Christine Hayes: Moses at Sinai - God's Partner or Adversary? (Shavuot 5776)

welcome everybody to the fourth and final rabbinic holiday webinar from the year 5770 on rabbinic webinars we have had programs on Yom Kippur Hanukkah and Purim and tonight from New Haven Connecticut with Allen Abby me in in Jerusalem and professor Christine Hayes in New Haven Connecticut we have tonight's program ending our year on Shavuot and professor Hayes's topic is Moses at Sinai God's partner or adversary let me tell you a bit about professor Christine Hayes and then we're going to turn the program over to her dr. Christine Hayes is a faculty member in Coe God fellow at the Shalom hartman Institute of North America she is the Weiss professor of Religious Studies in classical Judaica at Yale University she has a BA in religion from Harvard and an MA and PhD from University of California at Berkeley in her work at the Institute her she focuses on Talmudic and midrashic studies and her most recent work in 2015 what's divine about divine law early perspectives won the 2015 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship professor Hayes is with us on short notice tonight we especially thank her for that dr. Ilana Stein Haines of our New York office was going to be our presenter tonight but she wasn't feeling well and professor Hayes was kind enough to jump in very quickly almost at the last minute and give us what I think is going to be a fascinating program so I want to welcome you professor Christine Hayes in New Haven Connecticut to our audience online in North America and Israel and I want to turn the program right over to you thank you I'm very glad to be here I'm going to ask a very big question and try to answer it by looking at a very small text or even the gap or absence of information between a couple of verses in the Bible the question I'm going to ask is who is the God of the Bible and Jewish tradition and what does this god want or expects of his people and in one respect that Jewish tradition has already answer to that question God has been very clear about what is wanted or expected of his people through the revelation of the Torah the event that's celebrated at Shavuot God provided his instructions and directions for the formation and maintenance of a covenant community but as Rashi notes the Bible doesn't begin with the giving of the Torah it might have opened with the giving of the Torah it might have opened with the words here's the Torah or teaching of God revealed to Israel at Sinai followed by a list of Commandments and prohibitions and instructions but it doesn't the revelation of the Torah is embedded in a larger narrative context and if we examine the narrative of the giving of the Torah specifically the dramatic moment in which God prepares to hand the Torah over to Moses we discover a deeper and more complicated answer to the questions what does this God want or expect for perhaps even need of his people we sometimes forget that the revelation of the Torah was almost completely direct failed at the last second that it was not is due entirely to Moses and his ability to respond appropriately at the critical moment to do what God wanted or expected or perhaps needed him to do so on the question of what God wants and expects of his people the story of the giving of the Torah is as instructive as the commandments of the Torah itself so we'll take a look then at the story and asked what the story of Moses is interaction with God at the moment of the revelation of the Torah have to teach us about what God wants expects or needs from his people people so first we have to set the scene and you'll recall that after delivering Israel from Egypt God summoned Moses to the top of Mount Sinai in order to deliver the terms of the Covenant that will bind God and Israel together forever Moses is there for 40 days and nights at the end we read at the end of chapter 31 an inch most when he had made an end of speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai God gave to Moses the two tablets of the testimony the tablets of stone written with the finger of God so this is the climax of the entire this story the moment towards which everything has been tending and yet at this very moment the Israelites commit the ultimate violation they turn to the worship of another God this is the biblical story printed in your handout which hopefully you all have and I apologize looking over it I see some of the Hebrew got distorted or rearranged in the final versions so forgive me for that it was put together rather quickly what's gonna be important here is the space between God's two speeches the Lord spoke to Moses hurry down for your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have acted basely I love the way he throws the people into Moses as laughs your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have acted basely they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I enjoin de pon them they have made themselves a molten calf and bowed low to it and sacrificed to it saying these are your God's o Israel who brought you out of the land of Egypt now God's hesitates and then speaks again the Lord further said to Moses I see that this is a stiff-necked people now let me be and my anger will blaze forth against them and I will destroy them and make of you a great nation and then we have Moses his reaction but Moses implored the Lord his God saying let not your anger Oh Lord blaze forth against your people whom you delivered from the land of Egypt notice how he hands the people back to God your people whom you delivered from the land of Egypt with great power and with the mighty hand let not the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he delivered them only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth turn from your blazing anger and renounced the plan to punish your people remember your servants Abraham Isaac and Israel how you swore to them by yourself and said to them I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and I will give to your offspring this whole land of which I spoke to possess for ever and the Lord renounced the punishment he had planned to bring upon his people some important lines here God seconds feet riittää honey hallelujah Harrop even in battle aim the SAO colleague like a dog and in response by how misshapen a hash a metal have valium there and so on okay the passage contains many gaps scholars use the term gap Therese for not just to an absence or a lack of information but to any feature in a text which demands interpretation for a coherent construction of the story to proceed so in addition to a blank which must be filled if the reader is going to make sense of the story a gap can refer to a contradiction or a repetition or some something unexpected or irregular a hiccup that causes the reader to pause forces the reader to make a judgement or to supply an explanation too to fully understand the text what are some of the gaps or problems in this text depicting this critical juncture where God is holding the tablets and doesn't want to give them to Moses or is just in the process of giving them to Moses the first is a gap in the literal sense of a lack of information and that occurs between verse 8 and verse 9 between God's first speech in God's second speech we're not told how Moses reacted to God's first speech we may suppose that it was his reaction that caused got or motivated God to speak a second time so it may help to know here a general rule about dialogue in the biblical text certain scholars have pointed out that it's very rare in biblical narrative to have two successive speeches by one speaker with no intervening response from the other party generally in biblical dialogue you have a speak be speak a speak be speaks and it's rare for a speaker to speak twice in a row with no intervening response it happens maybe a dozen times and so when it happens it's significant I'll illustrate with a text from first from from soil out of First Samuel 17 this is where Saul is looking for someone to take on the Philistine giant Goliath David presents himself Saul is doubtful that this scrawny young boy is up to the task and Saul said to David you're not be able to do this right and David said to Saul your servant kept his father's sheep and when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb out of the flock I went out after it and I struck him and I delivered it out of his mouth and when he arose against me I caught him by his beard and struck him and slew him your servants smoke both the lion and the bear and this sighs Philistine shall be as one of them seeing as he has taunted the armies of the Living God and David said the Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear he will deliver me out of the hand of the Philistines Saul said to David go and the Lord will be with you notice that David speaks twice in a row notice also that his tone changes completely in the second speech that suggests that there was something in Saul's reaction to David's first speech that prompted David to speak again and to speak differently we can see in his second speech some clue as to what Saul's silent reaction to the first speech was David's first speech is full of swagger and braggadocio and he boasts of his strength and his prowess and I did this and I did that but these wild animals I can defeat Goliath as well and then in the second speech he says that God delivered him from the lion and the bear and God will deliver him from the Philistines and now that he's spoken with appropriate piety and giving credit where credit is due then Saul is favorably inclined and grants his request to fight the Giant with God's health so presumably David changed his approach because he saw after the first speech that Saul was completely unimpressed he reacted in some way perhaps he rolled his eyes or turned away or side and in that moment David realized that his arrogant self-confidence had not found favor with Saul and had not prompted the response he wanted so instead he changed tack and he credited God with victory and Saul approved in the same way we have a silence between God's two speeches here in our chapter and we may imagine Moses behaving in some way that prompted God to speak again to determine what Moses did or didn't do in that gap we have to look at the context of God's second speech how does God's change tack what does God do that indicates that he's responding to Moses in action or gestures and we realize that there's a fundamental ambiguity in God's speech in the second speech and it's an ambiguity that opens the door for two possible understandings of Moses reaction to announcement that the Israelites have committed idolatry to possible understandings of the character and the tone of God's second speech point to two possible understandings of Moses's posture and what it is Moses is doing when he then begins to pray for God to not not to kill the Israelites let's take the step by step first we have to note that God second speech contains the words let me be nanny colleague these words imply that after God's first speech which sort of dismisses Moses right he says go and get down your people have sinned I'm calling off the Covenant apparently Moses made a move of some kind to stop God perhaps he starts to defend the people or plead for mercy and it's because he starts to interfere in some way that God has to say honey honey it's no use leave me be so that my anger can blaze forth baby ha Rafi and I can destroy them all together if that's so then God's speech in verse 11 is an imperative it's a direct command in response to Moses effort to intervene Moses's task then is formidable he made one attempt to intervene and was silenced and so any subsequent entreaty like the long prayer that's about to begin in verse 11 I should have said verse 10 before God speech in verse 10 his long prayer that will begin in verse 11 is going to be in defiance of a direct order from God not to interfere would Moses in fact be so disobedient but there's another possibility maybe God hoped to provoke Moses's interference maybe God had to do so because after his first speech Moses in fact did nothing maybe Moses was too stunned to overwhelmed by the news of the peoples of infidelity paralyzed by fear when God dismissed him go and get down and calling off the Covenant I'm going to kill them all and that paralysis might have made God very nervous perhaps Moses is in action after the first speech means that he won't stand up to save the people and so God has to hint to Moses in a second speech that it's time to act in this case we have to read God's speech in verse 9 10 in a very different tone Bonita Lee is not leave me alone but leave me alone Moses and I will destroy them so please don't leave me alone on this interpretation of Moses's implied responses doing nothing in God's second speech God is leaving the door open for Moses his intercession he's signaling that he can be persuaded not to destroy Israel he's rousing Moses out of inaction and into action if that's so then Moses is prayer in verses 11 through 13 isn't done in defiance of God in his prayer he's actually taking God's hint I want to point to a few more interesting gaps in the passage because they'll be important to later rabbinic readers in developing in developing their interpretations of this passage and we want to turn to the Midrash very soon first the word that's used to introduce Moses is speech in verse 11 by FL is an unusual term and the Hebrew root from which it derives has several very different meanings and we'll come back to that will see that the rabbi's are going to exploit and play with all of these meanings and trying to figure out what role Moses is playing here second the content of Moses's long speech is remarkable in his intercession Moses doesn't try to defend the people at all he seeks only to stop their immediate destruction and so he appeals to God's sense of responsibility they're your people even though God had just called the Moses people he appeals to God's vanity right what will the neighbors think if you destroy them the Egyptians will think you brought them out here just to destroy them and they also appeals to God's promise to the three patriarchs it's a horrid ever homily it's hot for the Israel of a desk remember the patriarchs your serpents and the promise that you made to them share nice matzah by him and so the rabbinic readers are going to focus on all of these elements and Moses his speech when they're trying to explain his behavior his demeanor before God and the role that he's playing and the third thing we need to notice is the outcome of Moses is entreaty it's successful God changes his mind and indeed the language that's used quite strong but you know fam Hashem Al Hara shared a bear lassoed I'm O God literally repented of the evil that he had planned to do to his people so to summarize now the two ways that we can read God's statement any Cully might leave me alone in Exodus 32 we can read it as an imperative let me be an absolute imperative commanding Moses not to interfere and the next clause and my anger will blaze forth is a statement of purpose I will destroy Israel and you Moses may not interfere and on that interpretation Moses must turn back a seemingly inevitable tide and he must do so in defiance of God's explicit command not to interfere and so his lengthy entreaty in verses 11 to 13 become becomes on this interpretation and act of courageous defiance or verse 10 is a conditional statement initially might be a harpy by him so if you leave me now let me be and my anger will blaze forth against them if and only if you let me be my anger will blaze forth against them and I will destroy them read this way God's speech is not an order to Moses to leave him alone but a conditional warning that if Moses that the to Moses that the consequence of letting God be is that Israel will be destroyed so on this reading all Moses must do to prevent Israel's destruction is to not let God be and God is informing Moses he has the power to intervene and prevent God from destroying the Israelites in which case his prayer is not an act of defiance an act of obedience so is Moses here God's partner or God's adversary these two interpretations of Moses's activity correspond to two different perceptions of God according to one perception God is first and foremost the Redeemer of Israel ultimate intimately and actively involved in the unfolding events of history responsive to if not limited by human action intention and entreaty to dissuade such a God from his stated plan of action is a possible if delicate tact task requires tact diplomacy and good standing and has a role to play here as God's partner through prayer and treaty and persuasive argument he helps God to actualize his larger purpose which is to sustain and benefit his people and God's overlordship is not threatened because Moses simply assists God in the fulfillment of God's own plans and higher purpose but according to a second perception God is first and foremost the king and the lord of creation and history unlimited by his creatures whose word is supreme and irrevocable law to dissuade such a God from his stated plan of action requires doing battle with him and defeating him in line with this view of God some traditions of interpretation will place emphasis on Moses as God's adversary as the defender of Israel he must struggle to defeat God and only through deploying various weapons which can include prayer and entreaty does he succeed in forcing God to turn back from the course of action he was planning the imagery associated most commonly with this model is imagery of battle and defeat and on this view some limitation of God's over lordship seems to be inevitable if perhaps theologically difficult conclusion but as different as these two readings are they have an important element in common on either reading God needs humans whether it be to partner with him or to defeat him humans are essential to God's unfolding purposes so I just want to turn now to the interpretive tradition to see how these two models of Moses as God's partner or as God's adversaries are developed in rabbinic Madras but actually the oldest interpretations of the biblical narratives are found already in the Bible itself as new layers of the biblical text will retell or comment upon older layers of the text so the story of the Golden Calf is referenced on more than one occasion in later books of the Bible we're gonna turn first to Deuteronomy and 9 which contains Moses's recounting of the golden calf story if 40 years later on the plains of Moab here he describes what happens we won't read every part of this in depth but he describes how he saw the Israelites sinning in verse 17 on your your hand up I took hold of the two tablets and flung them from my hands and then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before forty days and forty nights I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all the sin you had committed provoking God I was afraid that the anger God bore against you was so fierce he would destroy you but the Lord listened to me that time also we have this image but the it Nepali finish him right and let him go healthy with my machete it's the affliction the self affliction he prostrated himself didn't eat and didn't drink he emphasizes his role as the intercessory partner of God he describes himself as terrified of God's destructive power and engaging an intensive prayer and self affliction to appease the awful and anger he's an intense supplicant here interceding in Israel's behalf pleading and obtaining God's mercy but a different idea appears in Psalm 106 here we have another retelling of the story of the golden calf and we're gonna focus on verses 19 to 23 which offer a slightly different interpretation of the Moses God relationship at this critical moment of the giving of the Torah they the Israelites made a calf at Horeb at Sinai and bowed down to a molten image they exchanged their glory for the image of a bull that feeds on grass they forgot the God who had saved them who had performed great deeds in Egypt and so on verse 23 he would have destroyed them by yomaira lashing then the Hashmi down he would have destroyed them had not Moses has chosen one confronted him stood before him in the reach to avert his destructive wrath ruling will shave the hero a mud appearance the Phenom the metaphor of standing in the breach is a powerful one a breach is the opening in a wall or a line of defense through which an enemy can enter to destroy a city so to portray Moses as standing in the breach before God casts God in the role of an enemy who is bent on Israel's destruction and whose access was blocked only by Moses standing alone by stepping into the breach this valiant defender of Israel forcibly God's hand and calamity was averted he defeated him so the model here is more clearly adversarial the language is more clearly battle oriented so already the earliest readers of our story in schmudge and in exodus 32 perceive these two possible interpretations of Moses's silent activity in that gap between God's two speeches and the images they provide and the implications of those images for understanding the nature of God are more fully and dramatically developed in later majestic interpretations of our story one of the characteristic features of rabbinic new - of course is the reading of verses in the Pentateuch in the light of verses from other parts of the Bible the rabbi's see Scripture is a self glossing literature one field of meaning and texts in one place refer to and illuminate text in another place so when reading a passage in one of the five books of the Torah for example the rabbi's will typically mobilize a verse from a distant part of the Bible especially songs or proverbs or share a serene song of songs and then they will bring it and they will read the Torah passage in the light of that distant verse that they have mobilized they use that verse as a kind of key to unlock or open up the verse of the Pentateuch that they're trying to understand and in so doing they often will reveal some hidden meaning in the verse so the juxtaposition of a remote inter text will generate a new interpretation of the story or the passage at hand and by just opposing different remote verses you generate a variety of different interpretations sometimes contradictory of one another but producing these multiple angles of vision on the text and these multiple interpretations seems to be the goal of the madrasa project and it happens here we see this intertextual approach in several Madrasi treatments of Exodus 32 I'm going to start with a relatively straightforward example where the rabbi's marshal a verse from Proverbs as the exegetical key for understanding the Moses God relationship in our story it's a verse from proverbs 25 14 verses 14 and 15 which reads because oh yes sir it is like clouds and wind without rain is one who boasts of a gift never given with patience a ruler may be persuaded and a soft tongue can break bones but or aha hi I'm your food scene with patience our ruler may be persuaded and what happens when this verse is decoded as a description of God and Moses in the story of the golden calf that's in text number one from sh'mey raba forty to one first they cite the verse which is in italics and then they say not only did they the Israelites make an idol but they also committed immorality and shed blood for the merrymaking that skulk referred to it there in the story in Exodus 32 you'll recall it says the Israelites rose up the next morning before the idol it's Hulk it's a fake I think means that the idol worship and immorality and the shedding of blood that word contains all of those sins how do we know that and they bring us proofs from other parts of the Bible where we find this root of sahak meaning morale sexual immorality murder and idolatry the Midrash then is follow that there very lengthy set a lengthy account of Moses's arguments before God on behalf of the Israelites and every single one of the arguments is refuted I didn't bother to bring it here it goes on quite extensively and yet it says even though God was able to refute every single one of Moses's arguments in their defense Moses still somehow succeeded in turning back God's anger this they say is an illustration of our proverbs first clouds and wind without rain that's the Israelites they look so promising and yet they delivered nothing and yet Moses was successful in averting the punishment a proof that with patience or ruler may be persuaded and a soft tongue can break bones so the idea is that Moses doesn't have a leg to stand on Israel's behavior is utterly indefensible to defend her is a hopeless case the rabbi's in fact pile it on they multiply israel's sins with the golden calf it included not just idolatry but murder and sexual immorality utterly defensible and yet moses refused to give up he stuck to his task and who simply wore God down by just not giving up he got God to relent and repent so Moses is the wise counselor in this Midrash who's soft tongue can break the resolve of an angry King but a very different portrait emerges in Madrid Sheen that read our story in the light of other inter texts there's a Midrash number 2 in Shaba 43 1 which uses Psalm 106 23 the psalm that described Moses as standing in the breach against God during that during the apostasy with the golden calf they used that verse in this Midrash to interpret the events in our story by how Moshe and Moses implored the Lord his God ready tom hollie bar-abba began this way he cites Psalm 106 23 he God would have destroyed them had not Moses his chosen one confronted him stood before him in the breach to turn back his destructive wrath what does it mean he stood in the breach before him and before God maybe hahaha Nina said the good advocate so we're already in an adversarial you know situation of a courtroom the good advocate knows how to set himself against the tribunal and Moses is one of two good advocates who arose to defend Israel and set themselves as it were against the holy one blessed be he and these were Moses and Daniel these were the two men who set their faces against the attribute of strict justice in order to argue for mercy on Israel's behalf so in light of the battle imagery in Psalm 106 this Midrash is reading our story as a more dramatic and confrontational moment Moses's activity is not simple diplomacy and treaty or just sheer doggedness he sets himself against God and does battle with him so based on a fundamental ambiguity in the original story about Moses behavior or posture we see two divergent portraits of Moses beginning to emerge first in the Bible itself and now already in the Midrash Moses the diplomat whose patience and speech persuade God versus Moses the military hero almost who who deflects the attack of a still God and these two basic images are subjected to further free development in the sources we'll turn to some of them now before we do I want to point to the element of wordplay that we'll see coming up again and again many of the mid regime will read will play on the word that's translated in the English here as in Florida but Moses in Florida the Lord has got the how Moshe the root of this word has a number of meanings I've just listed some of them I'm sorry for the typo it should say by you how Moshe the root how has a range of meanings it can be really related to the meaning for sweetness as in challah sweet bread it can be related to the meaning of profane whole and in that context it's also has to do with profaning or a mulling of vow right this is the root they failed to an L or absolve a vow because people took vows by swearing by the Holy Name and so when you broke a value were profaning the name and if you absolve someone of a value are also profaning something sacred it's also related to the word for for weapons in modern hebrew hi al is a soldier wearing a weapon girding oneself for war can be also that the verb form for all of these potential meanings will be exploited by the mid regime so we turned first two interpretations that view Moses as God's partner and intercessor and these depend on understanding God's speech as a kind of hint to Moses that he has the power to act and affect God's final decision and yet he's being indirect does God think he's being clear let's see what the Madras has to say about this this is text number three which cites the parable to illustrate God's strategy or God's thinking Shmuel Travie 42 nine uniquely so now let me be and so they asked explicitly and was God was Moses holding fast to God the human share that's a very cool shade will or Marigny Italy was was Moses holding on to God that he has to say let go of me leave me be of course not so meaning must be intended we can understand it through a parable so what can the thing be compared to a king who was angry with his son and he had him brought into a chamber and was about to beat him but then the King cried out from the chamber let me be that I may beat him now the instructor the pedagogue of the son was standing outside and he thought to himself if the King and the son are alone within the chamber then to whom is he saying let me be it must be because the King wants me to go in and entreat him on his son's behalf and for this reason he says let me be he's hinting I have that power someone could stop him similarly God said to Moses now let me be and Moses inferred it's because God wants me to intercede on his behalf and therefore Moses began to plead for mercy on their behalf as its x value how much a Moses implored the Lord has God so this is Madras employs a psychological approach in its analysis of God's speech just as in the parable the king's words let me be unhand me cannot be construed literally in that case because there's no third party physically present to restrain him so in our story God's words let me be unhand me can't be construed literally in this case because God can't be physically constrained so God's protestation must in fact be a veiled call for intervention and this also solves the problem by the way of Moses is apparent defiance he's not defying God by entreating him he's in fact getting the hint the presumption at the base of Midd regime that read God's words in verse 10 as a veiled call for action addressed to Moses is that God does not in fact want to destroy Israel he wants to be stopped it's God's will that Moses act as the divine pacifier cooling God's temper when it threatens to lash out at Israel by means of prayer and we see this in the fourth text this is from Robbie murabba god said to him let not the two of us be angry when you see me pour hot water you pour cold and when you see me pour cold you pour hot Moses asked ruler of the universe how shall this happen God replied pray for mercy on their behalf and so what did he do immediately via Hamish eh it's not too great a logical leap from the idea that God desires human prayer and entreaty so as to avert or mitigate punishment to the idea that God needs this human intervention and some of the major machine portray of God who is in some sense trapped by his own rules of sin and punishment this is what we see in rabaa 43 5 where Moses seeks to appease God but God says is it possible for me not to execute strict justice on them for having broken the commandments we don't have this text in your handout I'm simply referring to it because it poses the question so pointedly pregnant Lee is it possible for me not to do what I said I would do Connie shudders God will be forced to punish Israel unless Moses is able to find some escape hatch for him so responding to various textual elements in the adjacent verses a Midrash devises a variety of stratagems and attributes them to Moses to help God escape from the consequences of his own rules of sin and punishment in one case Moses proposes that God collect the debt to repay you know the debt that's incurred through this sin but collect it from a different source and in that way the demands of strict justice are met and Israel is spared so we see this in text 5 she won't rub a 44 for Moses pleaded Lord of the universe why are you angry with Israel he replied because they've broken the Decalogue he said well they possess a source from which they can make repayment he asked what is that and Moses replied it's a horahan remember remember that you tried Abraham with 10 trials let those 10 trials serve as you know compensation for the ten broken Commandments that's why he said Sephora Abraham that's why in his speech he says remember the patriarchs he's providing God with a viable alternative so here the Midrash is playing or drawing upon elements of Moses speech specifically his reference to the patriarchs but the most extreme portrayal of God's dependence utter dependence on Moses for release from his obligation to punish Israel is found in text number six Shradha 40 3/4 is a great text another explanation of the commotion but most of since Lord the Lord has got what does this mean it means that he absolved using a cell in the sense of annulling a vow he absolved his creator of his vow how when Israel made the calf Moses began to entreat God to forgive them but God said Moses I've already taken an oath back there in Exodus 22 verse 19 whoever sacrifices to a god other than me shall be prescribed destroyed I cannot retract an oath which has proceeded from my mouth I'm trapped Moses said to him Lord of the universe didn't you grant me the power of annulment of oath by saying over there in bemidji are in numbers look ahead a little bit and read a different part of the Torah you're giving me it says if a man makes a vow he shall not break you know lo you fail he shall not break his pledge meaning he himself shall not break his pledge but a scholar can absolve his vow if he consults him and and any sage who gives instruction if he wants others to accept his decision he should be the first to observe it and since you've commanded me concerning the annulment of vows it's only right that you should seek to annul your vow as you've commanded me to another vow of others we need to do a model role modeling session here thereupon Moses wrapped himself in his cloak and seated himself in the posture of a sage and God stood before him like one asking for the annulment of his vows hat-in-hand coming to Moses to get help to release him from the trapeze Amin and what did Moses say devar cachet the text says a hard thing do you now regret your vow and he said I regret now the evil which I said I would do to my people and when Moses heard this he said Tarla had some solved for you it's absolved for you there is neither oath or nor know neither vow nor oath any longer and this is why the text says by Hamas a meaning he observed hey pal the vow of his creator the Midrash punning Li construes vehicle implores as the technical term for annulling of vow we have this term in numbers 30 lo yes failed Varro when a man it's about he may not annul his word Moses the Midrash claims wasn't imploring God he was absolved in God of his vow his promise to destroy idolaters God's unable to retract this vow he's trapped but Moses is able to find an escape for him and notice how they also draw beautifully on the language of the biblical story itself Exodus 32 14 by you know him Hashem assured us Oklahoma and then the Midrash Moses says do you regret do you repent this vow and God says yes I regret the evil that I said I would do to my people taking that word those words from the biblical text and making it first person speech of God it's an astonishing portrait of God is trapped by his own rules of sin and punishment wanting to be thwarted and dependent upon the ingenious intervention of a human partner in order to rescue him from the consequences of his own decree in all of these Midrash a Moses can be described as God's partner in the project of sustaining the people of Israel playing a vital role at the behest of God to ensure that God's demands do not lead to the destruction of the very people he wishes to sustain in contrast to the Midd regime that portrayed Moses as God's partner in Exodus 32 there are magician that developed this idea of Moses as God's adversary as we've seen these magician are generally based on a reading of God's speech in verse 10 as an absolute imperative not to intervene conjoined with a serious statement of God's intention to destroy Israel and in light of that direct order Moses has to bravely set himself in opposition to God to defeat him according to summoned regime Moses is so taken up by the urgency of his task that he abandons his customary posture of respect before God and here by how Moses implored the Lord is taken as a pun that Moses profaned the Lord or treated him as something not sacred we see this in text number seven he Moses stood before God with scant respect in order to request Israel's need hence by yah he's treating him almost as something profane and not wholly on the simplest level this adversarial relationship expresses itself in the form of verbal argument or heated argument raba 40:49 is very long Madras which traces every step of this verbal battle between God and Moses and concludes as you have here in text 8 with a notice of God's defeat Ramiz Cox said then it was that God could give no reply but could only say you have argued well and thereupon the Lord renowned star repented of the evil he had planned to bring upon his people he's he admits defeat prayer is described as the weapon with which Moses Gerdes himself another pun on Valhalla Valhalla in the sense of hurting himself taking up a weapon and so the rabbi's read Viacom O'Shea here in number 9 as follows thereupon Moses girded himself for prayer and this is the meaning of Viacom oh may Hashem in Doha but on the theory that the best defense is a good offense Moses is depicted as carrying the battle into God's territory he's not content to simply stand in the breach so as to block God's destructive wrath he turns God's charge against Israel into an indictment of God himself we see this in text 10 from the bad leaves this is brought 32a where Moses is listed with Hannah and Yahoo as having hurled his words TTF hurled his words at God in prayer and this is the charge that he makes in your text number 10 ruler of the universe it was the gold and silver that you yourself lavished on Israel until they said die enough that caused them to make the golden the molten calf it was said in the school of Rebbe ni a lion doesn't rawrr on account of a trough of straw but on account of a trough of meat or MIOSHA i said it's like a man who had a cow that was skin and bones he fed it veg and it kicked him and he said to her what caused you to kidney nothing but the very veg with which I fed you so it was the fact that God gave us so much gold as they left Egypt that he put in their hands the instrument of their idolatry and he is ultimately responsible similarly in exodus rabbah 43 7 your text 11 we read Lord of the universe Moses his speech now to God in his verbal argument with God Lord of the universe consider the place from which you brought them out wasn't it Egypt where everyone worships lambs or Funes said in the name of rebuke a man uses a great Mashal or parable here it could be compared to a wise man who opened a perfume shop for his son in a market frequented by prostitutes and when the father came and caught him with a prostitute he began to shout I will kill you but his friend was there and he said you destroyed the boy wait and yet you shot at him and this is what Moses said Lord of the universe you ignored the entire world and caused your children to be enslaved precisely in Egypt where everyone worships lambs and from whom your children learned bear in mind whence you brought them forth again playing on the fact that Moses when he first begins to implore God says why should your why should you be angry llama llama Jimmy hurry up hub America a share hood say Tommy Eretz it's right why should you be angry because people you brought out of the land of Egypt what else would you expect from them but exodus rabbah 43 one finds a different solution to the problem rather than taking action that directly opposes God or arguing heatedly and vehemently against him Moses in this Midrash works indirectly to thwart God and made a great mitigate the divine decree this is your text number 12 which wall around Athens said well Maude he confronted him in the breach right it's rather difficult to say that he Moses confronted him in the breach that sounds rather physic physical and militaristic but it can be compared to a king who was angry with his and took his place on the tribunal and tried him and pronounced him guilty as he took off the pen to sign the verdict of the court what did his associate do he snatched the pen from his hand and broke it in order to appease his wrath similarly when Israel committed that sin God sat in judgment upon them to condemn them so what did the Moses do when Israel committed that sin he took the tablets and shattered them as if to say had they foreseen the punishment they would not have sinned moreover moreover Moses said it's better that they be judged as having done it unintentionally unaware of the prohibition then as if they had willfully committed the act but some regime do extend the battle imagery that we've been referring to beyond the verbal arena and into the physical and in voting raba 3:15 Moses tells God that he will muster 80 righteous men to stand in the breach against God with him he first gathers the 70 elders in the first part of the Midrash and then towards the end of the Midrash we read that Moses says add to them Aaron Nadab Abihu Eleazar Itamar confess I'm kind of that makes 77 he's still short 3 God said to him but Moses where are the three remaining righteous men to do battle with me Moses could not find them and then he said master of the universe if these righteous men though alive cannot stand for them Israel in the breach then let the dead do so meaning the three patriarchs and so here again the rabbi's are drawing on the fact that in his speech knows this refers to the patriarchs as a horde Abraham and so on some mid regime psychologize the drama and the struggle so that it turns out to be a battle not so much of Moses against God but a battle or struggle of God with himself God's anger becomes dissociated from him his anger goes forth from him and becomes dissociated from him and then he does battle with it in fact one Midrash picks up on the five distinct Hebrew words for anger and destruction that are used in the verses that describe God's reaction to the sin of the Israelites I'd given those verses on your handout they're from Deuteronomy 9 and also from someone six and I've underlined the words that supply these terms of anger and destruction that are so important to this we drive each one of these terms whether it's a four comma pizza for fish midrash each one of these words is understood to be a sort of separate hypostasis or separate concretize angelic figure attacking Moses and threatening to destroy the Israelites and so in the following madrassas Midrash text number 14 from shield robber 44 eight we have God joining with Moses in battle against his own anger and destruction personified by these five angels this text reads when Israel committed that sin five angels of destruction came out to destroy them anger of wrath ketse displeasure come destruction fishman and annihilation Hut these five words used in those verses that describe the sin and gods reaction and Moses said Lord of the universe you take on one I'll take on another you tackle anger there's a nice proof text that I've omitted to say that God rises up against anger and I'll tackle wrath and God said to him see I've taken on one and you another but what will you do with the other three and Moses replied there are the three patriarchs who contactable the other and that is why he mentioned them the following tradition though from Barbra Haute 32a is the most extreme in its portrayal of Moses bullying God into reversing his plan of destruction we're it not written in Scripture Rubbia ba who said we're it not written in Scripture it would not be possible to sing it Moses grabbed hold of God like a man grabs hold of his fellow by his collar his clothing and he said ruler of the universe I won't let go until you are merciful and forgive them so this review of rabbinic mid regime has uncovered two striking readings of God's speech in this 32 verse 10 and of Moses is activity in the following verse whether it's an act of great defiance and courage doing battle with God as his adversary or whether it's picking up on God's hint and working with him as his partner but these divergent readings stem from a pregnant ambiguity in the text of Exodus itself this ambiguity gives rise to these two lines of interpretation in rabbinic Midrash and they are fully and freely developed and I wanted to close with one final interpretation from the Zohar mystical work of course from the 13th century in which I think we see these two interpretations collapse into one as background we need to note the Kabbalistic belief that the world is sustained by the harmonic balance of God's ten spirit or attributes and in particular by the delicate balance between the sphere are the attribute of Justice which lashes out to punish evil and the sphere ax or attribute of mercy which tempers that punishment with forgiveness when the delicate balance between these two sphere out these two attributes is upset the consequences for Humanity can be devastating one of the tasks of the Kabbalist or the mystic is to help maintain the proper balance by bringing out God's attribute of mercy and forgiveness in order to restrain God's attribute of justice in times of human sin in the Zohar mystical interpretation of the Golden Calf story Moses is in essence a mystic engaged a Kabbalistic mystic engaged in the struggle against God's attribute of stern justice and here the adversarial model reaches its most extreme expression as Moses physically restrains God and yet at the same time the partnership model also reaches its most extreme expression the Zohar passage begins by explaining that mother Shekinah normally holds God's Stern judgment in checks we see that in the first paragraph of the last source even though he got threatens and raises the lash right to punish mother Shekinah comes and grabs hold of his right arm and the lash is suspended pardon the typographical errors the sentence is not carried out because both of them share one design he by threatening she by holding back his right arm so this image of God at the right arm raised ready to lash but at the same time other Shekinah is holding it they're threatening and yet the lash never just senses however the Zohar explains that when Israel committed the sin with the golden calf they drove mother Shekinah away and now the arm is threatening to in fact come down with the lash and so we'll read our last part of our last text however because of the sin mother Shekinah who always dresses the arm of the king and suspends the lash was not there and Moses had to take her place as soon as the Blessed Holy One penetrated him he saw clearly three times he penetrated him Oh Moses faithful Shepherd how mighty is your strength how great is your power three times he penetrated you as it is written now leave me alone that is one my anger will blaze against them and I will consume them that is two and I will make you into a great nations that is three weeks or three provocations moving Moses to do what he had to do the wisdom of Moses was in these three points he grasped his right arm in response to leave me alone he grasped his left arm in response to my anger will blaze against them and I will consume them and he embraced the whole body of the king in response to and I will make you into a great nation having embraced the body both arms on this side and that he God could not move to any side at all this was the wisdom of Moses he knew the various points of the king where to be firm on each one he acted in wisdoms the Czar's interpretation of Exodus 32 casts Moses in the role of God's technician Israel's sin caused the restraining influence of Shekinah to go into eclipse and Elohim the attribute of wrath and punishment was set free Moses as Kabbalists had to work to correct that imbalance and avert destruction the Zohar extolled the mighty strength the great power of Moses by means of each of which he pinioned God holding firmly and precisely right places so as to neutralize completely his destructive capability and yet even as it adopts the adversarial battle imagery in its interpretation of Exodus 32 so that God is completely neutralized or paralyzed the Zohar blends with it the idea of God's hinting to Moses of God's wanting and needing to be restrained and the result then is the following conflict portrait God recognizes that his attribute of strict and true judgment his punishing wrath is spinning out of control unable to restrain himself he appeals to Moses who then Rises courageously to oppose and restrain God the image is a rich and conflicted one God engages Moses to stop God from doing what he must but does not wish to do and God is only too glad to be defeated by his creatures our review of rabbinic interpretations of a highly charged moment in the Golden Calf story has unearthed powerful and moving images that capture diverse aspects of the complicated relationship between God and humanity perhaps the portrait that emerges most powerfully from these sources is not after all the portrait of Moses caught somewhere alternatingly perhaps between the roles of God's partner and God's adversary but rather the portrait of God taken as a whole these sources have presented us with the poignant and paradoxical portrait of a conflicted God who knows what he ought to do and has said you will do but who seeks to undermine his own execution of strict justice his own performance and acting on his promise a God who must learn what humanity is capable of and adapt his expectations accordingly a God who relies ultimately on the input of human beings to assist him in the governance of his world a God whose overlordship is in no way threatened or diminished by the fact that he wants and needs to listen to the voice and demands of his creatures to be convinced or forced to set aside his anger to sometimes regret and with our help change course hug the master we have a few questions we have a few minutes and we'll try and get to some of but the first thing I wanted to ask is that you you created you describe this something of an astonishing portrait of a God trap in many ways and particularly what struck me was God trapped by God's own vows and in fact dependent upon a human for absolution so isn't this God quite that you portrayed quite a different one from the more traditional images of the divine that we that maybe we've been taught or that is still taught in terms of strength and power and distance and here is a God as you said I think you said coming hat in hand for a human to absolve scheme for our help it is and I think one of the things I encounter is so much in my teaching particular when I teach them a Bible Court might the introduction to the Hebrew Bible students will say to me this makes no sense God doesn't act this way God is omniscient why does he need to go down to investigate complaints on earth God is omnipotent why can't he do what he wants to do why is he forted why couldn't he create human and so that they wouldn't have sinned in the garden God never changes his mind God is one in the same so half in Exodus 32 verse 14 iam say by UNIFEM Jim had that God changes his mind and what I remind students is that that image of God is really an outcome of a certain Western philosophical tradition that's grounded very much in greco-roman notions of the divine as that which is static immutable unchanging truth and that those notions really come from a different cultural concept and a different kind of conversation um God is the unmoved mover and one in which perfection is understood to be stasis unchanging static reality and that is not the God that we meet in biblical and Jewish tradition the God that we meet in biblical tradition is a dynamic God this is a God who is intimately involved in the creation and interacting with creation learning about the creatures that he has created changing course in response to their actions and their reactions to his actions so to my mind this is in fact their traditional notion of God but unfortunately we sometimes wear a set of lenses that have been handed to us through the Western philosophical tradition coming out of the greco-roman philosophical tradition which speaks of the divine in very different ways and we sometimes then read biblical stories or mint regime and our are sort of shocked or scandalized by what we see there you know how could they describe God in this way isn't God weak or doesn't this impute God's Authority and divinity to see him as you know as being someone who negotiates or who could be talked out of things or who just seemed self and I think not I think that for the Bible and for the rabbis what's divine about God is precisely not that he's static that which is static is dead but precisely that he's dynamic and alive and interacting with humans and very much in need of their input so that he can make the necessary adjustments to be the kind of God and ruler and King and father and friend and partner that they need he needs good sparring partners I like the phrase sparring partner because it captures the idea both of partnership but also of challenge and and being in an adversary sometimes so God needs sparring partners well in light of that I have a question from David Khrushchev of congregation of us Israel and Grand Rapids Michigan and he's was from early on and you talk and when he says that might Moses be reacting to God's use of the phrase your people and God responds stiff-necked people as if to say it's you and me Moses it's you and me against them so here's God negotiating with Moses pitting the two of them together against the the Israelite people where does this how does this relationship play out in between Moses and God and then Moses and the Israelites you know this is so great this is uh this is sort of God's modus operandi up till now right you know he creates humankind he's disappointed and so in Genesis 6 sees that the the desires of man's heart are evil and so he decides to just focuses on one person Noah and everybody else that's starting again now it's Noah it's gonna be disappointed again as the generations continue they build the Tower of Babel they turn away from from God and so God says that's it I've had it I'm gonna find one person and just ignore everybody else like Abraham Abraham will be the one right so he he had makes a covenant with Abraham and then Abraham's seed and now here we come again this is the third time God is disappointed he's disgusted and once again he wants to change dance partners and he says Moses I've had these people are no good either I let's get rid of them I'm gonna start with you and this is when Moses says no you can't keep doing this I'm gonna hold the line and you have to hold the line let's see that's why it's so huge none of this none of it would have been pulled off none of it would have happened without Moses literally standing up to God saying you can't keep doing this you can't keep throwing people aside and starting again with high hopes you have to accept the Israelites for good or for evil they're gonna disappoint you they're gonna do terrible things but you've got a compact and you've got a covenant and they're yours and you're theirs and that's it no more changing partners and dancing and you've made me this offer and you think it's too good to refuse but I refuse it and it's significant that at the end of the story right he says everybody or nobody if you're gonna wipe them out then flap me out from your book as well you can't divide and conquer that way I'm standing with the people so I think you're absolutely right to pick up on that it's throwing the people back and forth it's very significant it's God's God's effort to disarm them Moses is effort to hand them right back to God and say no there are yours and you have to stick with them and don't try to divide and conquer you can't set them aside and start again with me you tried that once with Noah you tried it with Abraham you're gonna try now again for a third time now you're stuck with them forever it's I'm with them and you blot me out from your book as well if you're gonna destroy that or you forgive them and you realize it's an imperfect world and you have to just you know be with this people and be good to true to your word we've just about run out of time so I want to just thank you again a professor for this program I want to remind all of our viewers that we are going to we have recorded this video and we're going to post it up on our YouTube channel and on the Hartman website as soon as we can so we certainly will hope to get it to you if you want to review it again before the chevre world Halliday in a week and a half this has been a an event with a session tonight with some large ideas for the very significant and of course challenging holiday of Shavuot at which as David Hartman and many of us have said at the Institute in the past that shovelled is when the people of the Jewish people really do become the people of the book all night study whether it's in Jerusalem or near town we hope that you will get something from this program and other material on the Institute from the Institute for your studies and again I want to thank everybody this is the final program of the fifty seven seventy six rabbinic webinar series we have received many comments about you on the format as well and we will address those we'll think about those as we go forward and plan our next year of programs and again thank you very much in New Haven professor Christine Hayes of Yale University and the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and ACOG some f21 at all and so long from Jerusalem thank you

Channel: Shalom Hartman Institute מכון שלום הרטמן

Views: 44,575

Keywords: Jewish, Judaism, Jerusalem, Hartman Institute, pluralism, Torah, Talmud, Shavuot, Sinai, Covenant, Yale, Judaic, Moses, Midrash

Id: Sl2wsYIhg-E

Length: 63min 56sec (3836 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2016