Timeless Torah

Moses’ first foray into Jewish leadership was a bust, when the two Israelites he tried helping indignantly demanded. “Who appointed you as a prince…?” Moses had not yet thought of becoming a leader and already his qualifications were being challenged. It was a taste of things to come.

As a consequence, Moses was forced to flee Egypt and find refuge in Midian where his identity was unknown. As Jethro’s daughters whom he rescued told their father, “An Egyptian man saved us.” Moses looked, spoke, and dressed like an Egyptian. Anonymous at last, he married and settled down to the quiet life, far from Pharaoh and the Israelites.

Yet his past did not leave him alone. At the Burning Bush, G-d called on Moses to lead His people out of slavery. One sentence in this passage, “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at G-d.” parallels a later verse. “When Moses came down [after the golden calf] from Mount Sinai…he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the L-rd. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw…his face was radiant, they were afraid to come near him.”

On this, our Sages commented: in reward for three pious acts, Moses received three rewards. Since he “Hid his face,” he was given a radiant face; because, “He was afraid,” he merited that, “They were afraid;” and in payment for being, “Afraid to look upon G-d,” he merited to, “See the form of the L-rd.”

It’s a lovely idea. Moses, who came closer to G-d than any other person, took on some of His radiance. Yet one detail is strange. The first two rewards are straightforward, a kind of measure for measure. Because he hid his face, his became radiant. Because he was awestruck by the burning bush, he became awe-inspiring. But what about the third: because he was afraid to look at G-d, he was rewarded by seeing G-d? Either it is right or wrong to look. If it is right, why was Moses afraid? And if it is wrong, why was he later rewarded with something that should not have happened?

We know Moses burned with a sense of justice. When he saw a slave beaten, people fighting, or young women being manhandled, he intervened. Moses was like Abraham who said, “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” This was Moses’ question. Paganism then, like secularism now, doesn’t expect justice. The gods fought; they were indifferent to mankind; the universe was not moral. The strong win, the weak suffer, and the wise keep far from the fray. If there is no G-d (or many gods), there is no reason why the world would be just.

But for the Jew, whose G-d chose Abraham so that he would teach his children to, “Keep the way of the L-rd by doing what is right and just,” that saints suffer while sinners prosper made no sense. It was this question that reverberated through the centuries and gave Moses no rest. Why were the Israelites enslaved? Why was the brutal regime of Egypt so strong?

In truth, pain and suffering are not always evil. There are circumstances when we know that they are necessary for some good. To be a parent is to give a child harsh medicine when we know it holds the cure. At times, a surgeon must plunge the knife, a general must decide who goes to the front. One who shrinks from these choices because of a strong sense of compassion may be a good human being but an inadequate leader. There are times when we must silence our most human instincts.

It was this that Moses feared. If he could, “Look at the face of G-d;” if he could understand history from the perspective of heaven, he would have to make his peace with the suffering of human beings. He would know why pain here was necessary for gain there; why bad now was essential to good later on. He would understand the ultimate justice of history.

That is what Moses refused to do, because the price of such knowledge was simply too high. He would have understood the course of history from the vantage point of G-d, but only at the cost of ceasing to be human. How then could he still be moved by the cry of slaves, the anguish of the oppressed, if he understood its place in the scheme of things? Such knowledge means saying goodbye to compassion and identifying with the plight of the innocent, the wronged, and the oppressed. If to, “Look at the face of G-d” was to understand why suffering is sometimes necessary, then Moses was afraid to look - afraid that it would rob him of the one thing that made him the leader he was: his anger at the sight of evil which drove him, time and again, to intervene in the name of justice.

There are two primary names of G-d in the Bible: Elokim and Hashem. Elokim refers to G-d’s attribute of justice, Hashem to His mercy and kindness. At the burning bush, Moses was afraid to look at Elokim. Years later, his reward was that he saw, “the form of Hashem.” He understood G-d’s compassion. He did not understand G-d’s justice. Indeed, he was afraid to.

So it has always been. Jews, however deeply they believed in G-d’s divine providence, never made their peace with what seemed to them to be injustice. True, there is an ultimate justice in the affairs of man, but we may not aspire to such knowledge - not because our minds are too limited, our horizons too short; but because we morally must not, for we would then accept evil and not fight against it. G-d seeks our passion for justice, our refusal to come to terms with a world in which the innocent suffer and the evil have power.

Faced with the opportunity to understand the troubling aspects of history from the vantage-point of G-d, Moses was afraid to look. He was right, and for this he was rewarded. G-d does not want us to understand the suffering of the innocent but to fight for a world in which the innocent no longer suffer. To that, Moses dedicated his life. We should do no less.