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Parshat Yitro
1998
A Little Pre Pesach Torah
It is an old question, but still an interesting one, Why is Moses absent from the Passover seder?
A suggestion from this week's parsha.
1.When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel his people, and that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt;
2.Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back,
3.And her two sons; and the name of one was Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land;
4.And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was my help, and saved me from the sword of Pharaoh;
Rashi comments that Zipporah and Moses' children went back to Midian before the Exodus and the plagues and only returned now, after they were completely out of danger, to Moses. During the first seder in Egypt, Moses was without his family. There was nobody to ask him ma nishtanah, nobody with whom to share the Paschal Lamb or tell the story.
The latter part of the Parsha is a description of the Revelation at Sinai. According to tradition, following Mt Sinai, Moses never went back to his tent, never resuming conjugal relations. He remained on call for G-d. After Sinai, Jews returned to their normal lives. Moses could not.
In our tradition we remember Moses, as Moshe Rabenu, our rebbe and teacher. At the same time, Moses is diminished at the central Jewish celebration involving family. Contained in Moses is a tension that reveals itself in many places in the Talmud, the tension between a love of family and children and a love of Torah, both of which can subsume your entire being. Moses is our teacher of Torah, but not our teacher of family. To emulate Moses is to leave the family for Sinai, the beit Midrash. To love Torah can mean walking away from your other love (Rabbi Akiva and Rachel). While this tension has yet to be resolved, I see a hint that around the table, surrounded by family, bonded together by blood and story, there is no place for Moses.
Prepared by Rabbi Michael Balinsky, Northwestern University Hillel
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