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Between Man and Fellow Man -
Moses' Humility
Character Trait: Humility "And Moses was the humblest man on
earth"
Biblical Sources:
Moses's humility is apparent in the following passages:
Exodus 3
4
33:12-17
34:6-9
Numbers 11:23-29
12:3
16:15
Teacher Focus:
Comprehension:
How is Moses's humility manifest in each of the above passages?
Try to define humility according to these sources.
Analysis:
In your opinion, does humility mean weakness?
Is it important that a leader be humble? How humble should he
be?
In Depth:
Should contemporary leaders also be humble?
Sources from the Talmud and Midrash:
Our Rabbis taught:
Man was created just before the Sabbath (i.e., at the
end of Creation). Why? So that if a man becomes proud, one can
say to him. Even mosquitoes were created before you!
Sanhedrin 38a
"And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame
of fire out of the midst of a bush...."
Exodus 3:2
Not because you are the tallest of trees did the Holy
One choose to manifest Himself within you, but rather because
you are the lowliest of trees did the Holy one manifest Himself
within you.
Shabbat 67a
Our Rabbis taught:
Let a man always [bend] like a reed and not be hard like
a cedar: A reed grows in the water, its stem is flexible, and
its roots are many. All the winds in the world cannot uproot it,
for it sways back and forth with them. And when the winds cease
to blow, the reed is still standing in its place.
A cedar does not grow in water, its trunk is not flexible,
and its roots are few. All the winds in the world cannot uproot
it, but when a southerly wind blows, it is immediately uprooted.
Ta'anit 20a In: "Moses," from Encylopedia Mikra'it,
by S. A. Levinstam
Moses as Historical Figure
The descriptions of Moses in the Pentateuch are clearly
of a mythological character. The question whether the historical
Moses can be reconstructed by analysis of the biblical narratives
is a continuing controversy among biblical scholars.... Jewish
tradition attributes authorship of the first five books of the
Bible to Moses.
According to the Torah, Moses was also the person to whom G-d's
Law was given. Scholars do not recognize Moses as the author
of most of the laws of the Torah, though many scholars do
accept the tradition that attributes the Ten Commandments
to Moses.
Another question over which there is disagreement concerns
Moses' role in the history of the religion of Israel and in
Israelite monotheism: According to the Torah, the forefathers
(Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) worshipped G-d as the one and
only G-d of the universe. Accordingly, Moses' contribution
to the religion of Israel was that of renewing the Covenant
between G-d and His people.
Those scholars who do not accept this view are divided into
several schools. Some learn from the accounts of G-d's revelation
to Moses that Moses was the first Israelite to worship one
G-d, and there are those who add to this assumption the theory
that Moses received the belief in one G-d from Jethro, his
father-in-law. Other scholars hold that the Children of Israel
worshipped the G-d of Israel before Moses, though they did
not worship Him as their only G-d. Accordingly, Moses is credited
with putting and end to the worship of other gods.
Still other scholars believe that in Moses' time, the Israelites
worshipped their G-d as the G-d of Israel only and recognized
Him as G-d of the entire Creation only during the time of
the classic prophets.
On the other hand, others attribute monotheism to Moses and
believe that this monotheism was influenced by the same intellectual
currents in Egypt that led to the revolution of the Pharaoh
Akhnaton (1365-1355) BCE, who established the worship of the
sun god as the one and only god of the universe. However,
the presumption of Egyptian influence does not seem probable.
Not only was the Egyptian religious revolution short-lived,
but nowhere in the Bible (except in Psalms 19) is G-d compared
to the sun.
The mythical character of the accounts of Moses narratives
does not necessarily preclude their being based on history.
Traditions concerning historical personalities can take on
a mythical dressing. There is certainly no reason for negating
the historicity of Moses on the basis of accounts of the Exodus
-- such as Psalms 78 -- that omit any mention of him. One
who wishes to praise what G-d has wrought is in no way obliged
to mention G-d's agent.
Even the author of the Hagaddah, a much later work, permitted
himself to omit Moses in his account of the Exodus, and attribute
the entire event directly to G-d. If we see Israel's liberation
from Egyptian servitude as a historical event, we cannot avoid
the conclusion that there was a man who initiated and prepared
this liberation and also led it.
The Pentateuchal sources are unanimous in holding that Moses
was this man.
In: Moses by Ahad Ha'Am [Footnote 1]
...therefore, when I read the Passover Haggadah and about
Moses son of Amram, hero of all heroes, who stands as a pillar
of light on the threshold of history, hovering before me and elevating
me to "the higher world," in no way do I share the doubts and
questions with which the scholars of the nations harrass us with:
whether Moses really lived, whether he lived and acted in in the
manner accepted by our people, whether he really was the savior
of Israel and giver of this Torah in the way that has been preserved
for us, and other questions of this sort.
In my heart I dismiss all these questions with one short and
simple and answer: This Moses, this hoary figure, whose reality
and essence you are trying to clarify is not a matter for
scholars such as you. We have a different Moses, our own Moses,
the one whose form is writ large on the heart of our people
from generation to generation and whose influence on our national
life has not ceased from ancient times to now.
Moses' historic reality does not depend upon your learned treatises.
For even if you managed to demonstrate beyond a shadow of
a doubt that Moses the man never lived, or that he was not
as he is depicted, this would not diminish by one iota the
historical reality of the Moses ideal -- the one who led us
not only forty years through the Sinai desert, but thousands
of years, through every the desert we have crossed from the
Exodus from Egypt to the present.
Footnote 1:
"Ahad HaAm" is the nom de plume of Asher Ginzburg (1856-1927), author,
thinker, and one of the leaders of the Zionist movement. In his writings,
Ahad HaAm promoted the idea of "Spiritual Zionism." By this he meant
establishing a spiritual center in the land of Israel, one that would
reinforce the sense of national unity of the Jewish people in the
Diaspora. This center would develop a Jewish culture on the basis
of the historical-traditional conceptions of the Jewish people. One
of these ideas was the prophetic idea of "the rule of absolute justice,"
an idea of which Ahad HaAm also writes in his essay, "Moses."
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Produced by: Unit for Jewish Education in the CIS
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