Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

There are no statues of Moses from his own time, but we have statues by Michelangelo and another one by Salvador Dali. We don't know how Moses looked or how he sounded. But Hollywood cast Charlton Heston as Moses, and Heston has a deep and commanding voice. But Moses, from what we know from the Bible stories, was a stammerer, a stutterer, a heavy tongue. It may not do for Hollywood to have a hero as a stammerer. But it is brilliantly Jewish. and it portrays Moses' doubts and struggles and uncertainties.

Martin Buber somewhere explains that Moses, who transmitted the word of God, was a stammerer because once the word of God is filtered through human lips it loses its apodictic certainty. Whatever the origin of the revelation, by the time it is transmitted through human voice and mind it is fragile and often ambivalent. We have no statues of Moses, but we have stories. One story is told about a certain Arabian king who learned of Moses' extraordinary feats during the Exodus, and chose one of the most renowned artists of the land to paint the portrait of Moses. The artist met with Moses and he placed on his canvas the face of this remarkable figure. He returned to the king and showed his masterpiece to him. But the king was appalled and unbelieving, for the picture portrayed a degenerate man, haughty, jealous, angry, disfigured by ugly character traits.  The king was enraged at the artist. But the artist insisted that he has painted accurately what he had seen with his own eyes.

The king decided to set off himself to see Moses.

Face-to-face with Moses, the King could no longer deny the accuracy of the painter's portrait of Moses. He could not understand how this ugly similitude could be squared with the reputation of Moses. The king was perplexed and Moses understood the perplexity.

Moses explained, "Your artist is not to be blamed. For by nature I possessed all the reprehensive traits that your artist captured on canvas. But I mastered my evil impulses by force of my will, and I acquired through struggle a character that was the opposite of the dispositions with which I was born. The changes wrought in me by my own wrestlings with myself earned me honor upon earth. If my fine qualities were only a product of nature, I would be no better than a log of wood which remains as nature produced it at first.

This is an important story. Moses was not born great. Moses became great. Moses is the model of transformation and the ideal of transformation. For we recall in the Haggadah of the Seder,what is emphasized is the lowly origin of the Jewish people. They were not sons and daughters of royalty. They were children and idolaters and of slaves. And this point hidden. The text says, "We were slaves in the land of Egypt." In the beginning our ancestors were worshippers of idols. What is important is not who this people was, but what they have managed to become. That is important for a people and for persons. Not who you were but what you've become. The heroism is in the metamorphosis, in the transformation. Moses is a different kind of religious hero. He is not the son of God or the son of angels. He is no saint and no infallible being, no superman. Moses is altogether human, altogether flawed. His life validates the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: "There is no righteous person on earth who does good and who does not sin." Ecclesiastes 7:20.

What is a hero and who is a hero? The Ethics of the Fathers puts it clearly: "He who has mastered his own impulses." All of the heroes of the Bible change. And they, like Moses and Jacob before him, people who struggle with God and with man. And even when prevailing still carry the scars of their wrestlings on their psyches.

Dali portrayed Moses with a vertical line running from his head throughout his entire body. Moses is a divided man. Indeed he is the man who was always caught between. He is caught between peoples, his adoptive parents and his own biological parents. He is caught between the palace and its powers and the slave quarters and its squalor. He is caught between God whose standards are high and who at times lashes out at the people, and the slave people could manifest ingratitude, murmurings, rebelliousness. He is caught between siblings who respect him but also express their jealousy. He is caught between his people who must adore him but who are rebellious against him. He is caught in a family, some of whom remain deeply jealous of his power and his status.

Moses is the man between. He defends God against Israel and Israel against God. Moses, the prototype of a prophet, is no popular celebrity. In our times. a celebrity is known for being known.

Consider for a moment Moses' birth. He is abandoned. He floats in a basket on the Nile and he cries. But remarkably he cries silently lest he be discovered by the Pharaoh who seeks to destroy all the Hebrew males.

He is born nameless, and he is introduced to us in the Bible in Exodus 2:1 with these anonymous descriptions: "And there went a man of the house Levi and took to wife a daughter of Levi and the woman conceived and bore a son." He is nameless and his parents are nameless. He is every man. He will be given a name but not by his parents but by a stranger, the daughter of Pharaoh, a name Moshe – "For I drew him out of the water.”

He is alone. He is an orphan.  Moses has a conscience, a heart, a deep empathy particularly for the powerless.

He himself is born into power. He is royalty. and he lives within the power structure of the palace. But we are introduced to him when he walks out of the palace into the street and observes an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew. And Moses then knew that it was one of his brothers. I don't know whether or not this means that he knew that he was Jewish, but he knew that he was one with those who are beaten and enslaved.

He could have turned away, looked away, gone away. But he could not. That is the nature of the prophetic conscience. Moses saw that no one cared, that no one intervened. So Moses defended the man who was being beaten to death, stood between the Egyptian task master and the slave, and smote the Egyptian.

But on the very next day, he saw two Jews striving with each other and once again he stood between them and he said "Why do you smite your brother?" Then Moses was rebuked by the Jews:  "Who made you a ruler to judge over us? We know that you killed the Egyptian." This is Moses' first experience of ingratitude. The prophet must not expect that he will be praised and raised upon the shoulders of those whom he defends. This will be repeated over and over again throughout Moses' career. Moses escaped with his life to the desert and came upon seven daughters of the priest of Midian, who had come to draw water out of the well for their father's flock. Moses saw that shepherds came and drove the women away. So Moses stood up and helped them and watered their flock. Why did he interfere? Why didn't he mind his own business? Who are they to him? They are not his kinsmen, his people, why mix in? Moses is the man between. And he will die that way, between God and Israel, between Egypt and the Promised land. He will die on the borders, on the dividing line – between.

One of his great tests and the tests of his people revolves around the golden calf. Moses the liberator, the great emancipator, does not leave them without gold. He knows that while the immediate goal was to loosen the bands of the slave to free them from the whip and the fetters that leads them into the wilderness, it leads them free from slavery but not free toward anything. Freedom without purpose is enslavement. We remember what the rabbis said about the nature of slavery. They tried to explain what the Bible meant by saying that the Egyptians worked the Jews "with rigor.” And they gave an illustration – it is when the slave is told to carry a burden from one place to another and then back again to the same place, when the slave is told to dig a huge hole out of the ground and then when he is finished, to fill it up with the same earth all over again. This is the curse of negative freedom. It is the curse of Sisyphus – to work without purpose.

But is it different if one works purposelessly in freedom just to make time, just to fill the sea with water, just to lift the boulder up the mountain only to have it pushed down again? That is negative freedom. It ends with boredom, with emptiness, without dignity. Moses came down not as an emancipator but as a liberator with a sense of purpose. But now descending triumphantly from the mountain clutching hold of the two tablets of the Law he beholds the wildness of the people. They are free. but without a Moses to tell them what to do and how to think and how to behave. They are confused and frightened. and demand of Aaron, "Make us a god who will go before us."

Moses is appalled by the ingratitude of the people, what they have seen and experienced: miracles, ten plagues, the splitting of the sea.

Moses is human. He is depressed, profoundly disillusioned. And all at once the writings on the Tablets vanish and the celestial writing disappears. Now without the letters of the Law, the Tablets which he held so triumphantly in his arms turn into heavy slabs of stone. Moses cannot bear the dead weight. For without the promise and purpose of a people the joy is lost. And he breaks the Tablets of the Law.

Did he break the Tablets of the Law out of anger? Or was it out of a greater identification with his people? Did he break the Tablets so that he would be punished along with his people? Did he break the Tablets thinking that it would be better for this people not to know the Law than to receive it intact and then transgress it and be punished because of their sins?

In any event, a terrible rage runs through the camp. Moses is angry with his brother Aaron, the priest who acceded to the mob's demand that a golden calf be created. Moses is angry at the people and the people are angry at themselves and at God. God is angry at the people. And God swears an oath at the stiff necked people, "Now there, let Me alone. Let My wrath wax hot against them that I may consume them."

Moses, according to one legend, removes his tent from the people a mile away, saying to himself, "The disciple may not have intercourse with people whom the Master has excommunicated." Moses thinks he honors God by excommunicating the people. But Moses' removal from the camp displeases God. He speaks to Moses in this manner: "We have an understanding between us. According to our agreement I was to propitiate you every time you were angry with the people and you were to propitiate Me when My wrath was kindled against them. What is now to become to this poor people if we are both angry with them? It is not good that both of us should be angry. When you see Me boiling with hot water you, Moses must pour cold water. But when you see Me pouring cold water you must pour hot water. Do not separate yourself from the people. Return to the camp of Israel. And should you not return, remember that Joshua is in the camp at the sanctuary and he can fill your place" (Deuteronomy Rabbah 3:15).

Here we see in this, the remarkable rabbinic imaginative dialogue between God and Moses, a singular relationship. Firstly, there is a closeness between Moses and God. God and Moses need each other. Moses is a confidant and helper of God in their common task to raise and protect their people. There is a remarkable kinship between the prophet and God. Each needs to temper the anger of the other. God needs human allies. God needs friends. There is a covenant between God and humanity, between God and Israel. God and Moses are friends as we are to be friends. But Moses is warned. Though you are close to Me you are not yourself indispensable. If there would be no Moses, there is a Joshua waiting in the camp to fill his place. And the sages say if there were no Moses to transmit the Torah, there would be Ezra the scribe. Moses is a great figure but he is not the equivalent of God. In this there is a great difference between Moses and the heroic character of Jesus. One cannot pray to Moses as one can pray to Jesus.

But Moses is not a passive, helpless person vis-à-vis God. And in this following rabbinic interpretation, we find the distinctiveness of the Jewish prophetic hero when God in the Bible observes the degeneration of the children of Israel as they worship the idol. That idol represents a return to the corruption and immorality and superstition that was Egypt. God threatens to destroy them. In the Bible, God declares "Leave Me alone that I may destroy them.”  But he and Moses understand that something is meant by that expression. Why did God say "Leave Me alone"? Who is there to hold God back? Clearly, Moses surmises this must mean that God wants someone to restrain His anger, to hold Him back, to temper His anger, to pour cold water on His heat.

In that instance Moses leaps up and takes hold of the Holy One like a man who seizes his fellow man by his garment. Moses then cries out, "Sovereign of the Universe, I will not let You go until you have forgiven and pardoned your people." Moses persists and argues with God, and urges Him to reconsider His vow to vent His wrath upon the children. Moses appeals to God in the name of justice, in the name of God's morality.  Moses reasons, “If a man sets up his son's business in a neighborhood brothel what should be expected of his son? Surely the son will go astray. Now, Master of the Universe, if a slave people is placed in the land of idolatry what can be expected of such a people when they are left leaderless? Moreover, God, did You not promise this people that their seed will multiply as the stars in the heavens? Will You go back on your word? And will You allow Yourself to be made the laughingstock of the nations? Will not the nations of the world say You are exhausted, You are enfeebled? Master of the universe will You destroy an entire people and with it Your reputation? Moreover God, will you destroy a whole people because of the sins of a treacherous few?”

Here we hear the echo of Abraham pleading with God on behalf of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. "Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justly?" Moses, the man between the people and God. And God is moved by Moses' compassion with His people, and then God says, "I am bound by My oath. What can I do since I have already uttered My vow and have explicitly declared that I would destroy this people? Can I now go against My own words and retract My own vow?"

Here the relationship between God and Moses is dramatically expressed. God speaks to Moses as a confidant and as a friend. God and Moses are not enemies. They are joined in a common effort to lead this people toward their spiritual potentiality.

Moses responds to God, "Lord of the Universe, I understand Your vow. But did You not Yourself give us the Law of absolution from a vow? Did You not say that power is given to a learned man to absolve anyone from his vows? You, God, are a just God and a just God desires that everyone obeys the law including You Yourself. A just God must submit Himself to the law. For there is one law in heaven as on earth and a just God will not stand above His own judgment."

God answers, "You are right. But where can I find someone to release Me from My vow?" Then Moses girded his loins and declares, "Come to me, God." And with this, Moses wraps himself in his robe, seats himself in the posture of a sage, while God stands before a sitting Moses. And the prophet, the man between, asks of God, "Do you, Master of the Universe, regret Your vow against Your people?" And God answers, "I regret now the evil which I said I would do to My people.” And Moses replied, "You are absolved. You are resolved. There is neither vow nor oath any longer" (Exodus Rabbah 43:4). 

We must pause to understand the depth and the implications of this rabbinically imagined dialogue. Firstly, it indicates that there is an unparalleled intimacy between Moses and God predicated upon the notion of a covenant which beyond Moses is held on between Israel and God. God will not hide from Moses His resolve to punish the Golden Calf worshippers any more than God hid His intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah from Abraham. There is a intimate connection between the two. So, God shared His intention with Abraham saying, "Shall I hide from Abraham that which I am doing seeing that Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I have know him to the end that he may command his children and his household after him that they may keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice to the end that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken of him."

Just as Abraham was not afraid of arguing with God, telling Him that it would be unfair to destroy the innocent together with the wicked, so Moses has no fear in approaching God and asking God to overcome His oath against the people. And indeed to allow a human being to annul God's vow. And reciprocally, it is no humiliation of God's power to annul His vow. God delights in Moses' interpretation. God did not lower Himself before Moses but in elevating Moses he elevated His own word.

MIRACLES, THE MIRACULOUS, AND THE PASSOVER SEDER

What is astounding to me is that the Passover should be a festival in celebration of the miraculous. The story begins in Exodus 4:1 with Moses explaining to God that the people of Israel, to whom he is sent, will not believe him. For they will say, "The Lord hath not appeared unto thee." And so God descends and uses some magical miraculous tricks. He asks Moses to cast the rod onto the ground and it becomes a serpent. He asks Moses to put his hand into his bosom and when he took it out the hand was leprous and white as snow. And following that we have the ten plagues, the splitting of the sea, etc. But no where in the tradition do we find that Moses is accepted because he is able to perform miracles.

"When Moses kept his hands up the Israelites prevailed, but when he lowered his hands, Amalek prevailed. The Bible does state that Moses' hands were heavy." And "they" meaning Aaron and Hur, "…took a stone and put it under him and Moses sat on it. And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side and the other on the other side and his hands were strong until the going down of the sun." Here is a clear case of the miraculous. But how do the rabbis take this biblical story of the miraculous? They say, "Did the hands of Moses wage war or crush the enemy?”  No so. Only the text signifies that so long as Israel turned their thoughts above and subjected their hearts to their father in heaven, they prevailed. But otherwise they were defeated.

And the same Mishnah taught the same lesson based on Numbers 21:8. In this case it says (verse 6) "And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people and many people of Israel died. And Moses prayed for the people and the Lord said 'Make thee a fiery serpent and set it upon a pole and it shall come to pass that everyone that is bitten when he sees it, shall live.’" Here again we have a biblical story reported in the name of God, and listen to how the rabbis accepted it. Now, did the serpent kill or did the serpent keep alive? No. When Israel turned their thoughts above and subjugated their hearts to their Father in heaven, they were healed. Otherwise. they pined away. Moreover, we read in II Kings 18:4 that King Hezekiah is praised because he “broke in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for in those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it and he called it nechushtan.”  So the literal meaning of the miracle of the fiery serpent in the Bible is rejected by the rabbis, and moreover they fear that the miracle becomes magic.

The rabbis (in Exodus Rabbah 21:9) point out that when God says to Moses (in Exodus 14:21), "Stretch out thine hand...and Moses stretched out his hand," it refers to God saying to Moses "Cast away thy rod so that they will not say, ‘Were it not for the rod you would not have been able to divide the sea.’" In other words, the rod has no intrinsic power. Indeed, when Moses used the rod to forcibly break through the rock and produce water, he was punished for his hubris and denied entry into the Promised Land.

Throughout the tradition, the rabbinic sages tried to diffuse the notion of the miracle as an interruption of the laws of nature. So we read in The Ethics of the Fathers, chapter 5, verse 9, that all those events that were called “miraculous” were created in the twilight of the Sabbath of the creation. For example, the earth that swallowed Korach, the rainbow during the deluge, the manna that fell from the heaven in the desert, Moses’ rod and the sepulchre of Moses, were all created before creation because miracles which are regarded as violations of the laws of nature are not tributes to God. This preestablished disharmony carries out the soft peddling, if not outright denial, of the miracle as such. Maimonides, in The Guide to the Perplexed III, Chapter 24 explains, "A miracle cannot prove that which is impossible; it is useful to confirm that which is possible."

All this comes to mind around the Passover, when one can see by contrasting it with the sacrament of the Eucharist, or the mass for the last supper. The sacrament in the church is a true miracle in a literal sense of transubstantiation. That is to say the wine literally becomes blood, and the bread literally becomes flesh. In Judaism, there is no sacrament and the matzah and the wine are just that. Perhaps I can better illustrate this with an interesting story by the writer Y.L. Peretz. He tells of the poor man who, on the evening of the Passover, recognizes that he doesn't have enough money for either the wine or the matzah. Aimlessly he wanders in the street and comes across a town fair, and he stops by and notices a juggler who quite magically pulls out of a hat matzahs and a bottle of wine. He is deeply impressed with this, and the magician gives the poor Jew the matzahs and the bottle of wine. Eagerly he accepts it and rushes home to his wife to tell her the good news. She, however, asks whether or not this is legitimate, and suggests that he go see the rabbi.

He tells the rabbi the story of the magician, the matzah and the wine and asks whether or not he can use it for the Passover Seder. The rabbi asks him, "Does the wine pour out of the bottle?" "Yes," says the poor Jew. "And does the matzah break?" "Yes," says the poor Jew. Then the rabbi says "The wine is wine and the matzah is matzah and it is valid to be used at the Passover Seder."

On Passover Jews eat history. And the many symbols that I use are all symbolic, but they themselves substantively are natural substances, not transformed and having no intrinsic power. The power lies in the use toward which the symbols are used.

The humanization of Moses and the naturalization of the symbols reveal the distinctive character of Judaism and its uniqueness.

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