Parashat Ki Tisa, Exodus 30:11-34:35, Shabbat Parah, Numbers 19:1-22

Parasha sponsored by the Sacks Family in honour of their father and grandfather –Morris Gainen

Moments of revelation are times of trepidation.

Art has often engendered controversy, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. There are people who question whether abstract painting can be called "art" because it departs from a realistic representation of objects. Then again, realistic depictions have also been contentious. Even today some question whether photography is art. Is the technology controlled by the artist, or does the technology make someone with passable talent and skill into a master?

Can a painting be too good? Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer had an amazing ability to capture the play of light in his paintings, as can be seen in the accompanying picture. The clarity of his work has been at the center of a dispute: Did technology help him achieve these brilliant results? Vermeer is believed to have viewed his subject matter with the aid of a camera obscura. A precursor of the modern camera, the camera obscura box allows light to enter through a small opening. The light rays focused on the opposite side produce an upside-down but accurate image of an object or scene; the smaller the opening, the sharper the image.

More familiar to some would be the pinhole camera, which many of us have used to view solar eclipses. Since it is dangerous to stare directly at the sun, viewing an eclipse with a pinhole camera allows you to see a shadow image of what is taking place. With both optical devices it is a case where less is more. The smaller the aperture, the greater the focus and detail. (Think of a magnifying glass that, in focusing rays of light, can start a fire.)

The idea of these devices, though not the objects themselves, can help us understand a curious situation that arises in Parashat Ki Tisa. When we encounter the intrepid Israelites this week, they are panic-stricken because Moses has not come back after spending weeks on Mount Sinai. In desperation they ask Aaron to create a god they can worship. The end result is the Golden Calf. With perfect timing, Moses arrives, Ten Commandments in hand, just as our ancestors have whipped themselves into an idolatrous frenzy. The end result is a slaughter of those who committed idolatry and a shattered set of commandments.

After the headache of the Golden Calf, Moses goes back up the mountain to take two more tablets, or more accurately, to make two more tablets. Here is where the curious incident takes place. Moses asks to see God but is told this is not possible: "you cannot see My face, for man may not see Me and live." (Exodus 33:20) God has a solution to this problem: "Station yourself on the rock and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back; but My face must not be seen." (Exodus 33:21-23)

Moses' situation is comparable to the person experiencing a solar eclipse. There is great danger in exposure but the experience itself is still possible; Moses, squeezed into the narrow opening of the cleft, will see the "back" of God, the shadow image. This is the safe way to do it; being wedged into this tight space helps focus the experience.

As we can well imagine, this close encounter with God changes Moses forever. It is a visible change: So Moses came down from Mount Sinai. And as Moses came down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant (karan)…(Exodus 34:29) Rashi, drawing on Midrash Tanhuma explains the source of Moses' radiance. Call it a Divine facial if you will, according to Rashi the radiance is a result of God's shielding Moses with the Divine "hand" as Moses was in the cleft of the rock. Furthermore, says Rashi, this radiance (karan) was actually in the form of horn-like (keren) rays of light.

Rays are the expression of a narrowing and intensifying of light, piercing through a crack, for instance. In the crevice in the rock, with God’s hand shielding his eyes, he achieves a moment of oblique vision. The nature of such a ray-like perception emerges most powerfully from the proof-text quoted in the midrash: “It is a brilliant light which gives off rays from His hand; and there His glory is hidden” (Habakkuk 3:4). God’s light is hidden, and that obstruction creates brilliant rays. Indeed, quite prosaically, human vision becomes possible only by a limiting of vision: too close, too bright, too total a light simply dazzles and blinds. A fissure in the rock yields piercing fragments of illumination which are not merely seen, but absorbed in the very fabric of Moses' being

The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus,

Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, pp. 445-6

This "fissure in the rock" is Moses' camera obscura, making it possible for him to see and therefore experience things as never before. In the Torah tight spots are the ones that provide these revelatory close encounters. Another example is the Sea of Reeds is. Wedged between an advancing Egyptian army and a foreboding body of water, this situation illuminates the necessity of action: Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind all that night, and turned the sea into dry ground (Exodus 14:21). Trudging through a soggy seabed between two walls of water, the people went in as slaves and came out as free people. Sinai as experienced by Israel is not a Rocky Mountain high. These folks are at the bottom and in the shadow; similar to Moses holed up in the wedge of the rock. No wonder midrash states that the mountain is threateningly held over the people. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place! Moments of revelation are times of trepidation.

Elsewhere we have talked before about how obstacles provide opportunities we could not have imagined. This is not to present a rosy Pollyannaish point of view. I personally hate the cliché about one door closing and another one opening. Sometimes a door closes and you're just stuck in a dark room unable to find your way out.

This was Moses' situation. The traumatic condition of the people reflected his personal need as well; stuck between an idolatrous nation and the God they spurned he strengthened the connection that could have been broken forever. And he did this by getting into an even tighter space: the cleft of a rock as God's glory passes by. It changed him forever.

Those times when life wedges us in the cleft of the rock change us too. Today, more and more people find themselves caught in the crevice between rock-solid unyielding forces. Tight spots put things in focus just like the camera obscura or the pinhole camera. They illumine what is important in our lives. Let us hope and pray that those experiencing such travail will, like Moses, experience God's caress, and emerge luminously changed.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Michal Shekel

Picture Credit: Johannes Vermeer, Milkmaid, Rijksmuseum,Netherlands
Image from: wikimedia.org