Lifting the Veil

On Purim, we wore masks and disguises, but Queen Esther wasn’t hiding anything when she went before King Ahasverous and revealed her true identity, her true origins. Making herself extremely vulnerable, Esther removed all pretenses, all masks. No longer hiding in the safety of the harem, no longer passing as just another woman willing to be used by the powerful king, she revealed a truth that had consequences for herself and for the entire Jewish people. Her act of revelation reversed the cruel decree and saved the Jews from annihilation.

Mordechai urged Esther to declare herself, despite the grave danger of appearing uninvited before the king to make a demand. “Think not that in the king’s palace you shall escape, any more than all the Jews,” Mordechai said. Esther cannot hide forever; she must remove the mask.

We praise Esther for refusing to hide. We crave unmediated, face-to-face relationships. We don’t like people who wear masks, creating a barrier between us and them. But this week’s paresha complicates that picture. Moshe Rabbeinu, our teacher Moses—the man who speaks with God panim el panim, face to face—places a barrier between himself and the people Israel: a מסוה masveh, a veil.
Moses emerges from the fiery cloud on Mount Sinai bearing the Tablets of the Covenant, unaware that his face radiates light. But he soon learns that something about him has changed. Frightened and still reeling from the sin of the Golden Calf and its harsh and swift punishment, the people shrink from Moses until he calls them near and imparts all that God has instructed him on the mountaintop. We read in chapter 34, verse 33, “vay’chal Moshe midaber itam, vayiten al panav masveh”—“When Moses finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.”

The image here is of a terrified and traumatized people, still new to freedom and certainly new to a relationship with a God who expects much of them. They have experienced the revelation of God first-hand at the foot of Mount Sinai; they have heard the Ten Commandments; they have sinned by worshipping the Golden Calf. Their leader Moses has disappeared into the clouds, returning with more revelation, more Law, more details about this covenant with the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Moses is physically changed; rays of light emanate from his face as he descends to the people, and they shrink in fear.

Biblical commentators throughout Jewish history have interpreted and reinterpreted this veil that divides Moses’ face, a face that has communed directly with God, from the faces of the wandering Israelites.

One reading asserts that Moses covered his face not to respect his relationship to the frightened Israelites, but to respect his relationship with God, with the sacred. Moses covered his face with a veil to prevent the people from using the light shining from his face for “common purposes,” just as we reserve the lights of Hanukkah for the sole, sacred purpose of remembering the miracles of days past. Moses wears a veil to mark a separation not precisely between himself and his people but between his unique spiritual experience and the quotidian worries of the desert. The veil says, no human being ever attained such a close relationship with God, and none had left the mundane world so far behind as to achieve the “complete” spirituality Moses achieved. Indeed, in our paresha we read, “v’diber adonai el moshe panim el panim ca’asher y’daber ish el re’eh’hu”—“The Eternal would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (33:11). The veil serves to preserve a distinction between the sacred and the profane, to guard Moses’ special relationship with God by withholding so much Divine radiance from the ordinary people who would be overwhelmed.

Here at the Hebrew Union College, we rabbinic students continually examine our own spiritual practice, our own encounter with both God and Torah. Like Moses, we, as future Jewish leaders, must carve out time and space to distinguish between the sacred pursuit of Torah knowledge and the mundane cares of shuk-shopping and bill-paying. We must engage in a relationship with God and with Jewish text and tradition—a relationship that is personal, close, panim-el-panim. Moses’ veil might teach us how, as teachers ourselves, we must also learn.
Indeed, to see the pedagogical and spiritual role of the rabbi as primarily founded in a personal relationship to God and Torah is a common view. Traditionally, rabbis didn’t have practicum courses in visiting the sick, comforting mourners, counseling the troubled, or effectively conducting a community Torah study. But this week’s paresha and the wealth of commentary on Moses’ veil offer us other paradigms on teaching and learning Jewish tradition.

According to medieval commentator Rabbi Levi ben Gershon , Moses puts on the veil in an effort to “bring himself down,” as it were, from his spiritual heights. Otherwise, it would be impossible to communicate with the Israelites. As modern interpreter Nechama Leibowitz explains, this is an image of a Moses aware of his difference from the Israelites: he knows that the people, on their earthly level, cannot relate to his unique spirituality. He puts on the veil not to separate himself from the kahal, the Jewish community, but to separate himself from the “transcendental and holy.” To use a buzzword in today’s Jewish circles, Moses makes an effort to meet the people where they’re at. As a teacher, a rabbi must of course challenge the community to reach new levels of understanding of Jewish text, tradition, and spirituality, but such understanding cannot be reached in a vacuum—it emerges from the real, lived experience of our communities. Moses does not force the people to ascend the mountain with him, to absorb the overwhelming Divine Light. Instead he comes down, and he mitigates the powerful light with a veil.
But does he withhold that light altogether? In our teaching, are we to keep our personal relationship with God and with Torah utterly separate from our community interactions? Does Moses wear the veil for the rest of his life, excluding only his encounters with God panim-el-panim?

Medieval commentator Rashi, in his usual direct manner, says no, and his opinion stems from a verse that also appears in this week’s paresha, chapter 34, verse 34: “Whenever Moses went in before the Eternal to converse, he would leave the veil off until he came out; and when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see how radiant the skin of Moses’ face was. Moses would then put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with God” (34:34). Rashi extrapolates from this verse that Moses always received God’s teachings and relayed God’s teachings to the people without wearing a veil; only when Moses had finished with the business of hearing and transmitting the words of Torah did he replace the veil over his face and cover the glow of the Divine.
God’s revelation of Torah to Moses on Sinai happens panim el panim, face-to-face, our paresha tells us. So, too, does Moses’ teaching of the Torah to the Jewish people happen without barrier, without mediation, face-to-face.

As a rabbinical student and a future teacher of the Jewish people, I am curious about Moses’ pedagogy. What does it mean to teach without the veil—despite the uniqueness of his face-to-face relationship with God and despite the people’s fear?
Perhaps Moses does use the veil to prevent the mixing of the sacred with the profane. Perhaps he wears the veil, as many commentators assert, out of modesty or humility. The 18th century commentary Me’Am Lo’ez notes, “It is true that when [Moses] taught the people he took off the [veil]. He felt that the people would assume that the radiance was a result of the Torah that he was teaching. After he finished teaching he would replace the [veil].”

Teachers can shine with the radiance and the power of the material they present, and this is especially true for those of us who are blessed with the privilege of teaching Jewish tradition. Moses’ face shone with a Divine light, and he does not want the people to think that light comes from him. While he is teaching, the people might safely assume that it is not Moses himself who is so radiant, but the Torah he transmits. Ki va oreich, we sing as we welcome in Shabbat—for your light has come, the light of the Torah. Moses, then, wears the veil to demonstrate to the people that it is the Torah, the Jewish tradition, the lesson he imparts—and not Moses himself—that illuminates their lives.

As I learned from one of my most influential professors, a truly successful and ethical teacher understands that the student ought never to be excited about you but about the material you present, the tools you give her to learn, to discover, and to develop her own voice. Like Moses, a teacher ought to encourage his students to see the brilliance in the subject he transmits.


All this talk about faces and masks and the boundaries between ourselves and the Other revolve not only around pedagogy in a technical sense. This isn’t a lesson on ensuring your students will remember the material for the test. The relationship between teacher and student motivates the student to enact Judaism (or whatever the subject taught) in her own life—to take the kodesh of Torah, of Jewish tradition, into the chol of Olam haZeh, this world in which we live, this world so much in need of repair. That repair, as Jewish philosopher and Biblical scholar Martin Buber taught, begins panim-el-panim. When we look into the face of the Other, we see not a reflection of ourselves. We see an unknown and yet familiar entity: we see a human being with needs, desires, and fears, and, locked in that gaze, we are called to responsibility to this vulnerable Other. Buber sees the relationship with the Other, the relationship that happens panim-el-panim, as part of a relationship with the Other we can never fully comprehend, the Other who is utterly unknowable yet crucial to our lives—the Other who is God.

When Moses thought the people would fail to connect the radiance of his face with the brilliance of the Torah, he veiled himself. Speaking as both a student and as a teacher, I think this is a pretty good way to use a veil—what could be an impediment to human connection becomes a teaching methodology. But, I would also emphasize that Moses did not wear the veil incessantly: he allowed for face-to-face connection with the people Israel, offering opportunities to confirm that sense of responsibility that only happens when we look the Other in the face and see a glimpse of the Divine. As we move from the revelry and the disguises of Purim to Pesach and the Exodus, we ought to take care that our veil not become a mask. We ought to remember that sometimes what people need is for us to reveal ourselves, like Queen Esther, for who we truly are.

Sheket

My brain is always going: a near-constant stream of words and thoughts, snippets of melodies, images of family, sudden flashes of Hebrew, lists of tasks I need to accomplish. In moments when I can find it, I really appreciate quiet—in Hebrew, sheket.

This morning I was awakened by a whistling noise I can’t quite identify or locate—I’ve narrowed it down to either the old radiator in my Jerusalem apartment or a bird nesting directly outside my window. Occasional traffic up and down nearby Keren HaYesod buzzed up and down the hill. My roommates, as usual, rose earlier than I, making their morning preparations. And then there were the nervous and excited conversations, sporadic because many of us are not used to rising at such an early hour, of my classmates and I as we made our way to the Kotel.

Today is Rosh Hodesh Adar, the new moon of Adar, the beginning of this Hebrew month. This morning, the Women of the Wall met, as they do every Rosh Hodesh, to pray the morning prayer and to sing the celebratory verses of Hallel, songs of praise to God.

At the Kotel, there was sheket. It was the quiet I always feel by the ancient stones—the quiet hum of history, the supplication of the prayers stuffed into the cracks, the voices of Jews of the past and the present expressed in whispers and in wails. Normally, it is a quiet, on the women’s side, only occasionally broken by the recitation of Hebrew verses, while the men’s side more regularly includes chanting and communal prayer. But when the Women of the Wall meet, their voices echo off the stones in joy, and in protest, sometimes in fear and pain, and always in praise of God.

As you can read in an Israeli news source, our group this morning included dozens of Reform women rabbis from North America, but the core of Women of the Wall is a small group of Israeli women who come here each month without the comfort of such a large, joyous crowd. Donning tallitot (prayer shawls) and bringing our own prayer books, we huddled together at the back of the women’s section of the main prayer plaza at the Western Wall. Most of our prayer happened very quietly, barely audibly, as each woman chanted the words to herself. But, sometimes, we sang aloud.

I took a deep breath in the quiet before we began each communally sung piece. We sang verses of joy and gratitude that declare God’s desire for song: God is “the one who chooses songs and hymns.” We chanted, as all Jews pray every morning, “All that has breath shall praise God.” And so we did, b’kol ram, in a loud voice—mostly loud because there were so many of us, standing there so close together on the hard Jerusalem stone, with the wall, the place where God’s Presence is said to dwell, magnifying our voices. I closed my eyes, and I felt that God was listening, rejoicing in the gratitude of the Jewish people for having reached this season, the month of Adar, a time of celebration.

“Sheket! Lo lashir!”—“Quiet! No singing!” Our voices angered some of the Orthodox men and women gathered that day to pray. And I have to admit, I remain ambivalent about that anger and about my own reaction. In the moment of praying, I felt sadness and fear, though I understand, too, that these people spoke out of the fear that women’s voices threaten their religious and spiritual reality. But the Wall is a powerful place in Judaism, and Judaism includes all Jews. How can we ensure that all Jews feel welcome expressing their relationship to Jewish history, the Jewish people, and, most crucially, to God, at this emotionally charged site? Shouting that our way of prayer is a "desecration," spitting at us, and throwing pebbles our way ensures only division.

Ultimately, I keep coming back to the words we sang: Sing to God, praise God with verse and hymns, all that has breath shall praise God. Our prayer didn’t last very long, and for the most part it happened in quiet, personal moments. But in reciting verses of praise and celebration, verses about the collective joy of the Jewish people in reaching this season, the month of Adar, in which we will celebrate the festival of Purim, a topsy-turvy day when the persecuted Jews triumph over their would-be-annihilators, it just seemed right to sing out b’kol ram.

Obama's New Era of Responsibility

A few years ago, my sister and I took a (nerdy) vacation together to Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum that embodies the everyday existence and historical significance of Williamsburg, Virginia, during the period surrounding the American Revolution. Walking along the cobblestone streets, viewing the restored homes and public buildings, I enjoyed the educational foray into the daily lives of eighteenth century colonists. But my favorite part of the day was witnessing a speech by “Thomas Jefferson.”

Peppered with quotes from actual letters, publications, and speeches of Jefferson’s, the performance addressed the crowd as colonists and argued for rebellion against the British Crown. With sweeping rhetoric and grand ideas, “Jefferson” called for a new political union, a new country and a new government unlike any preceding it, one that required bravery and vision, audacity and hopefulness. When I clapped and cheered “Huzzah!” I did so not as an audience to a convincing performance (thought it was) but as an enthusiastic supporter of Jefferson’s call to a new kind of nationhood—a government of the people, for the people, and by the people that would require hard work, education, dedication, and sacrifice.

Standing there in Colonial Williamsburg, I thought, and not for the first time, that the United States needs to revitalize its ideal of public service. In an age of increasing individualism, an age in which everyone and his blog is “famous,” we need a call to collective responsibility as a nation. We need a reminder that the founders of our nation, though marred by their own prejudices and biases, ultimately called themselves and future generations to strive to improve the life, the liberty, and the happiness of the many, not the one.

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama made such a call, honoring the memory and the legacy of countless Americans who “struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.” Through remarkable acts of self-sacrifice by our military personnel to the seemingly simple and too often ignored moral dedication of a parent, Americans, President Obama argued, have served their country and through it the human good through a “spirit of service, a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.”

“What is required of us now,” the President urged, “is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

In Hebrew, the word for responsibility is acharayut. Its first three letters also spell achier, “other” or “one who comes after.” I like to think about this connection between responsibility and the Other—the one who is different from us, the one we think we will never understand. I like to remind myself that my responsibility—to the Jewish community, to the Jewish people, to the nation of America, and to the world—is not only to myself or even to those I love, but to future generations. In Judaism, we share countless stories, prayers, and obligations about tze’etzaeinu v’tze’etzaei tze’etzaeinu, “our descendants and our descendants’ descendants.” The new era of responsibility that President Obama wants to catalyze is one that will weather us through the crisis, hopefully in our own lifetimes, but its focus and its riches will truly reach future generations: “Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end” and that “we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

May we remember that our acharayut, our responsibility, is to those who come after us, the other, acheir.