Right now it’s 10:40 AM. Do you know where your children are? The Tot Shabbat kids and their parents are downstairs now and they could be singing these words. Torah Torah Torah….Torah, Torah, Torah…Torah Tzivah Lanu…..Moshe!
The very first thing we are meant to teach children about Judaism is the verse Devarim: תּוֹרָה צִוָּה לָנוּ מֹשֶׁה מוֹרָשָׁה קְהִלַּת יַעֲקֹב. Moshe commanded the Torah to us as an inheritance to the Congregation of Jacob.
The identification of the Torah with Moshe is absolute. We sing about that relationship and we understand the authority of the Torah to be a derivative of Moshe’s faithfulness as a transcriber and as a teacher. He is Moshe Rabbeinu – “Moses our teacher” not our liberator or our king.
And yet, there is one Parashah from the first chapter of Sefer Shemot that chronicles his birth and childhood that does not mention Moshe’s name and that is Parashat Tetzaveh. In the words of the Tur, in his fourteenth century commentary to the Torah: Moshe’s name is not mentioned in this portion. This is unlike anywhere else in the Humash from the moment when Moshe is born there is no weekly portion in which he is not mentioned.
The Tur explains this absence based on the Talmud (Makkot 11a):
.שאמר מחני נא מספרך כי קללת חכם אפי’ על תנאי היא באה
Since Moshe said, “erase me from your book” and the curse of a sage, even when conditional, will be fulfilled. What does this mean?
Next week we will read about the sin of the golden calf, one of the greatest betrayals in Jewish history and an acute moment of crisis for Moshe’s leadership. God’s anger is so great that God threatens to wipe out all of the Jewish people and to start again fresh with Moshe as the founding father of a new, more obedient nation. Moshe’s heroic response is to pray for mercy. And not only to pray for mercy but to demand mercy. And not only to demand mercy but the threaten God:
וְעַתָּה אִם־תִּשָּׂא חַטָּאתָם וְאִם־אַיִן מְחֵנִי נָא מִסִּפְרְךָ אֲשֶׁר כָּתָבְתָּ׃
If you will not bear their sin, Moshe threatens: erase me from your book that you have written. I don’t want to be the founding father of a new nation. I don’t want my name in your book if you go ahead with this threat to destroy my people. For all of his loyalty to God and to the Torah, Moshe’s greatest loyalty was to us.
But there are questions that remain unanswered: Why is it Parashat Tetzaveh, the one we read prior to Moshe’s intervention, where Moshe’s name is absent. And why does Moshe refer to מִסִּפְרְךָ אֲשֶׁר כָּתָבְתָּ your book that you have written instead of the book that you will write?
Here is what Moshe really meant: Moshe was stating that there is no place for me in a Torah that demands perfection. That’s not who I am and that isn’t the people whom I took out of Egypt. I am an imperfect leader and I took imperfect people from Egypt. And imperfect people need the Torah and imperfect people are capable of loyalty to the Torah.
So God forgave us. And Moshe remained the individual most identified with receiving and teaching the Torah. He is Moshe Rabbenu because he taught Torat Moshe. Torah Tzivah Lanu… Moshe. But once the words “erase me from your book” came out of Moshe’s mouth, they had to have some impact and that impact, according to the Tur, was on this week’s Torah portion.
A few years ago I had my first meeting with a new primary-care-physician. And as part of my medical history she asked me to list the ages at which each of my grandparents had died and the cause of their death. So I listed each of my grandparents and the ages at which they died and the causes of their death. And then I had to list my paternal grandfather. He was 37 years old when he was murdered by the Nazis. But I didn’t say that. I just mumbled “he was 37 and he died in The War.” When I looked at my medical records online after the meeting I saw that my physician had misunderstood me .
“Killed in the War” or “died in the war” was a euphemism that I grew up with. It meant one thing and one thing only: murdered in the Holocaust. But on my online medical records it says that my grandfather died in combat. I had a great-uncle who was a heroic pilot in the air-force and who survived being shot from the sky over occupied Europe and was interned in a German POW camp. I had another great-uncle who died in combat, before the war, as a volunteer with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting fascism in Spain. But my grandfather was not killed in combat. In my desire to avoid an awkward and uncomfortable moment, and in my desire not to traumatize my doctor, I had inadvertently distorted my own family’s history through a euphemism.
There are fears that if we tell our children about our trauma or the trauma of our ancestors they will be traumatized too. On the contrary, if we tell the next generation the truth of our people’s perseverance, they too can draw inspiration from that perseverance and find the resilience to overcome new threats and challenges.
There is likewise a great deal of contemporary anxiety that if we share a story of imperfection with our children they will not be loyal to that ongoing story. This happens in the Jewish community. This happens in the context of the teaching of American history. And it also happens within families. Will our children be loyal to the things that we are loyal to if they know about the imperfections and the ugliness of the past? The answer is: yes.
From the moment when Moshe intervened and threatened God, the Torah has been a record of our imperfections and our sins. And, as Moshe showed his loyalty to us, and God showed us his mercy, we have been merciful to one another, and we have been loyal to the Torah. So may it be forever.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 