Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses Our Teacher

Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our teacher, is the way he is known in the  Jewish tradition.  Like Joseph he lives among non-Jews, marries a non Jew; becomes famous,  defends Jews,  kills a man who is beating a Jew, runs far away, and talks to God through the fire.  He has three children that love him.  He is indeed lucky.  But there is a deep sadness about the man.

There is no one in the Jewish Bible closer to God than Moses.  They talk again and again.  Moses gets to ask all the questions we would like to ask.  He is not shy.  He persistently inquires.  He argues with God.  He learns what he needs to know but not much more.  He receives God’s teaching to the Jewish people, the Torah.  Yet, it is clear that Moses both respects, is aggravated and puzzled by God’s methodology. 

Since the beginning of Genesis God has promised to bring the Hebrews to a promised land.  Moses has questions and he is not afraid to ask.  Why this terribly circuitous route?  Why slavery?  Why so long?  Why the desert?  Why are there other people already living in the promised land?  Why wars to get the land promised?  Why can Moses, the closest friend God has, not go into the land?  Most important why the ongoing hatred for Jews?  His doubts and questions are overwhelming, generation after generation he watches, Jews being persecuted and murdered, the Holocaust; it is only with questions Moses is able to pray.

Moses has no choice but to accept and live with the nature of things.  He becomes a passionate teacher urging his students again and again and again to remember and not forget.  Sometimes they listen.  Sometimes they are too tired and bored to listen.  Sometimes they think they already know.  But Moses is tenacious.  He does not stop.  He tries and he tries harder and harder. He is obsessed, like most eccentric and committed teachers, with being heard.  He warns, sings, screams, intimidates, cajoles, nags, preaches, teaches, shows film after film, stands on tables and chairs, rhetoric upon rhetoric, he does what he can do, he is indeed Moshe Rabbeinu.