PASSOVER-PESACH
The human figure that dominates the Torah is undoubted Moses. Michelangelo eternalized him in marble and, contemplating the finished work, supposedly exclaimed: “Why don’t you speak?” Moses, the great lawgiver, and ultimate 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 be erased from the annals of history if necessary to obtain divine forgiveness for the people.
Heeding God’s call in the episode of the Sneh, the burning bush, he returned to Egypt, where he was wanted as a criminal. He risked his life to fulfill God’s command: to deliver the Hebrew people from Egyptian slavery. Assisted by his older brother, Aharon, he appeared at Pharaoh’s palace on several occasions to request freedom of worship for his people and, using the powers God had granted, sent 10 plagues upon the Egyptians, events which eventually convinced Pharaoh to allow for 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 of the slaves, your ancestors,” so says the Haggadah, the formal narrative dating from the second Beit HaMikdash.
Rabbi Yosi the Galilean says, “How do we know that the Egyptians were punished with 10 plagues in Egypt? … When they were at sea, it is said, “And when Israel saw the wonderful power that the Lord unleashed upon the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord, they had faith in the Lord and in his servant Moses.” This verse of the Torah is the only mention of Moses in the Haggadah and, moreover, there are versions of the text that omit this verse.
In the course of this story that is repeated on the night of the Seder, the figure of Moses could have appeared on several occasions. The 10 plagues are recited, one by one, and a drop of wine is spilled which symbolizes possibly a tear for the damage that each of them caused. This recitation could have included the name of Moses, who started the plagues when he appeared at dawn before Pharaoh and turned the waters of the Nile into blood, preventing the monarch from bathing in them.
Why is Moses’ name absent from the Haggadah account? It cannot be a coincidence, because Moses is ubiquitous in the sacred text. If an attempt were made to purge his name from the Pentateuch, the text would become totally acephalous and mutilated. The author of the Haggadah emphasizes the fact that God did not use an angel or an emissary to extract the people: only He Himself in all His glory and majesty took care to bring them out of Egypt.
Perhaps the intention was to point out that freedom is an essential condition of the human being and God chose not to delegate its achievement to highlight its fundamental value. Because the divine sparkle that resides in every human being is a reference to freedom. By creating man in His image and likeness, God had made him free, because the cardinal attribute of God is to be absolutely free, without conditioning.
During the episode of Egel Hazahav, the Golden Calf, the people tried to deify Moses. Because the Egel was, in fact, a substitute for Moses, who was temporarily absent. They danced frantically around the golden statue and exclaimed, “This is the Divinity, Israel, who drew you out of Egypt.” It is possible to speculate that the author of the Haggadah tried to avoid confusion between God and man. Moses was the greatest of men because he spoke to God “face to face”; yet he continued to be a man. A great and exceptional man, endowed with talents never equaled, but always a man. And although Moses‘ name is not explicitly mentioned by the author of the Haggadah, there is no doubt that he was the heroic figure of the Exodus from Egypt that we celebrate on Passover.
