Elad’s blog

Happy Passover everybody. We just finished to read the Haggada. I wanted to note, in this occasion,  an interesting insight regarding that ancient text, probably widely known among certain people, but not known enough.

The Haggadah describes the great immigration story of the Israeli tribes from Egypt into the land of Kna’an. This story occupies four out of the five books that make up the Torah, and you have there a clear leader: Moses. The bible - and certainly the Torah (which is sometimes named after him) - is simply undescribeable without Moses, the greatest prophet of all, the only one who talked with god eye to eye, and so forth.

Yet he is missing.

Reading carefully the Haggadah - a text that goes back over 1900 years without any modification - you can read  a lot about god and her miracles; some things that wise people of the Mishna said; and very few biblical figures -  David, Ishay, and Aharon -  are occasionally represented in a very minor way (mostly at the parts that come after the dinner, so many people skip them). God is there with all her glory. Moses is not mentioned.

Not by name, not by deeds, not in any form. The most crucial individual to the formation of the people of Israel is simply not there. Couldn’t have been wiped away more thoroughly.

There are heaps of explanations for this, of course, but I don’t want to get to any of them. I just think that in this evening, when the Jews - each year for a few thousasnds years now - celebrate being a people, Moses - not that he needs it or anything - should be given a credit.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 23:06 and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.