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Hebrew scholar and Jewish academic Irene Lancaster explores Moses and masks in Exodus.
This year Purim falls on March 3, my daughter’s birthday. The festival commemorates the story of Queen Esther, as recounted in the biblical book of that name.
The following Shabbat reading on March 7 is Ki Tissa (Exodus 30:11-34:35). What do Purim and Ki Tissa have in common? The answer is – masks! Purim is all about hiding our identity, masking our faces and wearing fancy dress.
This is what the Jews of Persia did in a hostile environment – the name Esther meaning ‘I will hide’. And this is the only biblical book in which G-d is also concealed, is never mentioned and works behind the scenes to save the Jewish people from destruction.
The Exodus reading of Ki Tissa starts with G-d’s command to Moses: ‘When you lift the head of the children of Israel …’ that is, when you count their number through a ‘poll’ or head count, then they will be ‘elevated.’
Later in the Sedra, Bezalel is introduced, a man combining wisdom, understanding and knowledge of workmanship – a fitting person to construct the Tent of Meeting and all its appurtenances.
This is in contrast to the golden calf constructed in haste by the children of Israel when they felt that Moses had ‘delayed’ his descent from the mountain on which G-d was instructing him (Exodus 32:1).
On descending with the two tablets containing the commandments, Moses is angry with the people and returns to the mountain.
‘The Lord spoke to Moses face to face’ (33:11) and tells him that ‘My face will go with you.’ Usually the translation is ‘presence’ but the prime meaning of the Hebrew word ‘panim’ is ‘face’.
When Moses returns to the people with two new tablets he ‘did not realize that the skin of his face shone forth beams’ (34:29). The new radiant appearance of Moses scared Aaron and the children of Israel and they were ‘afraid to approach him’ (34:30).
And now we come to the similarity with Purim. For, ‘when Moses had done speaking with them, he put a mask on his face (34:33).’ But when ‘he went in before the Lord’, he took the mask off (34:34).
In his book, ‘Shemot: The Book of Exodus’, Rabbi Nathan Cardozo comments that Moses covered his face when he went around the camp, but removed the mask whenever he had to convey G-d’s words to the people, ‘revealing his luminous face’.
‘Instead of accommodating the people by making it easier to approach him, it seems that he wanted to bring them into an altogether different spiritual setting before repeating the words of G-d as he had heard them …
‘… By taking the mask off only when he had to repeat the words of G-d, he exposed them to this divine radiance, which caught them completely by surprise. The purpose was to catch them off guard.’
Rabbi Cardozo continues by warning against the danger of letting ‘the wonder [wear] off’.
The radiance had to be hidden in order to create an optimal effect on the people. ‘Only under these conditions could they fully appreciate and value G-d’s words.’
This element of surprise is also celebrated during Purim when G-d appears to be absent, people dress up, and nothing is what it seems.
In support of this positive view of wonder, Rabbi Cardozo cites the great German theoretical physicist, Max Planck (1858-1947).
In 1918 Planck won the Nobel Prize for Physics ‘for the services he rendered to the advancement of physics by the discovery of energy quanta.’ Planck was the originator of quantum theory and one of the founders of modern physics.
In addition, Planck was gifted at music and endowed with perfect pitch. He was a marvellous lecturer, ‘using no notes, never making mistakes, never faltering, the best lecturer … ’
In 1905 he ‘was among the few who immediately recognized the significance of [Einstein’s] special theory of relativity.’
Of Planck’s five children, four died before their time. One son was killed at Verdun in WW1. His twin daughters both died in childbirth and another son was executed in January 1945 for participating in the 20th July 1944 assassination plot against Hitler. Planck gave up the will to live and died two years later in 1947.
This is what the scientific Nobel Prize-winning German Protestant patriot had to say about the sense of wonder, as cited by Rabbi Cardozo (pp 198-9):
‘ … This feeling of wonderment is the source and inexhaustible fountain-head of [one’s] desire for knowledge. It drives the child irresistibly on to solve the mystery, and if in his attempt he encounters a causal relationship, he will not tire of repeating the same experiment ten times, a hundred times, in order to taste the thrill of discovery over and over again … The reason why the adult no longer wonders is not because he has solved the riddle of life, but because he has grown accustomed to the laws governing his world picture. But the problem of why these particular laws and no others hold remains for him just as amazing and inexplicable as for the child. He who does not comprehend this situation misconstrues its profound significance, and he who has reached the stage where he no longer wonders about anything, merely demonstrates that he has lost the art of reflective reasoning.’
Planck was talking about how science is enriched by engaging the inner child: that sense of openness, of excitement and of sheer pleasure at discovery. But he could also have been talking about religion. Dogmas are simply not enough. In order to retain excitement, enthusiasm and a yearning for the Divine, we need our inner child. This is why Moses donned his mask when conveying the mitzvot [commandments] to the children of Israel and why these mitzvot are still with us.
And this is also why, at the same time of year, on the festival of Purim, men, women and children dress up, don masks and consume alcohol. Purim teaches us what the greatest scientists also understand: the serious business of religion, as of life itself, needs fun to endure!
