SHIUR 7

PARSHAT KI TISA (PARSHAT PARAH)

SUMMARY, Pages 132-152, 48-55

READINESS FOR REVELATION

Ran opens his fourth derasha with the verse in Shemot that says that the cloud covered “it” (or “him”, it’s the same in Hebrew, va-yekhasehu) for six days, a verse that was the subject of a debate in the beginning of Massekhet Yoma, with practical implications for the Kohen Gadol before Yom Kippur.  R. Akiva understood the verse to be referring to Mount Sinai, which the cloud covered for six days before the giving of the Ten Commandments.

R. Yose haGlili, however, thought that the verse was talking about the cloud covering Moshe for six days after the giving of the Torah at Sinai, leading into his forty days of learning the whole Torah.  From that, the Talmud says, we learn that the Kohen Gadol had to leave his family for six days before Yom Kippur every year (to prepare) and that the priest who was going to burn a red heifer had to do so as well.

Before we get to what Ran has to say about this, the Talmud’s presentation itself bears several comments. First, R. Yose haGlili assumes that the forty days after the Giving of the Law were split into six days of preparation and thirty three days of study, which makes Moshe’s ability to absorb all of Torah even more remarkable.  Second, he includes the burning of the red heifer as a “meeting God up close” event, similar to Moshe and the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur, a topic worth a shiur or two of its own.  Finally, note that the Talmud draws practical implications from R. Yose’s view even though it conflicts with R. Akiva’s; ordinarily, we follow R. Akiva when he disputes but one other rabbi, but here we take R. Yose’s view to heart.  I suspect that that means that the Talmud found truth in R. Yose’s idea—close up encounters with God require significant preparation-- regardless of whether that was what happened at Sinai.

Returning to our topic, though, Ran is puzzled by the Talmud’s inference, since arguments a fortiori (the Latin term for a kal va-homer, an argument from a known truth to its obvious corollaries) usually go from the kal, the easier case, to the hamur. Thus, if Moshe Rabbenu had been performing a Yom Kippur service and needed a week’s preparation, Ran would have understood the argument—if the great Moshe Rabbenu needed that preparation, certainly an ordinary High Priest.  Here, however, Moshe was about to enter 33 days of intense encounter and learning.  His needing six days’ preparation, even in R. Yose’s view, should say nothing about a Kohen Gadol.

MOSHE AS EXAMPLE

Ran’s answer goes back to a view of his we have seen before, that in fact Moshe’s prophecy inherently differed from all others, a contention he proves from the verse’s saying that lo kam another prophet like Moshe.  Ran notes that the verb in that sentence, kam, is a continuing present, a continuing assertion that it will never be true that another prophet arose like Moshe; such confidence can only happen if there was something about Moshe’s prophecy which is beyond human control. 

Part of the miracle of Moshe’s prophecy is that he didn’t need preparation (which is ordinarily impossible for those who possess physical bodies); it just came to him whenever or wherever necessary.  Scripture’s mention of six days for him, then, must be there to teach us something about how to handle ourselves, not about Moshe.  We’ll take this issue up a little more after the summary, but I think it’s worth pointing out that Ran has said this before and will again, so it’s truly a central issue of the work.

Ran adds that that was because Moshe’s prophecy was direct from God—peh el peh adaber bo, the verse says, “mouth to mouth I speak to him”—as opposed to other prophets, who went through intermediaries.  Going through an intermediary means that there is a natural order, a set of rules for how the prophecy works.  God, however, can impose prophecy whenever He wishes.

EXPLAINING THE GUIDANCE OF THE ANGEL

Ran then goes on to use the distinction between the direct involvement of God and His indirect impact to explain numerous difficulties in the conflicting signals God gives about why He chooses to send an angel to lead the people to Israel rather than continue directly Himself.  In Chapter 23, God says that He is sending this angel, and that the people need to be exceedingly careful to listen to him, for he (the angel) cannot forgive their sins, for His Name is in the angel.

That sounds like having the angel guide them is more dangerous than having God do so, and yet in Chapter 33, God makes it sound like the angel is a better way for them to be guided, lest God destroy them along the way for their stiff-neckedness.  So, problem number one is: is it safer with an angel or with God?

Question number two is: What does God mean by saying the angel won’t forgive our sins—is it in an angel’s power to forgive sins? And if it is God who forgives, shouldn’t God have said “for I won’t forgive your sins?  Once on that topic, God’s warning to listen to the angel carefully without rebelling doesn’t make sense, since we generally only accept commands from God.

Ran says that the answer depends on understanding the difference between guidance by God and by an angel.  When God is directly involved in our affairs, then the response to our disobedience is in the form of punishment, and that might rise to the level of destruction of the people.  On the other hand, since it is a punishment rather than a result, it can—if God chooses to do so—be averted.

The angel, however (and here the word might be misleading, since Ran is coming close to envisioning this as some kind of force of nature), does not punish so much as leave us open to negative results.  If, for example, the angel were to inform Moshe (note that this force of nature can also directly communicate with Moshe) that the Jews should attack the Emori first and only then another nation, and the Jews reversed the order, their ensuing losses wouldn’t be the decision of the angel, they would be the natural result of our failure to obey.  The angel doesn’t order, he informs of the way his influence works. If we follow it, we do fine, if not, not.

Perhaps a useful example would be a really, really smart doctor, who understood the human body perfectly. If he warned a particular person, or group of people who share a specific genetic trait, against eating prunes, and they ignored him, we wouldn’t say that their ensuing illnesses were punishment from the doctor.  Here, too, the need to heed the angel’s commands is that he will be telling the Jews how the world works for them.

A throwaway example that Ran gives also makes the point well.  He notes the gemara’s view that when Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah had to be saved from the burning furnace (in the book of Daniel), the angel in charge of snow volunteered to cool it, but Gavriel argued that God’s glory would be even greater if he, the angel of fire, did so.  Here, too, Ran is assuming that “angels” have particular jobs, so that their going against their nature heightens the miracle and the revelation of God’s hand.  We’ll take this up again below.

MOSHE’S PUZZLING RESPONSES

Ran then moves on to cite Ramban’s questioning of Moshe’s here accepting God’s words without complaint, but later, after the sin of the Golden Calf, begging God to stay with them.   Ran suggests that in the earlier statement, God had not made clear that He would not also be there (as in Egypt, where God took the Jews out directly, but also sent destructive angels against the Egyptians); later, when God says explicitly that He will not join the Jews, Moshe protests.

And yet the protest is hard to understand, since God had clearly explained that the reason for His absenting Himself was to remove the possibility of the Jews’ being destroyed for their disobedience, as had almost occurred after the sin of the Golden Calf.  Why would Moshe protest?

Ran offers a sustained questioning of the give and take of that conversation, leading up to Moshe’s being taught the 13 Attributes of Mercy.  In Scripture, it seems like Moshe says to God, “You haven’t told me who You’re sending with us,” and then asks for God to teach him His ways, when he should have, right then, asked God to stay with them.  Then, God responds that He will go with them, and Moshe says “if you’re not going to go with us, don’t take us from here.”

To put it all together, Ran suggests that Moshe started off complaining that God hadn’t told him which angel He was sending; while that could have led in to a plea to have God do it Himself, Moshe instead asked for knowledge of God’s ways, since that knowledge would give Moshe the ability to pray for forgiveness should the Jews’ sin. Once armed with that knowledge, he’d be able to ask for God to go with them directly, since he could avert any destruction with his prayer.  Having God go with them, with Moshe to protect them from destruction, is better than any other plan, because they are God’s people, so the closer He is to them, the better.

A TEMPORARY WITHDRAWAL

Ran then understands God’s response- my face will go and I will leave you rest—as saying that Moshe had misunderstood, that God had not meant to leave the people completely, only until they arrived in Israel, at which point He’d return to their running.  The rationale for this, in Ran’s reading, is that in Israel the likelihood that the Jews would worship idols (the central worry underlying the possibility of national destruction) was significantly reduced.

The reason for that reduction returns us to the issue of the powers that run parts of the world.  In Ran’s (and the Talmud’s) reading, all places outside of Israel are under the influence of an angel, so that tragedies that occur are ascribed to the power of that angel.  Israel, though, is under God’s direct providence, so the turn to idols and other powers is less likely.  Incidentally, the history of the Jews in Israel argues against Ran’s view, since idol worship was fundamentally endemic for the entirety of the First Temple.

Moshe, however, does not accept this idea, because it could fuel the misimpression that it is only the difference in the Land that leads to the Jews’ different providence (but has nothing to do with them).  He therefore asks/demands that God go with them now so as to prove that they have extra providence as a function of their relationship with God, not the Land’s.

When God agrees, He emphasizes that it is because of His relationship with Moshe, implying—for Ran—that when Yehoshua takes over, God will once again recede to the background, until the Land has been completely conquered.  The derasha goes on, but we will stop here to consider some of the outstanding points so far.

MOSHE AS EXAMPLE OF HOW TO APPROACH GOD

Ran’s whole perception of Moshe as exceptional and supernatural forces him into an interesting position on whether events happened in Moshe’s life because of Moshe’s actions and needs or because of our need to learn from him.  In the case of Sinai, he sees R. Yose’s view as being that Moshe waited six days to enter into God’s presence (thus having to compress his mastery of all of Torah into 33 days) just to offer a lesson to all of subsequent Jewry.  On the other hand, at the end of the selection we are studying this week, it seems to be Moshe’s actions that succeed at having God delay the decree to guide them through an angel.  So Moshe, aside from his supernatural head start, seems also to be able to excel at his relationship with God.

To me, that shows an important underlying truth, that there is excellence and failure within every person, regardless of the head start they have been given. Here, Moshe is given a level of prophecy that no one else gets, but then uses it to go even further—hearing the 13 Attributes, e.g., is not inherent to the kind of prophecy God wants him to have in order to prove the truth of Torah.  Convincing God to “personally” lead them through the desert was also not necessary, but was a success of Moshe’s.  The possibilities of success and failure mean that even those figures we see as supernaturally greater than us, as unique (in the sense of there being no one else like them), can still teach us lessons relevant to how we handle our relationship with God.

BEING GUIDED BY AN ANGEL

Ran’s whole discussion of the angels really sounds very close to being laws of Nature, only sentient ones.  When he has the angel of snow wanting to cool the fire for Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, and Gavriel volunteering instead, Ran is saying that the greater the abrogation of the general pattern of nature, the greater the miracle. When he thinks that angels can only inform the Jews of what the future will be if they listen, it is again as if the angel only knows how the world tends to work, which we call nature (of course, the angels know it in terms of wars between the Jews and other nations as well, but that’s, I guess, part of an ordinary pattern of the world as well).  The only difference is that Ran envisions the underlying forces as being guided by sentient beings, angels, who have the ability to communicate with some humans (prophets).

BEING GUIDED BY GOD

In contrast, God is not seen as being limited as the angels are, but He is also more dangerous than the angels, since He has the right to punish as He sees fit.  However, He also can vouchsafe to Moshe knowledge of how to avert the full consequences of God’s anger.  The whole idea that the 13 Attributes can ease God’s anger needs a discussion of its own, but Ran does not delve into it, so we won’t either.

What Ran does claim is that God always intended to give us direct Providence in the Land of Israel, and the threat here was only to leave us to a more natural force while in the desert.  This falls in line with the Talmudic statement that ein mazal le-Yisrael, there is no natural force guiding the Jewish people, which has the pluses and minuses we see above.  In addition, though, it stresses the Jews’ role in the world as being the living symbols of God’s involvement, since everything that happens to the Jews as a nation is from God, not from any angelic or natural force. 

How this all comes together in a unified theme for this derasha, we will see next week, God Willing.  Shabbat Shalom.