Shabbat Chol

CHOL HAMOED PESACH
17 NISAN 5783 • APRIL 8, 2023
Shabbat Shalom • ouka ,ca
Yahrtzeiten
Shabbat Morning Kiddushim
Resume after Passover.
To sponsor a kiddush please contact
Linda Scheinberg
vfrck oburfz
Apr. 9 • Nisan 18 Bernard Ratner Father of Mark Ratner
Apr. 10 • Nisan 19 Sara Jacobs Mother of Howard Jacobs
Apr. 13 • Nisan 22 Leon Aronson Brother of Rosalee Bogo
Netti Shapiro
Mother of Linda Wertheim
Ceil Leifer
Mother-in-law of Barry Barber
Apr. 14 • Nisan 23 Ronald Goldsmith Husband of Susie Goldsmith
Apr. 14 • Nisan 23 J. Allan Friedman Father of Melvin Friedman
Birthdays
Apr. 7 Stephen Keyser, Jack Zoldan
Apr. 7 Joan Lasser
Anniversaries
jna `skuv ouh
Apr. 11 Ann & Martin Rubenfeld (53)
Apr. 13 Carol & Stuart Mest (37)
Friday, Apr 7 th - 6:15 p.m.
Saturday, Apr 8 th - 9:30 a.m.
Wednesday, Apr 12 th - 9:00 a.m.
YIZKOR
Via

Torah & Haftarah Readings:
Devarim: Exodus 33:12-34:26 (Etz Hayim p. 538)
1. 33:12-16 2. 33:17-19 3. 33:20-23 4. 34:1-3
5. 34:4-10 6. 34:11-17 7. 34:18-26 M. Numb.28:19-25 ( p. 932)
Haftarah: Ezekiel 37:1-14 (Etz Hayim p. 1308)
Torah Summary
Meeting the Gaze of Moses
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
This week, on Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach, we once again have the
opportunity to read the beautiful and borderline irreverent passage in
which Moses asks to see God’s kavod, God’s presence or glory. The leadup
to Moses’s big ask is exquisite - Moses and God dance around the topic,
one more polite than the next, as they reconfigure their relationship in the
wake of the Golden Calf.
The words both Moses and God use focus on sight. Moses starts his
speech by asking God to “see,” to “look.” He’ll remind God to “see” that
this people, Israel, is God’s nation. Repeatedly, Moses reminds God that
God likes Moses, literally that Moses has “found favor in his eyes.” This
emphasis on sight is striking. Rashi explains that Moses is reminding God
to look back to God’s own words, to reflect that to which God has already
acquiesced. Ibn Ezra reads “see” as Moses asking God to look at him, to
behold the difficult situation in which Moses finds himself. Either way, the
request to be seen is a call for remembering and for taking responsibility.
God agrees to the request of Moses, explaining that God’s face, perhaps
meaning God’s presence, will go with the Israelites. Moses had two
requests, for God to see and to let him know who would lead the Israelites
with him. God responds definitively to the latter request. God perhaps
also responds to the first request, the call for sight, by sending his seeing
mechanism to be with Moses. God puts God’s face at eye level with the
Israelites, becoming their perpetual beholder.
All this talk of God seeing Israel, of God bringing God’s face to Israel,
contextualizes God’s response when Moses famously requests to see
God’s kavod. Setting up an aspects-of-God parade, God will allow various
attributes of God to pass before Moses’s face while Moses is wedged in a
rock. But God will not allow Moses to see God’s kavod or God’s face. The
relationship defined here is clear and asymmetrical. God is present, God’s
face is present with the Israelites, so that God can see them and can behold
Moses. But Moses is not to see God’s face.
But Moses does glimpse something. We read that God permits Moses to
see God’s ahor. Many modern translations render this word as “back.”
Moses catches a view of God as God leaves. It is unclear what God’s back
is supposed to be or why Moses would be allowed to look at it. One
possibility, brought to us by Rashi, is that God shows Moses the knot of
tefillin behind his head. However, “back” is not the only way the word has
been understood. Targum Onkelos, a second century Aramaic version of
the Torah, renders ahor and penai, which I have been translating as “face,”
as directional terms, reading the verse to say, “You will see that which is
after me, but what is before me shall not be seen.” The Avot de Rabbi
Natan understands these terms as references to the world to come and to
this world. Moses may see one but not the other. Diana Lipton, a current
biblical scholar at Tel Aviv University, suggests based on careful readings of
rabbinic texts, that we may understand the ahor as referring to the future
and penai as referring to the past. God permits Moses to glimpse the future
but not the present and not the past. God reassures Moses by showing him
the continuity of the Jewish people long after Moses is gone.
God does not reveal to Moses the mysteries of how people work in his
present time or why the Golden Calf happened. Rather, God lets Moses
know that we will be ok even after Moses is gone. God fully sees Moses,
answering the true question that Moses is asking.
On Pesach, we do the opposite. We gaze deeply into our past, reliving the
Exodus. In doing so, we see the penai rather than the ahor. In looking
towards the past, we see God’s face, dwelling securely among the Jewish
people.
For more on the idea of ahor as the future, check out Diana Lipton’s article,
“God’s back! What did Moses see on Sinai?.”
Exodus: Greater the Second Time Around
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
After two seder nights we get the idea: the greatest event of the Jewish
people was the wondrous Exodus from Egypt, the land of bondage (not
just for us). It set us on course for the rest of our existence always looking
back to that formative experience which will color our narrative and our
legal system. We left the land of bondage for us and the land of plenty (if
you were an Egyptian master) and headed to the land of Israel to finally live
in the land intended for our nation.
Then came the exile. We were thrown out of the land. The Exodus from
Egypt unraveled. We were no longer a free and independent people living
in our own land. While prophets warned of the possibility of exile because
of our behavior, the reality of such a possibility did not sink in. Does anyone
really imagine being forced out of their home? That was not built into the
narrative.
It is in the setting of the community exiled to Babylon that Ezekiel speaks.
Explaining the unsettling description of the dry bones scattered on the
floor of a valley, Ezekiel says that the dry bones are the people of Israel.
They describe themselves as dried bones, as people whose hope is lost.
(The word for hope is “tikvah”. Naphtali Zvi Imber gave a modern reading
of this chapter in his poem that would eventually be the basis for Hatikvah
– Israel’s national anthem.) Ezekiel promises this dispirited group that God
will take them out of their graves and bring them to the land of Israel.
Whether this is intended figuratively or literally is debated.
This explains the need for Ezekiel’s prophecy, but not the choice to read
this prophecy as the haftarah on Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach. It might
have to do with the message of Pesach itself. We have spent a great deal
of time telling the story of the Exodus, our story of redemption. Now we
face a problem. Anyone following the story will be able to point out that
the redemption that we are touting failed in the end. We are not in the land
promised to our ancestors but rather in another exile. Don’t we see how
pointless it is to talk about our Exodus and our going to the land when we
have been kicked out of it and returned to a status of sojourners in foreign
lands?!
The prophecy of Ezekiel has come to speak to every generation that
found itself as dry bones at the bottom of a valley. It promised a future
redemption more miraculous and amazing than even the exodus from
Egypt, the ultimate measuring stick of the Tanakh. As we tell ourselves the
great story of God taking us out of Egypt, Ezekiel has helped Jews through
the centuries believe that it can happen again, just greater. We have not
lost our hope.
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