The following was given as my student sermon at the end of the academic year in Jerusalem.
In thirteen days, a voice over a loudspeaker will proclaim: “Now boarding El Al Flight 331 to New York.” My jubilee.
At least, that’s what I first thought when I sat down to write about this week’s parasha, which includes instructions for counting to the Jubilee year. I admit it: I am counting down, and in my mind I’m counting down to “jubilee,” popularly connoting joy and celebration, a translation of the Hebrew yoveil,.
When the ancient Israelites followed the laws of the Jubilee year, what did they do? We heard this morning, V’kidashtem et shnat hachamishim shana u’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha—yoveil hi t’hiyeh lachem –You shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty in the land, unto all its inhabitants: it shall be a yoveil for you.
The Torah instructs us to observe the yoveil by counting seven times seven years, and by blowing the shofar to proclaim the fiftieth year, a year of liberty—d’ror. Any Jew who has sold himself into slavery is released; planting and harvesting cease. Land sold in the previous years reverts to its original owner, and we live on the previous crops, like in the Sabbatical year. As Modern Orthodox commentator Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch notes, the yoveil year is a leveler: all people become equally dependent on God for their sustenance, from the rich landowner to the poor slave. All are reminded that what we own in this world does not belong to us, but rather, is given by God. We remember that we cannot be slaves to any human master because our only avodah, our only service, is to God.
Most of us aren’t counting out the years to the Jubilee, carefully planning our crops. In the past, the yoveil concretely reminded us that we don’t own this world in which we live. Today, without that concrete returning, what does the yoveil teach us? What does the word itself mean? And how helpful is the contemporary association with release, freedom, jubilee and, indeed, jubilation?
While Rashi tells us yoveil means “ram’s horn,” to symbolize the shofar proclaiming liberty, Ramban wonders, “what sense is there” in declaring that a year “shall be unto you a blowing of a ram’s horn”? Instead, the focus of the yoveil, for him, is the d’ror, the liberty. This freedom is not the shichrur we hear about in the news, hoping for the release of Gilad Shalit, nor the chofesh of vacation. D’ror is a unique word, appearing only this once in the Torah. Brown, Driver, and Briggs translate it as both “a flowing” and as “free run, liberty.” In Jeremiah, a d’ror is a stream, an abundant flow of water, and a d’ror is a swallow, a bird that resists captivity.
The shofar blast announces, then, that we are, each of us, free to flow where the current will take us, free to bear responsibility only to ourselves and to our God—no longer bound, no longer slaves. The yoveil announces this freedom, but, according to Ramban, it also does something else. Yoveil denotes transportation. The word is derived from the root yud-vet-lamed, l’hovil to conduct, to bear along, yuval, to to be transported. The 18th-century commentary MeAm Lo’ez reads this “transportation” literally: things are returned, physically moved. Land reverts to its original owners, slaves return to their ancestral homes. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch digs a bit deeper, saying that the yoveil is a kind of spiritual homecoming, “to bring a person to where he is suited to be, or a thing to whom it really belongs.”
So we’re back to the beginning, then: I will return to where, and to whom, I really belong, in thirteen days, and it will be unto me a yoveil.
But I’m not so sure. Because the yoveil is also about being transported, being carried … but carried to where?
U’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha—yoveil hi t’hiyeh lachem—v’shavtem ish el achuzato v’ish el misphachto tashuvu—and each of you will return to his holding and each of you will return to his family.
The yoveil, after the counting of seven times seven years, in the fiftieth year, an occurrence perhaps as rare in our lives as the word d’ror is rare in the Torah—the yoveil carries us, brings us home. We return to our source, Ramban says, referring to a verse in Jeremiah: Baruch hagever asher yivtach b’adonai, v’haya Adonai mivtacho. V’haya c’eitz shatul al mayim, v’al yuval y’shalach shorashav—“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Eternal, whose trust is the Eternal alone. He shall be like a tree planted by waters, sending forth its roots by a yuval, a stream.” The yoveil promises to return us to our roots, to our nourishing source, to a cool and steady stream.
Where is your source, the place where your roots drink deep? When the shofar proclaims d’ror to all the land, where will the yoveil transport you?
Perhaps the sound of the shofar has already proclaimed d’ror, and the yoveil has carried us to the Year in Israel.
What if this has been our Jubilee year?
D’ror might not be the first word that comes to mind, but what else has this year brought?
It’s brought culture shock, tiskul, dramatic surroundings and spiritual heights. It’s brought moments you’ll remember: your first trip to the Kotel, a sunrise in the desert, and meeting a new friend who has become a lifelong friend. We have lived a unique experience, one intended to nourish our roots and make them stronger.
We have been transported to the land to which Avram migrated, sight unseen, leaving behind his land and his birthplace and his father’s house—the land that became the birthplace of the Jewish people as a people. Whether we criticize it or praise it, Israel remains an origin, the achuzah, the portion or holding that one returns to during the Jubilee year, the achuzah of the Jewish people. However much Hannah Shafir and of course Harrison would be thrilled to hear it, I don’t mean that we should all cancel our return flights and set up permanent homes here. I mean that we will always be linked to this place; our future congregants and students will expect us to have a relationship to Israel as a State, a homeland, or a nation—positive, negative or indifferent—but some kind of relationship. During this Jubilee year, how has Israel served as your achuza?
Or perhaps it has not. Perhaps you’ve learned that your roots are utterly disconnected from this physical place, but they are nourished by Israel in the sense of peoplehood. Our parasha instructs us, v’ish el misphachto tashuvu, each of you will return to his family. Our community can strive to be for one another a mishpacha of colleagues. And we can continue to engage with Hebrew, the language of the Jewish mishpacha.
Yoveil comes from the verb l’hovil: to bring, to bear, to carry. I don’t know about you, but I was carried here—carried here by Judaism, faith, career goals, idealism… and, sure, carried here (somewhat unwillingly) by HUC. We have been brought, and we have brought with us our histories, our knowledge, our ignorance, our faith, and our doubt. I sincerely challenge each of us to recognize that this year has indeed served as a yoveil, a return to origins, a release into a year of introspection, study, and relationship to God, Israel, and the Jewish community. I have been carried to Israel, but I hope and pray that I have also been transported—transported to a new understanding of what it means to live a Jewish life, transported and transformed.
After all, we won’t get a chance like this for another forty-nine years.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Call
When we sing, “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of our Passover seder, we’re not really talking about Jerusalem. We’re singing our longing, God’s promise, and our hope for a better future, a time of peace and completion, wholeness, shalom.
After sharing seder with a warm and generous Israeli family on a kibbutz near Ashkelon, I traveled to Barcelona for the rest of my vacation, meeting Rachel for some much-needed time together. The modernisme architecture, World’s Fair grounds and buildings, and Gothic streets provided countless diversions and amusements; contemporary art exhibits around the city and the “Blue Period” works in the Picasso museum sparked thoughts and discussions. And the narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter, nearly indistinguishable from other narrow streets in the winding alleyways of the old Roman city, changed how I will sing “Next Year in Jerusalem” at future seders.
Spain’s once-thriving Jewish population, a large group in the city of Barcelona, living mostly alongside their Christian neighbors but in a close-knit community (the “kahal, a Hebrew word we still use today) and geographical area known as “The Call”>, faced persecution and eventually expulsion at the hands of Spain’s Catholic rulers. This is far from a story of redemption; rather, it is one of desperation and mourning—an entire community forced to convert, to migrate, to leave behind a rich culture, personal networks, lives they had built over centuries. The only trace of Jewish life in Spain that Rachel and I could find were a few doorposts marked in places where a mezuzah had once been affixed, some inscriptions along the walls of buildings that now house souvenir shops and clothing stores, and the remains of a 12-th century synagogue that now serves as a museum.
Unlike Barcelona’s Church tours, which focus on art, architecture, and history, the synagogue and museum also explains religion, outlining major Jewish practices and festivals for the non-Jewish tourist. Sadly, I am not sure how many of those the museum gets. When we walked in, the guide immediately asked us if we spoke Hebrew, and later that same day we ran into an Israeli tour group learning about the fraught and tragic history of our people in Spain and crowding together in the alleyways to imagine rather than see vibrant Jewish life in Barcelona.
Touching the stones of these former houses where people celebrated Passover and baked their Shabbat challah, I felt a sense of responsibility, as a Jew and as a future rabbi, to the memory of this community, but more so to Jewish communities around the world. It’s a feeling I never really internalized before, but I imagined what it might have meant, in medieval times, to be forced out of your village somewhere in the mountains, to reach the city of Barcelona, and to know that all you had to do was find the Call, and with it you would find open arms, a hot meal, a place to stay, an invitation to Shabbos dinner.
Later in the week, we visited another Jewish Quarter, in the city of Girona. Similarly, its museum, housed in what was once a major Girona synagogue, not only outlined the history of the Jewish community in Girona and in Spain, but also explained major Jewish beliefs, practices, and philosophies. The streets were narrow, and I could imagine the terrible days of being confined to just two streets with their intertwining courtyards, dead ends, and shallow stairs. Photographs of a nearby palace showed how Jewish cemeteries were raided, their carved stones used as building materials for new, Christian communities.
For the most part, I spent my time in the Jewish Quarters in contemplation—not in overwhelming or debilitating grief, though I certainly felt a sadness for a community that has all but disappeared. And then Friday afternoon came, and sunset approached, and it was time for Shabbat.
The progressive synagogue in Barcelona is not located on the nicest of the Gracia neighborhood’s streets. A metal grate covers the door until just before services begin, revealing curtained windows and a small mezuzah. But inside, it’s Jerusalem.
It was Kabbalat Shabbat at Bet Shalom. Greeting us warmly with a “Shabbat Shalom” and a kiss on each check, the dedicated members of this small but warm and welcoming kahal eagerly spoke with us (in broken Spanish, Hebrew, and English, and with much patience all around) about where we’re from, our visit, our synagogues, and my studies at HUC. Rabbi Jim Glazier, serving the community on his sabbatical from his home congregation in Vermont, graciously invited me to light the Shabbat candles and say the blessing, a great honor. The melodies were familiar, the cantor’s voice and presence were smooth and prayerful, the faces were bright and smiling, the mood in the room was enveloping, open, inviting. After the prayer, we chatted with Spanish, Catalonian, Italian, American, French—I can’t even count all the places of origin—members and visitors, students on their year abroad, families, friends. Rosina Levy, who helped us organize our visit, introduced us to members of the community, translated, learned about our lives, told us about the community’s activities, and generally did much to create a warm atmosphere. Suddenly, several people started setting up tables in the center of the room, and we found ourselves sitting down to a very late dinner (a Catalonian tradition), prepared by a member of the community. People lingered, talking and laughing, eating and drinking (we passed on the shots of Tequila!), sharing stories.
The Jewish Quarter in the old city of Barcelona thrives, but as a commercial center and a tourist destination. The people who live over its storefronts do not light Shabbat candles or bake challah. But in Gracia, a progressive community of Jews, mostly praying without a full-time rabbi, creates a kahal to which all Jews are welcome. They are making Judaism live and continue and thrive in a place that once saw crushing prejudice and mass destruction. They are making each Shabbat, each holiday, each community gathering a fulfillment of the promise of redemption and wholeness, completion and shalom.
After sharing seder with a warm and generous Israeli family on a kibbutz near Ashkelon, I traveled to Barcelona for the rest of my vacation, meeting Rachel for some much-needed time together. The modernisme architecture, World’s Fair grounds and buildings, and Gothic streets provided countless diversions and amusements; contemporary art exhibits around the city and the “Blue Period” works in the Picasso museum sparked thoughts and discussions. And the narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter, nearly indistinguishable from other narrow streets in the winding alleyways of the old Roman city, changed how I will sing “Next Year in Jerusalem” at future seders.
Spain’s once-thriving Jewish population, a large group in the city of Barcelona, living mostly alongside their Christian neighbors but in a close-knit community (the “kahal, a Hebrew word we still use today) and geographical area known as “The Call”>, faced persecution and eventually expulsion at the hands of Spain’s Catholic rulers. This is far from a story of redemption; rather, it is one of desperation and mourning—an entire community forced to convert, to migrate, to leave behind a rich culture, personal networks, lives they had built over centuries. The only trace of Jewish life in Spain that Rachel and I could find were a few doorposts marked in places where a mezuzah had once been affixed, some inscriptions along the walls of buildings that now house souvenir shops and clothing stores, and the remains of a 12-th century synagogue that now serves as a museum.
Unlike Barcelona’s Church tours, which focus on art, architecture, and history, the synagogue and museum also explains religion, outlining major Jewish practices and festivals for the non-Jewish tourist. Sadly, I am not sure how many of those the museum gets. When we walked in, the guide immediately asked us if we spoke Hebrew, and later that same day we ran into an Israeli tour group learning about the fraught and tragic history of our people in Spain and crowding together in the alleyways to imagine rather than see vibrant Jewish life in Barcelona.
Touching the stones of these former houses where people celebrated Passover and baked their Shabbat challah, I felt a sense of responsibility, as a Jew and as a future rabbi, to the memory of this community, but more so to Jewish communities around the world. It’s a feeling I never really internalized before, but I imagined what it might have meant, in medieval times, to be forced out of your village somewhere in the mountains, to reach the city of Barcelona, and to know that all you had to do was find the Call, and with it you would find open arms, a hot meal, a place to stay, an invitation to Shabbos dinner.
Later in the week, we visited another Jewish Quarter, in the city of Girona. Similarly, its museum, housed in what was once a major Girona synagogue, not only outlined the history of the Jewish community in Girona and in Spain, but also explained major Jewish beliefs, practices, and philosophies. The streets were narrow, and I could imagine the terrible days of being confined to just two streets with their intertwining courtyards, dead ends, and shallow stairs. Photographs of a nearby palace showed how Jewish cemeteries were raided, their carved stones used as building materials for new, Christian communities.
For the most part, I spent my time in the Jewish Quarters in contemplation—not in overwhelming or debilitating grief, though I certainly felt a sadness for a community that has all but disappeared. And then Friday afternoon came, and sunset approached, and it was time for Shabbat.
The progressive synagogue in Barcelona is not located on the nicest of the Gracia neighborhood’s streets. A metal grate covers the door until just before services begin, revealing curtained windows and a small mezuzah. But inside, it’s Jerusalem.
It was Kabbalat Shabbat at Bet Shalom. Greeting us warmly with a “Shabbat Shalom” and a kiss on each check, the dedicated members of this small but warm and welcoming kahal eagerly spoke with us (in broken Spanish, Hebrew, and English, and with much patience all around) about where we’re from, our visit, our synagogues, and my studies at HUC. Rabbi Jim Glazier, serving the community on his sabbatical from his home congregation in Vermont, graciously invited me to light the Shabbat candles and say the blessing, a great honor. The melodies were familiar, the cantor’s voice and presence were smooth and prayerful, the faces were bright and smiling, the mood in the room was enveloping, open, inviting. After the prayer, we chatted with Spanish, Catalonian, Italian, American, French—I can’t even count all the places of origin—members and visitors, students on their year abroad, families, friends. Rosina Levy, who helped us organize our visit, introduced us to members of the community, translated, learned about our lives, told us about the community’s activities, and generally did much to create a warm atmosphere. Suddenly, several people started setting up tables in the center of the room, and we found ourselves sitting down to a very late dinner (a Catalonian tradition), prepared by a member of the community. People lingered, talking and laughing, eating and drinking (we passed on the shots of Tequila!), sharing stories.
The Jewish Quarter in the old city of Barcelona thrives, but as a commercial center and a tourist destination. The people who live over its storefronts do not light Shabbat candles or bake challah. But in Gracia, a progressive community of Jews, mostly praying without a full-time rabbi, creates a kahal to which all Jews are welcome. They are making Judaism live and continue and thrive in a place that once saw crushing prejudice and mass destruction. They are making each Shabbat, each holiday, each community gathering a fulfillment of the promise of redemption and wholeness, completion and shalom.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
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.
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.
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