Eitan Mayer

Parsha Themes Archive

Last week we began to look carefully at the process by which Moshe ‘convinces’ Hashem to forgive Bnei Yisrael for worshipping the golden calf. Just to review briefly, we noticed the following elements of the conversations between Hashem and Moshe:

Moshe must play different roles on different stages: facing Hashem, Who is angry and ready to destroy, Moshe must act as a calming force, ready to defend. He certainly must hold his own anger and destructive impulses in check in order to counterbalance Hashem’s anger. But when he faces the people, Moshe must show passionate anger in order to shock the people out of their gleeful worship of the calf, into realization of sin, and into doing teshuva. This is why we hear that as Moshe witnesses the worship of the calf, he “becomes angry,” although he has known about the calf since Hashem informed him of it atop the mountain; his anger is not an artificial show, it is Moshe allowing his own genuine anger to burn now that he can discard the role of defender.

Moshe’s use of his anger shows his emotional flexibility and self-control. Before Hashem, he stifles his anger to achieve one goal; before the people, he releases his anger to achieve another. Maintaining an emotional balance between these extremes is a precarious tightrope-walk; if the inappropriate emotion emerges at the wrong time, disaster will follow. This sort of mediation also calls on Moshe to display absolute selflessness: he does not have the luxury of indulging whatever emotions he happens to feel, as many of us might. He must channel his emotions to the needs of the hour.

[Imagine the emotional roller-coaster of a typical Sunday for the rabbi of a nice-sized congregation: first he attends a brit milah, then a funeral, then a wedding, then counsels a troubled marriage, then goes to the hospital to visit a new mother and baby and a terminally ill congregant with cancer. The rabbi has to feel the appropriate emotions at the appropriate time, and he can’t fake it. To perform successfully, the rabbi (and all of th rest of us) must develop great emotional sensitivity, flexibility, generosity, selflessness, and energy.]

This brings us to our next question, which we touched last week and which will keep us busy this week:

Where does Moshe find the chutzpah to challenge Hashem? Hashem tells him that He intends to destroy the people, yet Moshe stands in the way and refuses to allow it! Some examples of Moshe’s puzzling (or shocking) behavior:

These would be pretty tall requests under any circumstances, but in this context, in which Moshe has stubbornly refused to do anything Hashem tells him to do and has accused Hashem of reneging on His commitments, what makes Moshe think that Hashem will not just zap him into a cloud of vapor, much less grant all of these requests? How does he know how far to push Hashem before he walks into the danger zone and finds himself on the wrong end of a Divine lightning-bolt?

Last week we introduced the idea that Hashem and Moshe are collaborators in a “conspiracy of mercy.” Hashem doesn’t really want to destroy the people, He wants to forgive them. But justice and His own anger make it impossible for Him to just forget the whole thing and pretend it didn’t happen. Moshe’s job is to calm Hashem and find a way for Him to be merciful.

How doeMknhe is reallysupposed to resist Hashem’sanger and behave so aggressively and stubbornly in the process of attaining forgiveness for the people? Hashem’s first hint is when He tells Moshe to “leave Me alone” so that He can become truly angry and destroy the people: paradoxically, telling Moshe about this plan is really Hashem’s way of hinting that Moshe is supposed to resist the plan, because certainly, if Hashem wanted to destroy the people, He would not have to say “excuse Me” first to Moshe. This perspective is expressed by the Midrash Rabba:

“Now leave Me, so that My anger may burn against them, and I shall destroy them!” Now, was Moshe indeed grasping onto the Holy One, blessed be He, that He had to say, “Leave Me”? To what is this comparable? To a king who became angry at his son, put him into a bedroom, and began to try to hit him; as he did so, the king shouted from the bedroom, “Leave me alone, so that I can hit him!” [The boy’s] teacher was just outside. He said, “The king and his son are [alone] in the bedroom—why is he saying, ‘Leave me alone’? It must be because the king wants me to calm him down over his son; this is why he shouts, ‘Leave me!’” In the same way, Hashem said to Moshe, “Now leave Me!” Moshe said, “The reason why the Holy One, blessed be He, says ‘Leave Me’ is because He wants me to appease Him over Yisrael.” Immediately, he began to seek mercy for them, and this is why “Moshe beseeched the face of Hashem, his God.”

[One other example of a situation in which Hashem warns Moshe to clear out of the way so that He can blast the people—and where Hashem is again really hinting that Moshe should intercede—is the story of the rebellion of Korah, BeMidbar 16:19-27.]

We should also note that our parasha’s story is not the first in which Moshe refuses to carry out Hashem’s will. The very first time Hashem communicates with Moshe, He commands Moshe to take Bnei Yisrael out of Egypt. Moshe says no—five times, in five different ways. The first four times, he gives a reason for refusing, but the fifth time, he just flatly refuses. Finally, Hashem becomes angry with him and forces him to take on the mission. Perhaps, though, Moshe’s refusals at that early stage in his career were what confirmed for Hashem that Moshe was the man to lead Bnei Yisrael: He needed someone who could “stand up” to Him in his anger.

Some see Moshe’s initial refusal to undertake the divine mission as negative—Hazal say that Moshe was to have been the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) but lost this honor because of his stubbornness; Aharon, who became Moshe’s spokesman to Paro, received the Kehuna Gedola in Moshe’s place. But even if Moshe’s early intransigence was a mistake, at other times, like in our parasha, Moshe’s willingness to take a stand against Hashem makes the difference between life and death for Bnei Yisrael. Ultimately, it makes the difference between a nation accompanied by Hashem and a nation abandoned by Him.

Getting back to our issue—how Moshe knows to behave the way he does—this first hint is the only indication we have seen so far. For the full picture, we must return to the text, which will also reveal Moshe’s strategy is in his successful bid to get Hashem to forgive the people.

SHEMOT 33:7-11 --

Moshe took the tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the “Ohel Mo’ed” [Tent of Meeting”]. Whoever sought Hashem would go out to the Ohel Mo’ed, which was outside the camp. When Moshe would leave to go to the tent, all of the nation would stand up and wait, each person at the door of his tent, and look after Moshe until he came to the tent. When Moshe came to the tent, the pillar of cloud [i.e., God’s Presence] would descend and stand at the door of the tent and speak with Moshe. All of the people would see the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tent; they would all stand up and bow down, each at the door of his tent. Hashem would speak to Moshe face to face—just as one speaks to his friend—and then he would return to the camp. But his servant, Yehoshua bin Nun, an acolyte, would never leave the tent.

As we encounter the scene described above, Moshe has tried once for forgiveness, but Hashem has resisted and told him to return to leading the people. Of course, Moshe is not actually going to listen to Hashem, but he does change tactics. Instead of working on Hashem directly, he returns to the other front of the battle—the people—and strengthens his position by deepening their teshuva, making it ‘harder’ for Hashem to resist forgiving them.

He takes a tent outside the camp and makes that tent the “Ohel Mo’ed,” the “Tent of Meeting” [=meeting between Hashem and people]. He even calls it the “Ohel Mo’ed,” an appellation the Torah uses over 30 times in Sefer Shemot to refer to the Mishkan. This gesture communicates to the people that Hashem is no longer in their midst: instead of the beautiful Mishkan, a center of national worship, a meeting-place with the Shekhina [Presence of Hashem] at the center of the camp, the “Ohel Mo’ed” is a plain tent planted “outside the camp,” “far from the camp,” to which interested individuals have access but to which there is no national dimension at all.

The people get the message. Whenever Moshe leaves the camp to communicate with Hashem, they look longingly after him; they show the utmost respect for the appearance of the Shekhina by bowing when it appears. These people appreciate what their sin has caused and are deep in the throes of teshuva.

Note that the Torah also takes this opportunity to contrast the distance between Hashem and the people with the intimacy between Hashem and Moshe. They speak “face to face,” “like friends,” while the rest of the people watch from afar. But besides this contrast, the Torah’s observation that Hashem and Moshe communicate as friends also expresses several other ideas:

“Hashem would speak to Moshe face to face”: we do not know [from this] whether the low one [i.e., Moshe] lifted himself up or the High One lowered Himself down. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, “As it were, the Highness of the world bent Himself over, as it says, ‘Hashem descended to the tent.’”

Instead of raising Moshe higher, closer to His own level, Hashem lowers Himself to Moshe’s human level, making Himself vulnerable to arguments which would sway a human.

SHEMOT 33:12-13 --

Moshe said to Hashem, “Look, You told me, ‘Bring the nation up [to Eretz Yisrael],’ but You have not told me whom You will send with me! And [yet] You have said, ‘I [Hashem] will know You [M] through the N,’ also, ‘[Moshe] have found favor in My[Hashem’s] eyes.’ Now, if I have really found favor in Your eyes, let me know Your ways—then I will know You and I will be able to find favor in Your eyes. And see, too, that this nation is Your nation!”

The *way* Moshe formulates his argument is crucial to understanding the substance of the argument. Note that Moshe makes everything here completely personal:

Not only are Moshe’s formulations personal, the content of his claims is personal as well. Moshe claims that Hashem had promised him that He would maintain intimacy with him, that Moshe had found favor in His eyes—yet He has decided to send a faceless, nameless angel along with him instead of accompanying him Himself! Of course, the reason the angel is faceless and nameless, the reason the angel does not carry Hashem’s name and represent a high level of Divine Presence, is not because of Moshe, but because of the people’s own abandonment of Hashem. Moshe argues, however, that this is simply not fair: Hashem had promised that He would remain close to Moshe, and sending this angel means punishing Moshe for a crime he did not commit.

What promise is Moshe referring to when he says that Hashem told him that He would “know him through the Name”? And what does that mean anyway—is Hashem about to forget Moshe’s name? Has He forgotten the names of the rest of Bnei Yisrael? The Ramban suggests a possibility:

. . . Moshe said [to Hashem], “You have not told me which angel You are sending with me,” and he [Moshe] made two requests: One, “I will know you by name,” meaning that “I [Hashem] will become known through you [Moshe]”; and perhaps Moshe’s saying “And You said,” refers to what Hashem had said to him, “I was not known to them by My name Y-HVH.”

All the way back in Parashat Va-Era, Hashem appeared to Moshe and told him that although He had revealed Himself to the Avot (forefathers) as “E-l Shad-dai,” He had not made Himself known to them as “Y-HVH.” Of course, they knew the name Y-HVH, as is clear from its appearance all over Sefer Bereshit (Genesis); but the name “Y-HVH” means “The One Who is Present,” and while Hashem had ‘visited’ the Avot, He had not yet emerged publicly on the stage of history. To them, He was not actively Y-HVH, not constantly present.

This state of affairs changes dramatically with the plagues, Hashem’s primary vehicle for manifesting His Presence to the world in a show of power. The key phrase, repeated many times through the course of the plagues—“So that Egypt will know that I am *Y-HVH*”—is the signal of this new stage in Hashem’s open participation in history. Paro begins his dealings with Moshe with the arrogant claim, “I do not know Y-HVH”; by the end, we can see that he “knows” Y-HVH, the Present One, quite well! (The fact that this process of Self-revelation is important to Hashem explains why Moshe uses it effectively in the beginning of our parasha to argue that decimating Bnei Yisrael would counter Hashem’s purposes.)

Hashem’s decision to dwell among Bnei Yisrael further manifests His presentness, His quality of “Y-HVH.” Moshe is now arguing that when Hashem told him that He was now making Himself known as Y-HVH, that meant that He would remain present. But now He has decided to send only an angel with them; He is withdrawing the aspect of Y-HVH, as it was withdrawn in the time of the Avot.

But why does Moshe formulate his argument so personally? Why is his argument so focused on the closeness Hashem has promised to *him*? If his goal is to gain forgiveness for the people, how will it help to focus on himself? Can it be that he has given up on this goal and is trying to preserve his own relationship with Hashem?

Moshe has been paying careful attention to Hashem’s responses to his requests and he has noticed that Hashem has singled him out several times in favorable ways:

Moshe notices this trend and expands it into a strategy: he will use his closeness with Hashem to pressure Him into forgiving the rest of the people. Moshe’s strategy unfolds in several stages in the parasha.

First Moshe takes a direct tack, demanding that Hashem forgive the people or “erase me from the book You have written”—forgive them or kill me (erase me from the Book of Life, as most commentators interpret). Moshe makes no attempt to address the substance of the relationship between Hashem and the people. Hashem should forgive them not because they deserve it and not because of His relationship with them but because He prefers forgiving the people to killing Moshe. Hashem rebuffs this demand and asserts that He will punish only the sinners. But He also commands Moshe to take the people to Eretz Yisrael, so Moshe has won something in this exchange: the people will not only survive, they will realize the destiny promised to their forefathers of inheriting Eretz Cana’an.

Moshe now begins to follow an indirect path to forgiveness: he casts all of Hashem’s promises as promises made to *him* (although these commitments were made to the people as a whole) and argues that it is unfair for Hashem to deprive him of this closeness. At the same time, he supplies an intrinsic reason for forgiving the people: making a sudden transition from the personal to the national, he sounds a theme he has sounded before: “See, also, this nation is Your nation!”, the insistent reminder to Hashem that these people are His people.

Having argued that Hashem ‘owes’ him, Moshe now spells out the essence of his demand: Moshe wants Hashem Himself to teach him how to achieve forgiveness for the people! This is what he means by “Tell me Your ways, so that I will know You and therefore will be able to find favor in Your eyes.” Tell me how to handle a situation like this—how do I successfully arouse Your midat ha-rahamim, your merciful qualities? This perspective is articulated by Rashi:

“I will call before you with the name Y-HVH”—To teach you the way to find mercy [before Me], even if the merits of the forefathers become used up.

Moshe is ostensibly asking Hashem to teaching him what to do next time, how to handle crises in the future. Hashem’s revelation of His merciful characteristics, the thirteen attributes of mercy, is a lesson to be used to defuse subsequent incidents of Divine anger.

He said, “My face [personal presence] will accompany you; I will lead yo.”

On the one hand, it seems that Hashem has finally given in. He agrees to perlead tpeople. Butthis is very strange two reasons: First, the demand Moshe just made was not that Hashem lead the people, but that Hashem show him how to achieve forgiveness for the people in future incidents. So the words above seem to ignore Moshe’s request. Second, if Hashem is giving in, why does Moshe say what he says next?

He said to Him, “If Your face [personal presence] will not go [with us], do not bring us up from here! How, indeed, will it be known that I have found favor in Your eyes—I and Your nation—is it not through Your going with us, singling out myself and Your nation from all the nations on the face of the Earth!?”

Moshe seems so dissatisfied with Hashem’s response that he declares a sit-in. What did Hashem say to bring on this strong reaction? Ibn Ezra offers a very sharp answer:

. . . In my opinion, when Hashem said to him, “I will send an angel before you,” Moshe responded, “But You have not told me whom You are sending with me,” i.e., whether he [the angel] is the one about whom it was written, “My name is within him.” Hashem answered, “I Myself will go; I will lead you.” The meaning of “you” [”lakh”] is that “I will go with you alone; I will not dwell among Bnei Yisrael. Moshe responded, “If You Yourself do not go” with the whole nation mentioned above (“Look, this is Your nation!”), then “do not take us up [to Eretz Yisrael]!”—using plural language. The proof of this interpretation is [Moshe’s question], “How will it be known [to the world] that I have found favor in Your eyes, I and Your nation—is it not through Your going with us” . . . .

Hashem focuses on the opening and closing of Moshe’s statement and ignores the demand in the middle: Moshe had opened with a complaint that Hashem had promised Him that He would remain closely connected with Moshe, and that He now seems to be moving away; he had closed with a reminder that the nation is really Hashem’s nation. In response, Hashem proposes that He remain with Moshe but not with the people. Moshe had tried to blur the line between himself and the people, beginning his argument by focusing on the relationship between Hashem and himself and then ‘sneaking’ the people in at the end—but Hashem refuses to group Moshe and the people as a unit. Keep in mind, however, that Hashem has not yet responded to Moshe’s request for a tutorial in “Divine Mercy Arousal.”

He said to Him, “If Your face [personal presence] will not go [with us], do not bring us up from here! How, indeed, will it be known that I have found favor in Your eyes—I and Your nation—is it not through Your going with us, singling out myself and Your nation from all the nations on the face of the Earth!?”

As Ibn Ezra pointed out, Moshe understands that Hashem has agreed to accompany him exclusively, but that He will not accompany the people. As far as Moshe is concerned, that is just not enough! Once again, Moshe rejects Hashem’s offer, refusing to be separated from the people. This has been his position all through the parasha, we should note:

Hashem said to Moshe, “Also this thing that you have spoken, I will do, because you have found favor in My eyes—I will know you through the Name.”

What does Hashem mean by “this thing that you have spoken”? Some possibilities:

That the second is the better reading of the text is not only a point of view articulated by Hizkuni (a medieval commentator), it is also supported by the following evidence:

Moshe sees that Hashem has responded favorably—“This thing you have spoken, I will do”—so he ups the ante just one more notch:

He said, “Show me Your glory!”

Hashem had just agreed to grant Moshe’s request to teach him how to find mercy for the people. But that was only an agreement to provide information: “Let me _know_ Your ways, and then I will know You and I will be able to find favor in Your eyes.” There is no experiential component involved, just a transfer of secret information. What Moshe really wants—and we will see in a moment why—is an experience of the divine, an experience unparalleled by any other such experience at any point in the past and future of the God-man relationship. He wants more than to know—“hodi’eini”—He wants to *SEE* Hashem—“har’eini”!

He **SAID**, “I will pass all of My goodness before you and call out in the name ‘Y-HVH’ before you. [But] I will favor whom I want to favor; I will be merciful to those to whom I want to be merciful!”

He **SAID**, “You cannot see My face, for man cannot see me and survive.”

Hashem **SAID**, “There is a place here by Me, where you shall stand by the rock. When My glory passes, I will place you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with My hand until I pass. I will then remove My hand and you will see My back—but My face cannot be seen.”

Hashem **SAID** to Moshe, “Carve out for yourself two tablets of stone. I will write on the tablets the things that were on the first tablets, which you shattered. Be ready in the morning, ascend in the morning to Mount Sinai and wait for me there at the summit of the mountain. No one should ascend with you; no one should be seen on the whole mountain. Even the sheep and cattle should not graze opposite that mountain.”

Note in the pesukim above that the Torah uses the word “Va-Yomer”—“He said”—four separate times, at the beginning of each statement made by Hashem. As we have seen several times in the Torah, this is the Torah’s way of indicating that between each of Hashem’s statements, He pauses and waitsfor Moshe to respond, but Moshe remains silent. Moshe’s silence should make us ‘suspicious’: what is Hashem adding each time in the expectation thaMoshe will finagree? We mustlook for tprogression in Hashem’s statements:

He said, “I will pass all of My goodness before you and call out in the name ‘Y-HVH’ before you. But I will favor whom I want to favor; I will be merciful to those to whom I want to be merciful!”

Hashem responds quite warily to Moshe’s request for the full divine experience. Still playing the ‘role’ of angry and distant God, Hashem ‘suspects’ that Moshe plans to somehow take advantage of the situation when He reveals Himself. He promises to reveal His merciful attributes, but insists that Moshe is not to attempt to use this opportunity to gain mercy and forgiveness for anyone whom Hashem is not ready to forgive: “Although I am revealing My goodness to you, calling out the name Y-HVH before you [signifying Presence, the opposite of Hashem’s abandonment of the people], I will forgive only those I want to forgive, and I will have mercy only on those upon whom I want to have mercy!”

Moshe, unsatisfied with this offer, does not respond; he wants more than just a personal experience of Hashem’s merciful attributes, more than just the text of the prayer he should use next time. He wants this intimate experience of Hashem’s revelation to offer him a context in which to seek mercy for those whom Hashem is, so far, unwilling to forgive. Hashem has agreed to reveal His merciful attributes, but refused to allow Moshe to grab the opportunity to gain forgiveness for Bnei Yisrael: “I will favor whom I want to favor; I will be merciful to those to whom I want to be merciful!” For Moshe, this is simply not enough, and ultimately, his silence wins out, as Hashem capitulates on this point and merely offers Moshe another challenge. He ‘attempts’ to put Moshe off by reminding him of his limitations as a human being, arguing that the intense Divine experience he has requested will kill him:

He said, “You cannot see My face, for man cannot see me and survive.”

But Moshe maintains his stony silence. He knows of his limitations, but he also knows that Hashem can find ways to shield him from a fatal exposure to the Divine. Hashem gives in once again, promising to make this revelation the ultimate prophetic epiphany Moshe requests and also promising to shield Moshe from harm:

Hashem said, “There is a place here by Me, where you shall stand by the rock. When My glory passes, I will place you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with My hand until I pass. I will then remove My hand and you will see My back—but My face cannot be seen.”

But—incredibly—Moshe is still not satisfied! He maintains a stubborn silence, waiting for Hashem to give in. Hashem finally does so once again, promising that this experience will culminate in the establishment of a new covenant with the people Moshe so stubbornly represents:

Hashem said to Moshe, “Carve out for yourself two tablets of stone. I will write on the tablets the things that were on the first tablets, which you shattered. Be ready in the morning, ascend in the morning to Mount Sinai and wait for me there at the summit of the mountain. No one should ascend with you; no one should be seen on the whole mountain. Even the sheep and cattle should not graze opposite that mountain.”

Moshe’s gamble has been successful. Hashem has agreed to become an open participant in the “conspiracy of mercy.” Moshe, acting on Hashem’s own instructions, has ‘worn Hashem down.’

Note, though, that despite Hashem’s agreement to reestablish a relationship with the whole nation, He still focuses on Moshe alone: only Moshe is to ascend the mountain, unlike at the original revelation of the Decalogue (Ten “Commandments”), when various privileged groups ascended to different levels on the mountain. Hashem communicates in no uncertain terms that He is participating in this covenant only on Moshe’s merit. The covenant comes completely through Moshe; the people have no role in the Divine experience accompanying the giving of the Torah this time.

All that remains now is for the Torah to tell us how the event takes place:

He carved out two tablets of stone like the first ones. Moshe arose early in the morning and ascended Mount Sinai as Hashem had commanded him. He took in his hands the two tablets of stone. Hashem descended in a cloud, stood with him there, and called out the name, “Y-HVH.” Hashem passed before him and called out, “Y-HVH, Y-HVH, God of mercy and kindness, slow to anger and great in kindness and truth; maintaining kindness for thousands, forgiving sin, iniquity, and transgression, but who will not simply excuse sin, remembering the sin of the fathers [with punishment] upon the children to the third and fourth generation.”

Many people think that we have just read the most important part of this story: Hashem’s revelation of His attributes of mercy. But the most important moment is still ahead:

Moshe *hurried* to prostrate himself on the ground and bow. He said, “If I have truly found favor in Your eyes, then let Y-HVH please go in our midst, though it is a stiff-necked nation; forgive our sin and transgression, and make us Your possession!”

We will never know what Moshe saw as he peeked through the cracks between Hashem’s protecting ‘fingers,’ but what we can understand is that Hashem has detonated a hydrogen-bomb of divine mercy (so to speak) right in front of Moshe. Harnessing the power of this unparalleled expression of divine mercy-energy, Moshe does exactly what Hashem had warned him not to do (but eventually capitulated to): he takes advantage of the situation to attain forgiveness for the people. As He articulates the Midot Ha-Rahamim, Hashem’s mercy creates such a powerful wave of divine Presence that Moshe must be shielded from it to survive. Moshe seizes the opportunity to make his final attempt to attain forgiveness for Bnei Yisrael: Hashem, who has just proclaimed in more than a dozen different ways how merciful He is, simply ‘cannot’ deny Moshe’s request for mercy! He simultaneously agrees to forgive the people and establish a new berit (covenant) with them:

He [Hashem] said, “I hereby make a covenant: I shall perform wonders before your entire nation, which have never been created in the whole world and among all the nations; THIS **WHOLE** **NATION,** in whose midst you are, shall see the acts of Hashem, who is awesome, which I perform with you.”

Note that the argument between Hashem and Moshe about whose nation this is has not been settled. Moshe begins his final request with a focus on himself—“If I have found favor in Your eyes”—and calls the nation “stiff-necked”—but continues by grouping himself completely with the people, even making it sound as if he needs forgiveness along with them: “May Y-HVH go with *us*”, “Forgive our sin and our transgression, and take us as Your inheritance.” But Hashem responds by reasserting that he sees Moshe as separate from the people: he calls the nation “Your [Moshe’s] nation” and refers to them as a separate entity from Moshe (“The nation *in whose midst* you are”).

Hashem next commands a string of mitzvot which will be the substance of the new covenant. These mitzvot are a combination of the post-Exodus mitzvot, such as the sanctification of firstborn people and animals, and the mitzvot of the original Sefer ha-Berit (“Book of the Covenant”), the legal section of Parashat Mishpatim. Note what is missing here but present in the mitzvot of Parashat Mishpatim: all of the interpersonal mitzvot (the laws of damages, treatment of slaves, kindness to orphans, converts, and others, theft, murder, judicial laws, etc.). Instead, all of the mitzvot repeated here relate to our responsibilities to Hashem. We don’t have the time to discuss the details here, but the choice of these mitzvot is certainly not random: a close look suggests in different ways, these mitzvot all reinforce allegiance to Hashem (especially, of course, those which command us to keep away from idol worship). The original covenant, shattered by worship of the c, must be recast innew berit, through its repetition of key mitzvot of the original berit.

In the final piece of the parasha, a veil now covers Moshe’s face, symbolic of what has taken place over the course of the parasha. Although Moshe has remained deeply loyal to Bnei Yisrael, the events of the parasha have driven a wedge between him and the people forever. He will always be on one side of this miniature mechitza/veil—with Hashem—and the people will always be on the other side. In a sense, although Moshe has won the ‘struggle’ with Hashem over forgiving the people, Hashem has won the struggle over whether Moshe is truly a part of the people, indistinguishable from them.

Ironically, although we would think that the major result of Hashem’s forgiving the people is that He is now closer to them, what the Torah chooses to emphasize is that as a result of Hashem’s having forgiven the people, He is now closer to *Moshe.* The second revelation of the Torah is given to the people, but they are absent from the event itself. The forgiveness of Hashem is granted to the people, but they are absent from this story as well. Moshe is not only the conduit for Hashem’s interaction with the people, he has become one of the major reasons why Hashem chooses to interact with the people at all!

“Remember the Torah of My servant Moshe, which I commanded him at Horev upon all of Yisrael, laws and statutes.”

Our Torah is truly Moshe’s Torah, given to us not only through him, but because of him.