Rabbi Freedman’s Shabbat Message

A friend of mine asked me an intriguing question the other day – he asked me if any congregant of mine had ever said to me that given the choice they would have preferred to have been born a non-Jew. The quick answer was no, although I did mention one non-Jewish friend of mine who was so taken with the way Jews support each other and form strong communities, he told me that if he died and came back a second time, he would like to come back as a Jew.

In considering the question, I contemplated some of the differences between Judaism and its two daughter religions, Christianity and Islam.

One of the major differences between Judaism and the other two is in the realm of prophecy. Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah explains how a true prophet is distinguishable from a false prophet and how we, as Jews, are obligated to heed a true prophet. This is no small matter. One of the most significant differences between our religion and others – is that our prophets, notwithstanding that they receive and transmit God’s word to His people, are entirely human. As with every other human being they are mortal and during their lifetime perform a variety of actions, some good, others sinful. It is true, they may be saintly, but they are not divine and in this respect Judaism stands apart. In some religions the prophet is considered divine, in other religions the prophet may not be divine, but we have seen all too often that they are above criticism, and woe betide any person or institution who utters a disparaging or disapproving word about them.

As we farewell Pesach for another year – these thoughts seem to relate to one unusual aspect of the Seder service. In the midst of the Maggid section of the Haggadah Shel Pesach, Rabbi Yossi of the Galilee asked the following question:

מִנַּיִן אַתָּה אוֹמֵר שֶׁלָּקוּ הַמִּצְרִים בְּמִצְרַיִם עֶשֶׂר מַכּוֹת וְעַל הַיָּם לָקוּ חֲמִשִּׁים מַכּוֹת
How do you know that the Egyptians were struck with ten plagues in Egypt, but they suffered from fifty plagues at the Red Sea?

His answer, like much of rabbinic folklore, is enigmatic. In Egypt the plagues suffered by Pharaoh and the Egyptians are described by Pharaoh’s advisors as “the finger of God” (Exodus 8:15), whereas at the Red Sea it is written that the Children of Israel were privileged to witness “the hand of God” (Exodus 14:31).

Explained Rabbi Yossi, if the finger of God resulted in ten plagues – the ten that the Haggadah had just identified on the preceding page and that we commonly ritualise by dipping our finger into our wine cup ten times – then obviously the hand of God must represent the power that God illustrated in Egypt multiplied by five – hence his deduction that there were fifty plagues by the sea.

The purpose of such literature is to demonstrate that there is no end to the questions we may ask one another on Seder night. At the outset of the Seder service, we are reminded that:

וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם הֲרֵי זֶה מְשֻׁבָּח
Whoever discusses the Exodus at length should be praised.

At that point, the Haggadah relates a rather cryptic story concerning five of the greatest rabbis of the Mishnaic era, who during their Seder in Bnei Brak lost all track of time and required their students to prompt them to recite the morning service since their discussions had lasted the entire night. If such extended deliberations were good enough for the likes of Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon – then certainly it should be good enough for us too – and we should not hesitate to prolong our Seder by considering every aspect of the Exodus. Unfortunately, however, many do not have the same background knowledge or perhaps intellect of these great rabbis and as a result Rabbi Yossi and certain other early sages prepared passages, such as the one above, to assist us on Seder night with our thoughts, reflections and conversations regarding the Exodus from Egypt and other associated themes.

What makes Rabbi Yossi’s statement of particular interest and somewhat useful information if one was preparing a trivia quiz, is that within this one paragraph is the only mention of Moses by name in the entire Haggadah. Clearly he is referred to obliquely throughout the Seder – but direct reference to מֹשֶׁה by name is restricted to this one passage – it is fair to say that Moses, on Seder night, is conspicuous by his absence. Our most important prophet is completely sidelined from the proceedings.

In fact the only reason that his name appears at all is because Rabbi Yossi was aware that if one quotes a verse from the Bible, which he does in this case to prove a point, then in Rabbinic tradition one should quote the whole verse and since Moses happens to be mentioned towards the end of the verse – he gets a mention in the Haggadah. Here is the verse in question:

וַיַרְא יִשְרָאֵל אֶת־הַיָד הַגְדֹלָה אֲשֶר עָשָה ה’ בְמִצְרַיִם וַיִירְאוּ הָעָם אֶת־ה’ וַיַאֲמִינוּ בַּה’ וּבְמשֶה עַבְדוֹ.

And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant. (Exodus 14:31)

Without this consideration, the name of our great leader would be missing entirely from the Pesach Haggadah. How strange is that? Can you imagine the British relating the entire story of World War II: Dunkirk, The Battle of Britain, El Alamein, D Day etc. without mentioning the name of their great wartime leader – Winston Churchill – it simply couldn’t happen, so why in the case of Moses is he missing in action?

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in his Haggadah offers us an answer. Referring to this quotation as the only mention of Moses on Seder night and acknowledging that it is a purely incidental reference at that, he adds:

Nothing more strikingly conveys the difference between Moses and Pharaoh, and the value systems they represented. Pharaoh was the sun god made manifest. In Judaism no human being is a god or godlike, but everyone is in the image of God. The Exodus was the prelude to a political-religious order in which we are equal citizens under the sovereignty of God and in which no one needs an intermediary – a god, priest, or holy person – to approach Him. Only under the sacred canopy of faith does an entire society, as opposed to rare individuals, achieve its full stature and freedom.

In similar vein, Rabbi Dr Jeffrey Cohen in an article in the UK Jewish Chronicle (2018) describes how the Haggadah goes out of its way to stress the divine nature of the redemption from Egypt. Yet he still questions, what prompted the author(s) of the Haggadah, when interpreting the verse: “And God brought us out” (Exodus 12:12), to assert so vehemently that this implies God alone, given that Moses (and for that matter Aaron too) played such a significant role in persuading Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves leave Egypt. The Haggadah expresses this in a well-known passage:

וַיּוֹצִאֵנוּ ה’ מִמִצְרַיִם. לֹא עַל־יְדֵי מַלְאָךְ, וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָרָף, וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָלִיחַ, אֶלָא הַקָדוֹשׁ בָרוּךְ הוּא בִכְבוֹדוֹ וּבְעַצְמוֹ
‘And the Lord brought us out of Egypt’…..not through an angel, not through a seraph, and most certainly not via an intermediary, but only as a direct result of the Holy One, blessed be He – as a consequence of His glory and His presence.

Rabbi Cohen supplies a number of answers to this question, but the one that I particularly appreciate is based upon the wider polemical battle that the rabbis of that time waged against other religious groups such as the idolatrous Romans, the renegade Judeo-Christians, the Persian dualists (later known as Zoroastrians) and unorthodox Jewish movements such as the Sadducees, and later the Karaites.

Each of these groups held views contrary to traditional Judaism. To counter these heretical views, the sages included in their writings, especially in their liturgical works, such as the siddur (the daily prayer book), the machzor (the festival prayer book) and the Haggadah Shel Pesach, coded theological messages which were intended to inculcate their religious dogma into the hearts and minds of their students and the general Jewish community. Pagan Rome was an obvious target for a strictly monotheistic religion, but so too were the Judeo-Christians who had recognised a pretender as the Messiah and as a consequence were changing fundamental aspects of Judaism. Similarly, Zoroastrian beliefs were utterly rejected by the rabbis. Their dualistic cosmology of the twin powers of good and evil was at odds with Jewish belief as expressed by the prophet Isaiah:

לְמַעַן יֵדְעוּ מִמִזְרַח-שֶמֶשׁ וּמִמַעֲרָבָה, כִי-אֶפֶס בִלְעָדָי: אֲנִי ה’ וְאֵין עוֹד
יוֹצֵר אוֹר וּבוֹרֵא חֹשֶךְ, עֹשֶה שָלוֹם וּבוֹרֵא רָע; אֲנִי ה’, עֹשֶה כָל-אֵלֶה

So all the world from east to west will know there is no other God. For I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create the darkness, I bring both peace and create disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things. (Isaiah 45: 6-7)

Unorthodox Jewish groups were also in the firing line, especially those such as the Sadducees and the Karaites who rejected the Oral Law i.e. the teachings found in the Mishnah and Talmud.

It was in this broad context that we might explain the Haggadah’s exaggerated assertion that God employed no agency other than Himself in redeeming the Israelites. This may have been a conscious polemic against the new Judeo-Christians who were developing a heretical theology which spoke of a man taking on divine properties to save the world. Moses may well have been our greatest leader – but he was a mere mortal living in the presence of God, in that sense no different from any of us.

Alternatively, the polemic may have been targeting those Jews from early times who had a preoccupation with angelology. This had already evolved in the early Pharisaic period (3rd century BCE). In the late biblical books of Zechariah and Daniel and, in more developed form in the post-biblical books of the Apocrypha, angels appear as independent beings, with their own personal names and distinguishable traits. Such a developed system of angelology underpinned the apocalyptic vision of Jewish sects such as the Qumran Covenanters, otherwise known as the Dead Sea Scroll sect. The popular obsession with such ideas, according to Rabbi Cohen, might well have alarmed the conventional Pharisaic authorities of the period, struggling hard to promote pure monotheism among the uneducated masses, for whom such angelic intermediaries were becoming a powerful influence in their lives. Seder night would have been, therefore, an occasion not to be missed in the mainstream fight against such sectarian ideas.

To these ideas, Rabbi Cohen added one final thought:

The almost total absence of reference to Moses in the Haggadah may be similarly explained, given it attained its final editorial form in the early Geonic period (eighth century CE). The editors would have been zealous about distancing their unsophisticated readers from the dominant Christian and Islamic theologies, both of which viewed their respective faiths as having been mediated through a heaven-sent malach (angel), Jesus or Mohammed.

The Haggadah employed, therefore, two means of emphasising the absolute purity of Judaism’s monotheism: the first was to overemphasise the fact that God did not have recourse to any intermediary; the second was to suppress the name of Moses and any reference to his role as an intermediary in the Exodus.

Perhaps I may offer a third reason why the rabbis decided to divert attention away from Moses on Seder night. In many of the myths of the ancient world, as well as in the great histories of the medieval world – the hero is set apart from mere mortals. In ancient Greek myth, heroes such as Achilles, Hector and Odysseus were human, but they were endowed with superhuman abilities. Real-life conquerors, such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan are also portrayed as extraordinary, godlike beings and was it not Shakespeare who re-invented historical characters? Shakespeare’s heroes were fictional, even the ones based loosely on real people; he is said to have written histories but the whole notion of accurate portrayal is not really applicable. Shakespeare was a dramatist, not an historian. One might also add whatever Shakespeare did for the Elizabethans, Hollywood replicated in modern times.

If I were to ask you to describe your image of Moses, how many of you would describe a handsome, fearless, noble man – somewhat similar in physique and personality to Charlton Heston!

Yet this was exactly what the rabbis feared – that we would fixate on all the wrong things. For Pesach, including the slavery, the Exodus, the Crossing of the Red Sea and onwards into the wilderness – none of these are concerned with the heroic acts of one man – but rather, how these events in our national story still touch us and teach us about life and death, pain and suffering, recovery and hope, freedom and national identity.

Moses is missing from the Seder – for one reason above all others – he is not the central character – we are. We, the Jewish people, after all these years, still identify, still connect, still believe.

If Moses appeared on every page of the Haggadah, but we didn’t show up at the Seder – that would be a disaster. Instead what we need to do is appreciate that Moses was exactly the same as each one of us – more human than most of us give him credit for: heroic and flawed, courageous yet inconsistent. Moses had his weaknesses to be sure – he was stubborn, impatient and irritable, at times he felt disinclined to lead, at other times he was harsh and unfeeling – yet he cared for his family, he shepherded his people and he related to his God. His life was one of transformation – from a Hebrew child abandoned on the Nile, to a pampered prince in the court of Pharaoh, to an asylum seeker in the Land of Midian, to a shepherd, a reluctant leader, and finally a prince among men and before God – a leader and legislator who changed the world.

Moses is not heralded – because each one of us is as important today, as he was then; each one of us can achieve great things and we shouldn’t be overshadowed or intimidated by someone who lived and died thousands of years ago. Moses should not be allowed to inhibit our progress.

I cannot speak for others – but I can admit that I am like Moses – I am also stubborn, impatient and at times irritable, and sadly I have been known to be harsh and unfeeling – but I can be inspired, as you can too – by the lives of great people who went before us and changed; changed themselves and then the world around them. So rather than fictionalise our heroes, placing them so high on a pedestal that we cannot see them, let alone reach them – we walk alongside them, we normalise them, we see them with exactly the same honesty that we should see ourselves – for only then will we be able to transform ourselves, and in so doing change the world – and leave something of value for those who will come after us.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Freedman