Kee Tissa
Exodus 30:11-34, 35
Numbers 19:1-22
Ezekiel 36:16-38
With engaging narratives portraying strong personalities and religious upheaval and transformation, the Book of Exodus focuses on the formative years of the Israelite nation.
Exodus is the bridge between the nomadic origins of the Jewish people and the settling of the Promised Land. In Exodus, the Law is revealed and the Covenant is established. However, the events leading from slavery to national sovereignty are minimized by a far more important question raised by the author of Exodus: Can mere mortals see God?
That is a question of consequence because Moses is the only individual in the Book of Exodus to both see God and talk to God, a contact that burdened Moses with the responsibility of convincing the Israelites that God is real, not an uncommon difficulty for religious leaders.
When God spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush and sent him on his mission to liberate the Israelites, Moses worried about how he could convince the Israelites that God is real. He asked: “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13)
God’s answer in Exodus 3:14, “‘Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh’ — ‘I will be what I will be’ — sent me to you” is so illusive and ambiguous that this description could not have been very believable.
Nevertheless, so much did the Israelites hunger for a glimpse of Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh or any god that, in Moses’ absence, they built the Golden Calf. When the people saw the finished product, they exclaimed, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus32:8).
While this idol may have mollified the majority of the people, Moses was so enraged by this feeble effort to depict his deity that he dashed the Ten Commandments against the ground. But even Moses was not satisfied that the God who did wonders for the Israelites by leading them to freedom and providing them with the Law could not be more visible.
In Parashat Kee Tissa, Moses implored God, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence” (Exodus 33:18). God’s reply is well-known. “I will make all my goodness pass before you…and you will see My back; but My face must not be seen…you cannot see My face, for man may not see Me and live” (Exodus 33:18-23).
A reader might think the case to be closed; God is so incomprehensible and unknowable that it simply is not possible for human beings to see the appearance of God. However, this citation is preceded by one that is in conflict with the notion that God cannot be seen. The text reports, “The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as an individual would speak to a friend” (Exodus 33:11; also see Deuteronomy 43:10).
This tension between the abstract and the concrete is one that is felt by many people of faith. Those most comfortable with the abstract will not sanction graven images, while individuals who require concrete images cannot tolerate the abstract. But Exodus contains a curious comment that provides a middle ground for the two.
In Exodus 26:1, the elaborate curtain, the parokhet, that separated supplicants from the Tabernacle’s Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum where God was said to be present, is described. This is the curtain that Aaron is warned to stay behind when he enters the Tabernacle “lest he die” (Leviticus 16:1).
The desire to see God and live is universal. As the Temple was being destroyed, Titus, the Roman general who led the assault, forced his way into the innermost chamber of the Temple because he wanted to see what the Jews worshipped.
He was astounded to find an empty room, whereupon he declared the God of the Jews to be impotent (Talmud, Gittin 55b). The invisible God of the Israelites was as abstract for Titus as it was for the builders of the Golden Calf.
The struggle to see beyond the veil that conceals God from the human eye is an ongoing one. The faithful would be satisfied with a glimpse of God’s back, a fingerprint from God’s hand or a faint sound of God’s still small voice.
At moments when we, like Moses ask, “Show me your glory,” we struggle for a fleeting glimpse of the Eternal, knowing that the answer to Exodus’ question, “Can we see God?” is: yes and no!