History Crash Course #9: Moses

In an all-time irony, Moses the savior of the Jewish people is raised in the house of the enemy of the Jews.

The Exodus story is the central event of Jewish history. It is also a model -- in microcosm -- for what happens later throughout the history of the Diaspora. We see again and again the roller-coaster ride from high points to low. Generally, the higher the Jews manage to rise, the lower they fall and then, despite the odds, they rise again.

The story of Exodus recounts the Jews going from a good situation (as when they were welcomed into Egypt by the Pharaoh himself) to a very bad situation (when they were enslaved) to the highest heights, the pinnacles of spirituality (when they were freed from slavery by God Himself and given the Torah at Mount Sinai).

At the point in time when the Exodus story begins the family of 70 individuals that arrived in Egypt at the time of Joseph has grown to a nation of about 3 million people.

The supernatural, rapid increase in the Jewish population has made the Egyptians nervous -- "there are too many of them, what if they rise up against us" -- and Pharaoh issues a genocidal decree: Kill all the Jewish boys. (This is a classic anti-Semitic pattern -- the Jew the in Diaspora is always loyal to his host country, yet can never escape unfounded suspicion of treachery.)

At this point, baby Moses¹ is born. His parents, Amram and Yochevet, decide to hide him, but after a few months they realize that very shortly they will be found out. So his mother, in order to save him somehow, puts him in a waterproof basket and hides it in the reeds the Nile. As we all know, he is found by none other than the daughter of Pharaoh.

Irony of ironies? It's all part of the plan. As noted earlier, God puts the cure before the disease. This is another classic case.

It does give one pause though -- that the savior of the Jewish people is going to be raised in the house of the ultimate enemy of the Jews. The only modern equivalent would be of some fellow who is meant to overthrow Nazi Germany being raised as Adolf Hitler's adopted grandson. That's what we have here. You realize what a wild story this is if you imagine it in a modern context.

EGYPTIAN HISTORY

By the way, who is the Pharaoh in the story here?

The events of Exodus happened circa 1314-1313 BCE if we translate Jewish chronology into the Christian dating system the world uses today. But that may be misleading. For one thing, the Egyptian chronologies we use in modern world history have only been calculated in the last centuries by scholars who tried to estimate the reigns of the kings of Egypt and Assyria/Babylonia, two of the oldest empires in the world. There's a huge amount of educated guesswork involved in these chronologies. If you open any books on ancient Egypt you'll get lots of different opinions as to when different Pharaohs reigned.

Generally, the Pharaohs associated with the Exodus are Seti and Rameses. (a period called The New Kingdom 1550-1050) Rameses II was certainly the great builder of this period of time. And it's interesting that the Bible says that the Jewish slaves built the cities of Pitom and Ramses. (See Exodus 1:11.) Of course, it took them 116 years to build these cities so that covers the reign of more than one Pharaoh.² (A common misconception is that the Jews built the pyramids, but as mentioned previously, these were built a thousand years earlier.)

Now what's fascinating is that after Rameses there was a period of chaos in Egypt; this much we know from available records. This would fit if Egypt was, in fact, destroyed by ten supernatural plagues; they would be in bad state for a number of years afterwards. So there we may have some evidence of it.

The Pharaoh who reigned after Rameses was his son Mernephtah who ruled in the late 13th century BCE. Now what's most interesting is that in Thebes (modern Luxor in Egypt), Mernephtah carved on a large slab of black granite (known as a "stele") a victory inscription. Known as the Mernephtah Stele, it contains a record of Mernehtah's military campaigning including the area of Canaan, the Sinai/Israel. And it's the first extra-Biblical mention of "Israel" anywhere in human history. We're talking about something that's around 3,200 years old. And this would correspond in Jewish chronology to some time after the Exodus story.

What does the stele say? "Israel is a widow. Her seed is no more." That is, we've wiped out the Jewish people, they're gone. This means:

1) The Ancient Egyptians lie when they record things. Jews are here today 3,200 years later, they hardly wiped the Jews out; in fact, they're gone. This is not surprising as the ancient people are notorious for lying in their official records.

Objective history was non-existence three thousand years ago. What few events were recorded were usually grossly exaggerated and recorded solely to glorify the accomplishment of the ruler of the country. Egyptian inscriptions of battles show Pharaoh as larger than life slaughtering his enemies. He is always victorious and no dead Egyptians appear anyway. Losses, failures, imperfections and the like are never recorded by any ancient people.³

Like the story of Judah and Tamar, we see yet another example of the unique objectivity of the Bible. Faults and failures must be mentioned, otherwise how could the necessary lessons be learned?

2) At this early time in history, corresponding to the time when the Jews just entered the Promised Land, we have concrete references to a people called Israel in the records of another country. This is very significant piece of archeology.

PRINCE OF EGYPT

Moses grows up as the grandson of Pharaoh, who is then (whoever he was) the most powerful human being on earth, being the ruler of the mightiest nation on earth.

Moses could easily have grown up to be a totally assimilated, totally spoilt Egyptian kid. But the Pharaoh's daughter has hired his own mother as his nanny and so he never loses the connection or the commitment to his people.⁴

It is no surprise therefore that, when one day he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Jew, he cannot stand it and he kills the taskmaster. Then, of course, some Jews inform on him, which is another classic case we're going to see in Jewish history -- Jews informing on other Jews. And Moses has to flee for his life.

Eventually he ends up in the land of Midian, which is across the Sinai Peninsula. There he meets Jethro, an excommunicated priest who has several daughters, one of whom named is Tzipporah, Moses marries Tzipporah and they have two sons, Gershon and Eliezer, (about whom we don't hear much) and he becomes a shepherd.

In this regard he follows the example of the other great leaders of the Jewish people; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's twelve sons were all shepherds. So, we have to ask: Why were so many Jewish leaders shepherds?

Now if you've ever watched shepherds at work, you might have noticed that most of them sit around doing nothing except daydreaming. A shepherd has a lot of time to think, and this is an absolute prerequisite for being a prophet. To elevate oneself to the highest level, where one transcends the physical reality and enters a higher dimension of communicating with the Infinite, requires a huge amount of work, and a lot of time to think.⁵

Another reason why Jewish leaders were shepherds has to do with the fact that the work of a shepherd is practice for dealing with large groups of living creatures. Leading the Jews is the hardest job on the planet. One of the great lessons that we need to learn from Jewish history is the difficulty and the challenges of unifying and trying to lead the most individualistic nation on the earth. Being a shepherd is good practice for this daunting task.

THE BURNING BUSH

While Moses is tending the sheep, he has a vision of the burning bush-his first prophetic experience.

The story of Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush is incredibly profound and laden with many deep meanings, but for our purposes in analyzing Jewish history we will consider the burning bush as synonymous with the Jewish people.

The burning bush is burning, but it is never consumed by fire. So, too, the Jewish people seem to be forever a nation in danger of being destroyed yet always miraculously preserved by divine intervention. On another level, we could say that the burning bush is also symbolic of the Jewish people who burn with the fire of Torah, with an ideology that is going to change the world.

When Moses encounters God at the burning bush, God identifies Himself repeatedly (Exodus 3:6, 3:13, 3:15, 3:16, 4:5) as the God of his forefathers -- Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with whom He had made an eternal covenant.

This is an extremely important passage because later on in Jewish history a lot of different people are going to come -- the Christians, for example -- claiming that God changed His mind, abandoned the Jews and made a new covenant (new "testament" to use the Greek term) with them.

God made an "eternal" covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and He renews the deal at several intervals.

But God made an "eternal" covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and He renews the deal at several intervals. We learn that God has a master plan for humanity and the Jews have an absolutely essential part in that plan.

At this juncture, God has decided to bring the Jews out of Egypt. And it's important to keep in mind that God put the Jews in Egypt in the first place – It says in the Talmud, you have to bless the bad as well as the good. ⁶Traditionally, whenever a Jew hears bad news (ie someone has passed away) the first response is "Boruch Dayan Emet –Blessed is the truthful Judge (God). "There is no concept in Judaism of a devil who does evil and competes with God. God is omniscient and omnipotent and nothing is outside His knowledge or control. While we finite human beings may perceive events as good or bad, from God's infinite perspective everything that happens is part of a master plan and ultimately for the good.

So, in effect, we come to understand that Egypt served as a womb, where the Jews were formed as a nation in a very difficult situation, so that when they would be ready, God could bring them out and establish a special relationship with them.

God tells this to Moses and then commands, "Go back and tell Pharaoh to let My people go."

"LET MY PEOPLE GO"

Moses goes back down to Egypt, confronts the Pharaoh with his brother Aaron, and he says, "The God of my forefathers told me to tell you: 'Let My people go.'" And in response, the Pharaoh is incredulous "What are you talking about? Who is this God? I don't know him."

The ancient Egyptians had around 2,000 gods. They took their spirituality and knowledge of the spiritual world very seriously. Since Pharaoh didn't have a laptop to do a "god-search," you can imagine the Egyptian priests furiously flipping through their lists of the different gods and couldn't find the God that Moses was invoking.

The notion of one, infinite, all-powerful God was an idea that was incomprehensible to the ancient polytheistic people -- it simply did not fit with their fragmented way of viewing the world.

When the Pharaoh won't listen, what does Moses do? Aaron takes his staff and he throws it down and it turns into a snake. If someone did something similar today it would make a very big impression on us, but Pharaoh is not impressed. His magicians can do the same thing. (Even though Aaron's staff then swallows the other staffs)

It is very important to stress that the ancient world understood spirituality in the way we cannot even fathom today. Today we are spiritually on a much lower level. We talk about magic, but magic for us is illusion, not a real manipulation of the forces of nature as they were able to do.

It is a fundamental idea of Judaism that there's a spiritual reality, and that there's a physical reality. You can transcend the physical into the spiritual; you can use the spiritual to manipulate the physical. And you can do this by accessing the dark/impure forces or the light forces. And the Egyptians, who were very spiritually sophisticated, were able to access these dark/impure forces and they knew how to turn a stick into a snake, so they were not impressed by what Moses did.

But Moses was just getting started.

1. Moses is an Egyptian name meaning "from the water." There were even a number of Pharaohs with similar names-Thutmose.
2. For more on the Pharaoh of the Exodus see: Finegan, Jack, Light from the Past-The Archeological Background of the Hebrew-Christian Religion (vol.1), (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1946): 117-121.
3. A great example of this subjectivity can be seen is the Lachish Relief (inscriptions) in the British Museum in London. Taken from the palace of the Assyrian Emperor, Sennacherib, these reliefs depict the siege and capture of the city of Lachish in Israel c 2,700 years ago. The fall of the city is depicted along with the slaughter or capture and exile of the survivors yet no where in the inscription can one find one dead Assyrian soldier. This is typical of all such ancient inscriptions.
4. See Rashi Gen. 2:7; Shemos Rabbah 1:30
5. For a description of prophecy see: Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, Derach HaShem (The Way of God), III:3:4 & III:4:6
6. "Whatever God does is for the good." (Talmud, Brachot: 60b)

History Crash Course #10: Ten Plagues

With the Ten Plagues, the laws of nature are turned upside down to free the Jews.

Once the plagues hit Egypt ― blood, lice, frogs, etc. ― the devastation continues for over a year (Talmud - Ediyos 2:10). Each plague is an open miracle, because each one represents a fantastic manipulation of nature. The laws of nature are turned upside down to help the Jews.

Open miracles are a very important part of early Jewish history. After the destruction of the First Temple they're going to cease, although arguably the Jews couldn't have survived this long without continual hidden miracles.

The obvious question we must ask when we examine The Plagues is why? Why did God choose to set the Jewish people free through this very long, drawn-out process ― an entire year? If He wanted, God, an all-powerful being that He is, could have made all the Egyptians drop dead on the first encounter with Moses, or He could have frozen them in place, then all the Jews could have packed up and left in five minutes.

To explain why the Ten Plagues had to be, we need to first explain the Jewish view of miracles in general.

The first point to focus on is that all existence ― all the processes of the physical universe ― is a miracle. We have become so used to it in out day to day lives that we simply don't notice it.

Judaism holds that nature does not act independently of God, but, at the same time, God created the laws of nature and does not like to interfere with them. God is certainly capable of doing whatever He likes, but He doesn't play around with the physical world and its workings. Therefore, most miracles are natural phenomena with awesomely good timing.

But to this rule, the Ten Plagues are a notable exception.

The Ten Plagues are a clear example of God flipping the laws of nature on its end.

We have hail ― which should be frozen ― that is on fire; we have darkness so dense that no one can see or move; things that happened to Egyptians not happening to Jews. All supernatural stuff. Why? Here is the reason:

The essence of idolatry is the belief that every force has a god controlling it.

The whole essence of idolatry is the belief that every force in nature has a god that controls it. In Egypt they worshipped the Nile god, the sun god, the cat god, the sheep god, etc. The Ten Plagues were designed by God to flip all the laws of nature on end to demonstrate ― not just for the Jewish people but for all of humanity, for all of history ― that He alone controls all of nature, all of the physical world, and that there is nothing outside of His control.

If we examine the plagues carefully we can readily see that each one was designed to show God's control of all forces in nature: water and earth, fire and ice, insects, reptiles and mammals, light and darkness, and finally, life and death.

Archeological Evidence

Do we have evidence for the Ten Plagues in archeological records?

Surely the Egyptians would have recorded such amazing events!! First we must understand that the events of the Exodus take place during the period of time before there were historians, newspapers or any other form of mass communication. As previously mentioned, any events that were recorded by ancient Egypt (or any other ancient civilization) were solely for the purpose of making the Egyptians look good. Combine this idea together with the knowledge that thousands of years ago, people were far less impressed with the supernatural than we are today and we have our answer. The last thing that an Egyptian priest would inscribe on the wall of one of their temples 3,300 years ago would be the Exodus story, regardless of how amazing it seems to us today.

There is some circumstantial evidence that should be mentioned. As noted in the last installment in this series there is recorded a ten-year period in Egyptian history (right around this time) when chaos reigned. There are other oblique references, the most famous being the IpuwerPapyrus. This is actually a series of papyri, which describe various cataclysmic events in Egypt ― blood everywhere, people dying etc.

Immanuel Velikovsky uses the Ipuwer Papyrus as the basis for his books, Ages in Chaos and Worlds in Collision in which he argues that the whole Exodus story is true, but that the plagues happened because a comet came close to the earth. He says the dust from the comet turned the water red, and the pull of the comet's gravitational field split the sea, etc.

However, if you read the Bible, you see that with the plague of blood, it's not just water turning a "dusty red." The Midrash also tells us that Egyptians perish from this bloody water but not the Jews.

Despite that, there is an amazing amount of resistance on the part of the Egyptians ― not just the Pharaoh, but the whole of Egypt ― to let the Jews leave. It is classic anti-Semitism, "I don't care if I take my whole country down as long as I can take the Jews with me."

This actually is a very common historical pattern. You'll see this certainly when we get to Hitler ― by 1944 they needed the trains to send reinforcements to the Eastern Front, but they diverted them to ship Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. They were losing the war, but their main energy still went, not to win, not to even save themselves, but to kill the Jews.

Finally, finally, after the death of the first-born, the Pharaoh says, "Go!"

The Jews leave, the sea splits, the Egyptians follow and they drown. That's the final great event until... Mount Sinai.

History Crash Course #11: Mount Sinai

The encounter between God and the Jews at Mount Sinai was a totally unique event in all of human history.

Passover is often described as the holiday of freedom. And in liberal democracies freedom is often misunderstood as the ability to do whatever you like with no oppressive authority telling you what to do. But that is not how the Bible and Judaism define freedom.

The Jewish idea of freedom is best summarized by that very famous expression -- "Praise the servants of God who are not servants of Pharaoh." ¹That is, freedom is seen a means to an end, not an end in and of itself-True freedom means to be free of outside influences and pressures so that we can be free to pursue ultimate meaning-relationship with God. ² In the specific context of the Exodus story it means being free from an oppressive authority in order to stand at Mount Sinai and commit to a certain responsibility.

What happened at Mount Sinai?

To answer quite simply, the Jewish people -- every man, woman and child -- had an encounter with God.

It was a totally unique event in all of human history. The Bible itself states in Deuteronomy 4:33 that this never happened any place else. You can check all history books; you'll never find a similar story of God speaking to an entire people.

All other claims about revelation in human history are based on the experience of one individual or at best a small group of initiates. For example, Islam is founded on the teachings of Mohammed who said that God spoke to him in a cave and revealed the teachings contained in the Koran to him.

The notion of an entire people having an encounter with God is unique to Judaism. And it's the one claim that cannot be faked. So for example, I can claim that I had a vision last night and God spoke to me, and if I'm charismatic enough and you are gullible enough you might believe I am a prophet. But I can't convince you that you saw something that you know you didn't see.

Jews say that we have kept the Torah for thousands of years, not because of miracles or any other supernatural phenomena of Jewish history, but because we all stood at Mount Sinai and heard God speak and for generation after generation that very fact was passed down. ³The great Medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides summed it up perfectly when he wrote:

The Jewish people did not believe in Moses our teacher because of the miracles he performed. If one believes in something because of miracles, he may suspect that they were performed through sleight of hand or sorcery...We believe in Moshe because of what happened at Mount Sinai. Our own eyes saw, not a stranger's, our own ears heard, and not another's...The revelation at Sinai is the only real proof that Moses' prophecy was true and above suspicion...(Yad, Yesodei HaTorah 8:1.)

The story of the survival of the Jewish people is going to be to a large extent the story of what's called shalshelet hakabala -- the transmission process of Torah from one generation to the next.

A NATION IS BORN

At Mount Sinai the Jewish people become a nation. Again, this is a unique event which says a lot about the Jewish people. What's so unique about it?

Well, consider how the French became "the French." Did they all wake up one morning to collectively decide they liked white wine and blue cheese and they were going to speak French? No. It was a long process. As with every other nation, this process involved a people living in a specific geographic area for an extended period of time and evolving a common language and a common culture born of a shared historical experience. Eventually, this people developed a political entity and government (with a king at its head) and they defined their boundaries, flew a flag, minted coins and called themselves France.

For Jews the process of becoming a nation started outside their national homeland -- in fact while in bondage and under the most adverse conditions designed to erase any cultural or historical identity. Jews did not become a nation by pledging allegiance to the State of Israel. A scraggly band of escaped slaves became a nation standing at the foot of Mount Sinai and saying to God: "We will do and we will listen" -- that is, pledging to fulfill the commandments of the Torah and with time to understand the mission that came with it.

Just as Abraham said, many, many generations earlier, "I choose to live, and if necessary to die, for the reality of God," so too these descendants of Abraham made the same commitment.

That's how the Jews became the Nation of Israel.

This is why we say that Judaism is not just a religion -- it's a national identity. Being a Jew is not the same as being a Christian. Christianity is purely a religious belief. You could be British, American, French and still be a Christian.

Not so the Jews.

The Jews can certainly become citizens of the countries in which they live and they often look and act like everyone else, but all the while, they and everyone else knows they are different. If they choose to deny this fact, the rest of the world will always remind them of it.

Being a Jew is being part of a distinct people and a nation, which does have a land, does have a language, does have a history and a world mission.

Most importantly, Jews have a specific relationship with God which is not just a religious/spiritual identity; it's an all-encompassing view of the world -- how to live every second of life -- which is unique in the world.

The Jewish national identity was forged by the experience at Mount Sinai where we committed to a mission, and a specific way of life to be lived in accordance with the commandments of the Torah, which is the guidebook for accomplishing that mission on a personal and national level. ⁴

THE ULTIMATE SCRIBE

After the original revelation, Moses spent 40 days listening to God talking to him, dictating to him the 613 commandments of the Torah (which are encapsulated in Ten Statements, the so-called "Ten Commandments") and also the principles how to apply these commandments (which are referred to as the Oral Law). ⁵

Note that the Oral Law was given first. And the Oral Law has been exclusively in the domain of the Jews. The Christians adopted the Written Law -- the Torah and other parts of the Hebrew Bible as part of their scriptures -- but the Oral Law stayed uniquely Jewish. Because it is the Oral Law that tells us how to live as Jews.

It cannot emphasize strongly enough how significant the Oral Law is. One can't live as a Jew without it. It's going to become a very important issue when we look at splinter sects in Judaism later on in Jewish history.

The Written Law was written over a period of 40 years while the Jews wandered in the desert and God was dictating to Moses. There's a lot of material in the Bible that's explaining what happens later on in their wanderings, so obviously this wasn't given in advance at Mount Sinai or there'd be no free will. ⁶

Although the Torah -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy -- are called the Five Books of Moses, Moses was not the author. Moses was the scribe -- the ultimate scribe. God dictated to Moses.

But it's very clear, and the Bible says over and over again, that Moses was unique among all prophets.

And there arose no prophet in Israel like Moses whom the Lord knew face to face.(Deut. 34:10)

Prophecy is a process whereby God communicates directly with man. Prophecy is not something that just happens to someone. To achieve prophecy means that a person is able to perfect himself and transcend to a higher level of spiritual reality, and of course, what that level is depends on the prophet's direct experience of the infinite. Most prophets would be asleep or in a trance when God would communicate with them via a vision and would later put that vision into words. Moses' prophecy was unique in that God spoke to him while awake and fully conscious. He "heard" God directly. ⁷

And the Torah is considered a direct dictation, which is why the Five Book of Moses have a unique position among all holy books of the Jewish people and a unique authority in the Jewish world.

Having learned the Oral Law and with the Ten Commandments in hand, Moses came down the mountain and what he saw shocked him to such an extent that he dropped the stone tablets. Below the mountain, where just a few weeks ago, they stood in an encounter with God, the Jews were worshiping an idol in direct violation of the law they had just been given.

1. Talmud, Megillah 14:a
2. See: Maharal, I>G'vurot Hashem, chap. 51.
3. Moreh Nevukhim 2:35; Kuzari 1:6; ibid. 1:81; ibid. 1:87; Yad, Yesodei HaTorah 8:1.
4. Tosafoth, Shabbat 88a; Shavuoth 29a; Nedarim 25a; Breishith Rabbah 87:9;
5. Brachoth 5a; Sotah 37b; Chagigah 6a; Zevachim 115a; Sefer HaMitzvot, Shoresh1. Yad, Yesodeh HaTorah, Introduction.
6. Yad, Yesodeh HaTorah, Introduction; Sefer Chasidim 1016; Shemoth Rabbah 5:18;BaMidbar Rabbah 14:35: Bava Batra 15a; Menachoth 30a; Gittin 60a.
7. Yad, Yesodeh HaTorah 7:1-6.

History Crash Course #12: The Golden Calf

Only a tiny portion of Jews participate in worshiping the golden calf. So why blame the whole nation?

The day for this infamous event is forever marked in the Hebrew calendar -- 17th of Tammuz. This would be the day later in history on which the walls of Jerusalem would be breached by the Babylonians and the Romans prior to the destruction of both the first and the second Temple.

It is very important to analyze what happened with the golden calf and why the Torah criticizes the Jewish people so harshly for this sin. And indeed what is revealed here about how God views the Jewish people.

After the greatest national revelation experience in human history when the whole nation hears God, Moses goes up the mountain and comes down 40 days later to find people dancing around an idol.

Now if I'd had an encounter with the Infinite Creator of the Universe speaking to me and I heard Him say "I am God, don't worship anything else," I don't think I would be stupid enough to be jumping around a golden cow. So what's going on in this story?

This is a classic case of knowing how to correctly read the text of the Bible. When I say correctly read, I mean, ideally in Hebrew but certainly with the commentators because there's an oral tradition that must be studied along with the simple, very brief description in the text.

When Moses came down the mountain, were all 3 million Jews dancing around a golden calf? No. The Torah in Exodus 32:28 says it was only about 3 thousand people, mostly the mixed multitude of individuals who left with the Jews because they were so impressed by what went on with the Ten Plagues.¹

That means that only about .1% of the Jews (one in a thousand) participated and 99.9% of the Jews did nothing wrong, (although the majority's failure to stop the minority from worshipping the Golden Calf was considered a mistake). Yet God's reaction makes it clear he is blaming the whole nation.

LOVE ISN'T BLIND

We already mentioned that amongst all ancient books the Bible is unique in its objective criticism and that the purpose of this criticism is to educate. But why the hyper-criticism?

One of the great untrue expressions of all time is "love is blind." Infatuation surely is but true love has a magnifying glass for faults. To love someone means to focus on the beauty and positive within that person. This doesn't mean that you don't see their faults, but rather that you associate that person with their positive attributes. (Hate is of course the opposite).

An excellent practical example of this is your mother. She probably loves you more than any other person on earth yet she surely knows you faults better than anyone (yet she still loves you!).

Far worse than an overly strict parent is a parent who is neglectful.

If we transplant this parent analogy to God (aka Our Father in Heaven) then the hypercritical nature of the Torah begins to make sense. While God is the God of all humanity, He has a special relationship with the Jewish people and constantly "has an eye" on them. He deliberately overstates the Jewish people's faults and mistake to get them to pay attention -to hammer home in the strongest possible language vital lessons that we must learn.

AN EXACTING STANDARD

God holds the Jews to a very high standard because they have a unique responsibility in human history. The world won't get perfected without the Jews and if, God forbid, the Jews blow it, all of humanity, not just the Jewish people, will be doomed. Therefore, the Bible uses hyper-critical language to bring home some important principles:

1. According to your level of knowledge is your level of responsibility. Even the small mistakes of people in positions of power have huge consequences.

2. According to your level of responsibility is your level of accountability. The greater you are, the bigger the impact of your decisions, therefore you must be held to an extremely high standard of accountability.

The Jewish people had been given the ultimate responsibility for the world at Mount Sinai, and these principles explain the criticism that God levels against Jews and why it is so over-stated.

We also learn here another fundamental idea of the Torah -- that every Jew is a guarantor for every other Jew. The nation of Israel is a "body" and the individual Jews are like cells in this body. If part of the body does something wrong, the whole body is held accountable.

Judaism teaches you're either part of the problem or you're part of the solution, and that you have a legal obligation to be part of the solution. Being a by-stander is not an option. (Till today, the Bible is virtually the only moral/legal code in the world that demands that you actively do good as epitomized by the expression "...go in His ways." (Deut. 28:9)² )

This theme of collective responsibility repeats itself over and over again in the Bible and throughout Jewish history.

That's why when a small group of Jews does something wrong and the rest of the nation doesn't stop them, all are held accountable.

THE AFTERMATH

As a sign of God's displeasure, He distances himself from the Jewish people and the Tent of Meeting (Moses's tent for communicating with God) is moved outside the camp. Moses spends a lot of time back in the camp dealing with the aftermath of the golden calf debacle. He smashes the idol, gathers loyal Levites around him and executes those responsible. (As you might have noticed the Bible is not a liberal book. While it is full of the merciful acts of God, it also emphasizes that there are serious consequences for wrongdoing.)

He goes back up the mountain on the 1st of Elul -- Rosh Chodesh Elul. Elul is the month before Rosh Hashana, before 1st Tishrei, the beginning of the Jewish year. He spends forty days on the mountain again. He comes back down with the second set of tablets, and this is a clear sign that God has forgiven the Jewish people. What's the day Moses comes back down? Yom Kippur.

As already mentioned, each Jewish holiday has a specific theme or focus. While these holidays are linked to specific historical events, on a deeper level they are connected to the different spiritual forces embedded with in the yearly cycle. Each holiday in the cycle touches on a fundamental concept is serves as a opportunity for growth in our relationship to God.

From Yom Kippur we get the spiritual power of teshuva -- of repentance, of returning to closeness with God and repairing relationships with our fellow human beings.

As a sign of forgiveness God tells Moses He will again dwell among the Jewish people, and He instructs how His "home" is to be built.

"They shall make for Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them." (Exodus 25:8)

Following this command, the Torah spends many chapters giving intricate descriptions just exactly how to build this portable sanctuary.

The sanctuary consisted of a large tent -- called a "Tent of the Meeting" or Tabernacle -- surrounded by a courtyard. Inside the courtyard was an altar where sacrifices were offered. In the tent were two rooms. The outer room held a seven-branched candelabra, a table with twelve loaves of bread on it, and an incense altar. The inner -- called the Holy of Holies -- held the Ark of the Covenant.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

Anyone who has seen Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arkhas seen a pretty good replica of what the Ark looked like. It was a wooden box covered with gold and it was decorated on top with two small statues of winged cherubs facing each other.

The commentators say that the two cherubs normally faced each other but when the Jewish people were not getting along with God they would be turned away from each other.

Inside the Ark were the two sets of the Ten Commandments -- the broken set inscribed by God, and the second set inscribed by Moses.

The whole structure -- called the Mishkan in Hebrew -- was not a portable synagogue or a museum. It was a tool to be used by the Jewish people individually and as a nation, to connect to God.

When it was completed, the Torah relates that the "clouds of glory" -- a manifestation of God's infinite presence called the Shechina -- would literally rest on the sanctuary as a tangible sign that God was with the Jewish people.

When the sanctuary stood, people would feel holiness in the world in a way we can't begin to understand today.

When the sanctuary stood, people would feel holiness in the world in a way we can't begin to understand today. No amount of description can begin to give us a sense of what it would have been like to connect spirituality to God via the <>Mishkan. Today we are like people born blind- no description of site can begin to replace the actual experience.

So central is the Mishkan to Judaism that following the account of the Exodus and Mount Sinai most of the rest of the Five Books are spent describing the construction of the Mishkan, its vessels and the priestly service that took place with in it. So detailed is the description within the Written Law that further description within the Oral Law is not needed in-order-to construct it.

Because we don't have it, only 369 of the 613 commandments are applicable and most of those are negative commandments-"thou shall not." Most of positive commandments are focused on how to use theMishkan to connect to God. The loss of that structure has tremendous implications for the Jews' (and all of humanity's) ability to relate to God and fulfill their mission as a light to the nations.

The service in both the Mishkan and later theTemple was carried out by the priest, in Hebrew: the Cohanim. The first Cohanim were Moses' brother Aaron and Aaron's sons. This line has continued for 3,300 years until today. Most interesting is the fact that recent genetic analysis of the Y-Chromosomes of hundreds of Cohanim from around the world proves that close to 80% are in fact descended from a common male ancestors more who lived more than 3,000 years ago.³

Even though the Temple service has been discontinued for 2,000 years Cohanim (who often have the last name: Cohen, Kagan, Kahn, Katz or Cowen) are still awarded special honors (ie the first person called up during the weekly Torah reading is a Cohen) in recognition of their unique status and responsibility.

This sanctuary -- which was readily dis-assembled and assembled -- the Jews carried around in the wanderings in the desert for 40 years. For 440 years after they entered the land of Israel, but before they conquered Jerusalem, they assembled it in four different locations. After David became king and made Jerusalem his capital, he planned to build a permanent structure just outside the city, atop Mount Moriah where Abraham had offered Isaac as a sacrifice to God and where Jacob had dreamt of a ladder to heaven. For reason that we will explain later, he did not actualize his plan

Finally, in 832 BCE, his son King Solomon built the first Temple there, and it became the permanent sanctuary until it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 422 BCE. At this time the Ark of the Covenant disappeared never to be seen again. (We will discuss the speculations where it might be hidden when we reach that point in history.)

Seventy years after the first destruction and exile, the Jews returned and the Temple was rebuilt and then again destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, never to be rebuilt again. The golden Dome of the Rock, which is there now, was built on the site in the year 691 CE and it has stood there ever since.

But we are getting ahead of the story. At this juncture in time, the Jewish people have experienced a national revelation. They've been given the Torah, and built the sanctuary for God to dwell among them. Now they are ready to enter the Promised Land.

1. See: Rashi, Exodus 32:4; Ramban, Exodus 32:7 & 32:28.
2. See Sefer HaHinuch 611 An excellent example is the obligation to give 10% of your income to charity. In addition to giving humanity the concept of social welfare, the first animal rights legislation and the first environmental law also come from the Jews. For additional information see: Ken Spiro, WorldPerfect-The Jewish Impact on Civilization (Health Communications Inc., Deerfield, Florida, 2003) chap. 14.
3. For more information on this fascinating subjest see: Yaakov Kleiman, DNA & Tradition-The genetic Link to the Ancient Hebrews. Israel: Devora Publishing, 2004.

Jewish History in the Land of Israel

Sunday, November 29, 2015