Pesach
The human figure that dominates the Torah is undoubtedly that of Moses, Moshe in Hebrew. Michelangelo eternized him in marble and, as he contemplated the finished work, supposedly exclaimed, “Why don’t you speak?” Moshe, the great legislator and maximum leader of the people, combined mental vigor with emotional sensitivity, verbally punished the Hebrews for their periodic deviations but implored God not to punish them. He was even willing to have his name erased from the annals of history, if necessary, to obtain divine forgiveness for the people.
Following God’s call in the burning bush episode that was not consumed by fire, he returned to Egypt, where he was sought after as a criminal. He risked his life to fulfill God’s command: to free the Hebrew people from Egyptian slavery. Assisted by his older brother, Aharon, he showed up at Pharaoh’s palace on several occasions to request freedom of worship for his people and, using the powers God had granted, cast 10 plagues upon the Egyptians, a punishment that eventually convinced Pharaoh to permit the exodus.
The Torah insists that the account of these events must be repeated to the new generations: vehigadeta levinecha, and “you will tell your descendants the details of the events that led to the liberation your ancestors as slaves,”, so reads the Hagadah, the formal narrative dating from the times of the second Beit HaMikdash.
Rabbi Yosi, the Galilean, says: “How do we know God punished the Egyptians with 10 plagues in Egypt? … When they were at sea, it is said, “And when Israel saw the wonderful power which the Lord unleashed upon the Egyptians, the people feared of the Lord, they had faith in the Lord and his servant Moshe.” This verse of the Torah is the only mention of Moshe in the Hagadah. Moreover, there are versions of the text that omit this verse.
It is clear that, in the course of this account repeated on the night of the Seder, the figure of Moshe could have appeared on various occasions. The 10 plagues are recited, one by one, and a drop of wine is poured out of the cup to probably symbolize a tear for the damage each of these plagues caused. This recitation should have included Moshe’s name, which began with the plagues when he appeared at dawn before Pharaoh and turned the Nile’s waters into blood, thereby preventing the monarch from bathing in them.
Why is Moshe’s name absent from the account of the Hagada? It cannot be a coincidence because Moshe is ubiquitous in the sacred text. If an attempt were made to expurgate his name from the Torah, the text would become totally cephalic and mutilated. The Hagada author emphasizes that God did not use an angel or an emissary to extract the people: only He Himself in all His Glory and Majesty acted in taking the Hebrews out of Egypt.
Perhaps the intention was to point out that freedom is an essential condition of every human being. God chose not to delegate this achievement to highlight the fundamental value of liberty. Because the divine spark that resides in every human being is a reference to freedom. God had made him free by creating man in His Image and Likeness because God’s cardinal attribute is to be absolutely free, totally unbound by any restriction.
During the episode of the Eggel Hazahav, the Golden Calf, the people tried to deify Moshe. Because the Eggel was actually a substitute for Moshe, who had temporarily disappeared, they danced frantically around this golden effigy. They exclaimed, “This is the Divinity, Israel, who extracted you from Egypt.” It is possible to speculate that the author of the Hagadah tried to avoid confusion between God and man. Moshe was the greatest of men because he spoke with God “face to face,”; yet he remained a man, no more or less. A great and exceptional man, endowed with talents never matched, but always a man. Perhaps whoever composed the Hagadah wanted to avoid the bewilderment and ambiguity that invades other faiths when they propose the possibility of a human incarnation of God.
