

But the bush whispers something different. It says: The fire that burned you was not meant to destroy you. It was meant to refine you. You were not consumed because you carry something unconsumable within you: something luminous, something holy, something that makes the ground you stand on sacred.

The Sefat Emet teaches that you cannot reach the illuminating fire without first passing through the consuming fire. This is the architecture of redemption, personal and collective. Egypt before Sinai. The coal before the bush. Affliction before revelation.

But here’s the part that we can not forget: once you’ve made that passage, you don’t leave the fires behind. You carry both. You remember the consuming flame. It keeps you humble, human, connected to all who suffer. And you embody the illuminating flame; it lets you lead, teach, heal, elevate.

Moshe’s genius wasn’t that he was born perfect. His genius was that he learned to read his imperfection as text. The heavy tongue became the mouth that would speak with G-d. The murderer who fled became the liberator who returned. The exiled who tended another man’s sheep became the shepherd of Israel.

The coal prepared him for the bush. The bush prepared him for Egypt. Egypt prepared him for Sinai.

It’s all one fire.

So I want to say to you what G-d said to Moshe: Take off your shoes.

Take off the barriers between you and the truth of where you stand. Stop insisting you’re not holy enough, refined enough, eloquent enough, whole enough. Stop waiting until you’re unmarked by fire to begin your work.

The place where you stand right now, with all your scars, all your hesitations, all your burns…this is holy ground. Not because you’ve arrived at someone else’s fire, but because you carry your own. You’ve passed through flames and survived. You glow with what you’ve endured and transcended.

And when you finally see yourself in the mirror of your own story…When you recognize that the great vision is you…You will understand why G-d doesn’t answer Moshe’s question directly. G-d doesn’t say, “Here’s who you are, Moshe.” G-d says, “אהיה עמךְ – I will be with you.” Because once you see yourself truly, once you stand barefoot on your own holy ground, once you recognize the inner fire you carry, the question of identity dissolves into something larger: presence, purpose, and partnership with the Divine.

The bush called to Moshe by name: “Moshe, Moshe.” Not “Hey you” or “Shepherd” or “You there.” Moshe. As if to say: I know who you are even if you don’t yet. I see the fire inside you even if you can only feel the scar on your tongue.

That voice is calling us too. By name. Saying: I know who you are. I see what you survived. I recognize what you carry. Now take off your shoes. Feel the holy ground beneath your feet. And turn toward the work that only you can do.

The bush burns. It always has. It always will.

The question is whether we’ll turn aside long enough to see: the bush is a mirror, and the light within it is our own. 

Shabbat shalom.