64 Friday, August 22, 1975
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Moses the Lawgiver as Man of Action and Historic
Facts in a Fascinating Portrayal by David Daiches
therefore by definition ab-
solute.
octor
•
"A classic by a classicist" chitect of the Exodus and
is the description deservedly the great hero of Jewish
applicable to the very im- liberation from Egyptian
pressive study of Moses the slavery, his name is not
Lawgiver by Dr. David even mentioned once.
Universality is undoubt-
Daiches, in his newest
scholarly study "Moses: The edly another important
Man and His Vision" term to be applied to Moses.
It is evidenced in popular-
(Praeger).
Moses the Meek, the ity, and there is a lighter
leader who reluctantly un- vein in which Daiches con-
dertook to lead his people cludes his brilliant bio-
out of Egyptian bondage, graphy when he states:
There is the negro spir-
who argued with God
against the assignment; itual, which has perpe-
Moses with all the aspects of tuated a memory of Moses
a man who had the normal the liberator in a 'simple,
characteristics of a person sensuous and passionate'
who could both be irritable medium appreciated all
in times of difficulty as well over the world. For one
as responsive to crises — it person who has responded
is Moses the Man who is to the intricate and corn-
portrayed in this most fas- plex patterns of Schoen-
cinating story which has berg's music, so inti-
inspired Christians as well mately related to the
powerful words, there
as Jews.
Moses in the Daiches ac- must be many millions
count is the factual leader, who have been moved by
and the fables are given the simple melodic line
credence in evaluating the and the unsophisticated
man and in expressing the expressive words of
realities of his perform- When Israel was in Egypt
ances and his achievements. /and
e chief
c
The Bible is the
(Let my people go)
source, of course, and ar- Oppressed so hard they
theology, anthropology and could not stand
the works of the world's em- . (Let my people go) . . .
inent scholars who had in Go down, Moses,
the course of the ages stud-
down in Egypt land:
ied the role of Moses are 'Way
Tell
ole
Pharaoh
drawn upon for an illumina- To let my
people go.
tion of the chief character in
As for Moses in the pop-
Jewish spiritual history.
The human Moses ular imagination, he is at
emerges from these de- the same time the biblical
scriptive evaluations in hero and the bearer of an
the work that will add to archetypal Jewish name
scholarly studies and will, often employed for comic
at the same time, provide or satiric effect. Isaac
most thrilling reading by Watts introduced him
lay people. into the hymnal in the
Daiches' "Moses" is all- 18th Century:
inclusive — it is biography,
a recounting of the Jewish
historical era in the time of
Moses and the Exodus from
Egypt, with analyses of
writings by the most emi-
nent in Jewish literary at-
tainments — Martin Buber,
and many others in Jewish
ranks, as well as the Chris-
tian theologians of note.
Noteworthy about this
impressive work are the 124
illustrations — 24 multico-
lored — which are descrip-
tive of Moses the man and
the era in which he served
during the Hebrew-Egyp-
tian conflict and the Exo-
dus. The deep studies de-
voted to Moses in art by
Christians and others is
symbolic of much of this
work.
Dr. Daiches, the eminent
scholar, author of more
than 30 works, who has
taught at Cambridge, Ox -
ford, Chicago - and Cornell
universities and who is
presently professor of En -
glish at Sussex University,
provides definite explana-
tions of the humanism of
the hero of his biography
who was not divided in Jew -
ish history, whose role is
strictly that of a human
being, whose divination was
avoided in Jewish record.
The fact is that in the
,1..-ntire Passover Hagada, in
which he could have been
portrayed as the chief ar -
Could we but climb where
Moses stood,
And view the landskip o'er,
Nor Jordan s stream, nor
death's cold flood,
Should fright us from the
shore.
For generations school-
boys have asked each
other: 'Where was Moses
when the light went out?'
and replied, 'Under the
bed, looking for the
matches.' Thus he moved
easily from the sublime to
the ridiculous, a fate
shared by many great
names.
Moses shares with God
and Jesus Christ the dis-
tinction of being invoked
in oaths and exclama-
tions. When he legislated
against taking the name
of the Lord in vain, he
cannot have imagined
how his would have been
used in the remote future.
The Oxford English Dic-
tionary gives 1855 as the
first recorded use of 'Holy
Moses!' as an oath or ex-
pletive', But Moses, that
meek man, would have
repudiated any exclusive
claim to the adjective: all
the people, he said, should
be holy.
At the same time some of
the most emphatically de-
livered and repeated Mosaic
laws are concerned with so-
cial justice and the relief of
misery. The reiterated com-
mands to assist the widow,
the fatherless and the stran-
ger, the concern with impar-
tial judgement, the interest
in the condition of servants,
the provisions for alleviat-
ing poverty and for not
pressing a poor man's debt,
these all sound like laws
worked out by a compas-
sionate human intelligence
in order to further particu-
lar social end.
commands of God, but as
the commands of the God of
nature and of history who
had by covenant made him-
self the melech (king) of
Israel, and whose divine-
royal edicts were in an abso-
lutely unique category. It
would be too crude simply
to say that we can assume
that Moses delivered his
laws in the name of Yahweh •
and in the context of a cov-
enant between Israel and
Yahweh because he thought
that by getting people to
believe this he was guaran-
teeing that they would obey
them.
If they are interspersed
with cultic commands
which to the modern
mind may seem irrational
or meaningless, they are
nonetheless present, and
they are emphasized.
Daiches in his portrayal of
Moses as a man, and never
as a sune rman
While there are some
omissions — the views of
Henry George, Ahad
Ha'Am and others contain
much additional interpre-
tive material to implement
the account drawn by
Daiches.
Especially instructive in
the Daiches story are the
summations of the tradi-
tional judgments, and
Daiches states inter alia:
irrevocable commands me-
diated by Moses. Their ob-
jective, as God made clear in
his convenant, was to enable
the people to live in peace,
prosperity and stability by
obeying them. That is the
essence of the Mosaic con-
cept of law.
Yet the Mosaic laws are
not presented as utilitar-
ian rules to ensure the
greatest happiness of the
greatest number: God
guarantees happiness to
the community (rather
Moses is presented in
than to the individual)
these traditions as a man,
that obeys them, but this
and fallible. The experi-
is not because in a natur-
ence he underwent alone alistic sequence of cause
by the burning bush in
and effect behavior in
Midian led him both to a
accordance with these
new conception of God
laws could be calculated
and to a belief in the ne-
to result in happiness, but
cessity of bringing the
because it is God's will
Hebrews out of their
that these laws should be
Egyptian slavery, but at
carried out and he will
the same time he is shown
favor the community that
as extremely reluctant to
obeys and punish the
undertake that mission
community that disobeys.
himself and as actually
Of course many of the
arguing persistently with
laws are calculated to
God against God's choice
promote a decent, ordered
of him for leader.
and satisfying life.
This counterpointing of
leadership and meekness, of
special divine favor and
normal human irritability,
seems to be a central part of
what was , handed down
about his character.
He spoke, in a sense, face
to face with God and
brought God's revealed
word to his people, but he is
not a superman or a saint or
an epic hero, or in any way
divine or immortal. At the
end of the story he dies and
he is buried.
We are not told that his
soul goes marching on or
that he took up his place be-
side God in heaven: such
concepts are wholly alien to
the Mosaic traditions. But
he left behind him laws,
The traditions in which given by God, imperatives
Moses is presented and in- that were absolute because
terpreted by scholars divinely given.
The Israelites, then, asso-
through the ages are re-
viewed and re-evaluated by ciated their laws with God's
But that is not the osten-
sible reason why God has
chosen these laws to pro-
mulgate. He has chosen
them because they repre-
sent his will.
The people are not forbid-,
den to eat pig because in a
hot climate the flesh of the
pig might give the eater
trichinosis. The pig is a ri-
tually forbidden animal,
repugnant to the cult of
Yahweh, probably because
the wild boar was consid-
ered sacred in the Syrian
and Phoenician cults.
The prohibition of boiling
a kid in its mother's milk is
not because this offends our
humane feelings but proba-
bly because such a process
was associated with Ugari-
tic milk spells. But in any
case God never gives rea-
sons. The Mosaic commands
are presented as divine and
We must make a distint_
tion between the way the
Mosaic tradition presents
the laws as requiring uncon-
ditional and unreflective
obedience because they rep-
resent the unchallengeable
will of God, and what their
historical origin really must
be.
With respect to Moses it
is impossible to say how
much of the law associated
with his name derives in
any significant way from
him, how much was modi-
fied or codified by him and
how much was taken over
by him as traditional—or
indeed how much tradi-
tional material ignored by
Moses remained alive and
was later absorbed into -the
Mosaic code.
But it was Moses who
gave the law a new and
special kind of authority by
delivering it not only as the
A theophany at Sinai,
and Moses' central part in
it, became established at
an early stage in Israel's
consciousness of its own
history as the real starting
point of their history as a
nation. Something hap-
pened at Sinai in which
Moses and lawgiving were
involved.
By a study of the way in
which the traditional ac-
counts of that event were
preserved and eventually
written down we can try to
discern the outlines of the
character of the man Moses
and of the special nature of
his contributions to the laws
and customs of his people.
Further than that we can-
not go.
Moses in the universality
of acceptance of his teach-
ings and leadership, the-
immensity of the historic
man, are emphasized in
Daiches' "Moses: The Man
and His Vision." Fascinat-
ing, historically superb, this
impressive work gains its
significance from the scho-
larship and brilliant re-
search of the author. It is
historical biography at its
best.
—P.S.
20th Bar-Ilan University
A nniversary Inaugurated
The 20th anniversary celebration of Bar-Ilan Uni-
versity was inaugurated at the university, in Ramat
Gan, Israel, by President Ephraim Katzir of Israel,
shown left, and Phillip Stollman of Detroit, right, global
chairman of the board of the university, together with
Ludwig Jesselson of New York, former global chairman
of the board.