February 20th, 2022
20 Adar I 5782
Click here to listen to a recording of Rabbi Sarit's sermon from this past Shabbat.
There are moments - moments that probably each of us have had in different ways - that change us. Moments that transform who we are forevermore, moments that are near impossible to describe to others if they weren’t a part of it. It could be the intensity of one’s first year of law school, a painful experience navigating a divorce, or even a deep spiritual encounter which simply cannot be translated into words. These moments change us.
This week, Moshe has such a moment. We could probably look at the Torah, and throughout the book of Exodus and come up with many moments that likely changed him - being hid by his mother, put in a basket, found by pharaoh’s daughter, killing a taskmaster, liberating the Israelites, splitting the sea, etc. As our central character of this Biblical narrative we witness several highs and lows of Moshe’s life, each one having the potential to transform him.
But there is one such moment in this week’s parashah, Ki Tissa, that the Torah says, explicitly, changed Moshe. Moshe gets to the top of mount Sinai, he has this incredible encounter with God, then it says that God gave Moshe the two tablets of the Covenant, stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God.
As if the gift of God’s time and presence and intimacy were not enough, here God presents Moshe with physical recordings-- inscribed by God!-- of their conversation. But there is more. Moshe does not just receive this precious gift, law on stones carved by God, but Moshe himself is also transformed. After the incident of the egel haZahav, the Golden Calf, Moshe has returned back up the mountain to receive a second, nearly identical set of tablets with the law written by God. And at the very end of the parsha, as Moshe is descending down from the mountain this second time, we are told:
“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, since he had spoken with God.” The Torah tells us that he has Keren Or - rays of light - that emanate from his very being.
Moshe’s face radiates such intense light that he covers it with a veil once he realizes what has happened. The Torah understands this not just in the idiomatic way we might describe someone as glowing, but that literally, his powerful encounter with God changed him. It altered who he was as a person.
When we go through one of those powerful moments - it’s not always clear what it is that alters who we are. Is it the actual events that happened that change us, or the feeling that we experience in response to those events? Moshe was changed in this beautiful, positive way, not because he viewed receiving the Torah as a task he had to accomplish or a burden or challenge, though those can certainly change us, too, but because he viewed it as a gift. Because he was willing to receive this gift.
A midrash tries to explain this phenomenon: At first, God presented the Torah to Moses as something to learn, but he would study the material and promptly forget it. So God switched tactics, realizing it wasn’t working the way God wanted it to, and decided to give Moshe the Torah as a gift, as it says, “vayiten el Moshe” - God gave Moses the tablets.” God gifted Moshe the tablets, and in that experience, Moshe became transformed. He became radiant.
Biblical scholar Aviva Zornberg teaches that this midrash highlights a transformation in Moses. When he is up there studying Torah and forgetting it, he is fully human. But when God grants Moshe the chesed, the loving kindness, of gifting him the Torah so that he will remember, Moshe, in Zornberg’s words, becomes “supernaturally gifted.”
Moshe is transformed from purely human to touched by the divine, a shift made possible by God’s generosity, but, and maybe more importantly, because of Moshe’s receptiveness to being changed. Because Moshe was able to receive a gift, he became gifted. He was elevated not just because God gave a gift, but because Moshe was able to receive it. There are experiences in life that can transform us, if we let them.
And yet, the Torah states clearly that at first, Moshe did not even know that he had been changed. Moshe could not see that his own skin was radiant. We too are often not granted the distance to see ourselves objectively and understand the transformation that we may have gone through. We are often not aware of how gifts that we welcome into our lives affect us, how they change us and impact how we move in this world and shape our relationships.
Social scientist Dan Ariely speaks to this reality. He talks about the power that gifts have on us and our relationships psychologically, in ways we’re often unaware. Gifts, in all kinds of ways, affect the way we relate to others, both when we give gifts, and when we receive them. We can often view relationships, in his language, as transactional ones, which rarely transform us, or we can view them as social ones, which have the power to change who we are and our dynamics with others.
Imagine a scenario, Ariely offers, when you need a couch in your home moved. You ask your neighbor to do you a favor and come over one night to help you move the couch. They agree, come over and you do it together, perhaps tell a joke while it’s happening, and they go home. The next day, to show your gratitude, you buy a bottle of wine and leave it on their doorstep. You accomplished what you needed and had your couch moved, but also connected to your neighbor in the moment. Your neighbor likely felt good about helping you out, especially in a way that didn’t really inconvenience them. It was lovely to get the wine, but it wasn’t really ever about the wine. Everyone feels good about this interaction.
But now imagine that you reach out to your neighbor and say, “I’d like to hire you to help move my couch, and I will pay you $12 (the cost of the bottle of wine).” The neighbor may not be interested in spending their night on this odd job for 12 bucks, and if they did, it would feel, in Ariely’s words, transactional. It wouldn’t be about the relationship, and no one would be transformed because there was no gift- not just the wine, but the gift of time and sacrifice. No giver, and no recipient.
However, in the original scenario, there are multiple gifts - the gift of the neighbor’s time and energy, and the gift of the wine. Both of those are appreciated, both of those elevate the nature of the relationship and affect the individuals involved.
A transactional relationship creates a certain dynamic. If Moshe was only the servant of God, and God said, “here, this is your responsibility to impart these words to the Israelite people, and in exchange, you will be my prophet” - I’m not sure that Moshe would have descended that mountain and felt radiant. But when we enter a social relationship, perhaps a gifting relationship, we are hopefully willing to give and receive in ways that have the capacity to transform.
Part of what allows us to be changed and transformed in the context of a relationship is not viewing it as transactional. When that’s the reality, there is pressure to accomplish and achieve, to remember, to perform well. There is, of course, a time and place for that in all of our lives. But if we’re able to change our orientation to think of certain relationships as offering gifts, without the pressure of performing, of the transaction, we actually gain more. When we act in the realm of gifts, we become gifted, elevated.
For each of us, the spiritual work is in how we allow the relationships in our lives to function this way, and how we can view things in our lives, as gifts. How can we understand the tablets that we carry and usher through life, the unique Torah that we each carry, as elements that can transform us to be radiant? Moshe was able to do this, not because he learned them so well or because he really mastered the law, he was able to be transformed because he viewed them as gifts.
I hope that for each of us, as we move through life and as we navigate our own life’s relationships and experiences, we offer ourselves the possibility of seeing things as gifts. Of giving things the opportunity to transform us. And I pray, that for all of us, when we allow ourselves to receive these gifts, we will be gifted, we will be elevated.
Ken Yehi Ratzon.
