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About Face – Ki Tisa

Don’t turn around, this is about THE face. In this week’s Torah portion we are told the process of G-d communicating with Moses and how exactly it happened. It took place at the Tabernacle (dubbed the tent of meeting due to its function.) and Moses entered the tent. The signal that a meeting was going on was a “pillar of cloud” descending from heaven and hovering over the Tabernacle. This sign was able to be seen by the entire nation and they all knew that at that moment G-d was conversing with Moses.

In perhaps the most amazing and unimaginable sentences in the Torah, it says that G-d spoke to Moses face to face like one friend to another. For us to understand that verse we would need to see it ourselves as it’s kind of hard to explain something that doesn’t have a definition. The question is why does the Torah have to tell us how Moshe corresponded with G-d; all we need to know is that he did correspond with G-d and what the message was. What is the use in telling us something that we can’t understand? There is a profound message here hidden between the words. It says they spoke face to face like one friend to another; why the addition of one friend to another? Isn’t face to face as straight up as it gets?
The answer is that we have the ability to speak to G-d face to face as well. When two human beings interact with each other through a friendly medium that moment is not only a meeting between two bodies but between two souls. A soul is a piece of G-d, a part of Him. So when one friend confronts another there is a deeper interaction taking place. There is a meeting of souls, a meeting of human beings and a part of G-d. The message the Torah was giving us is that we shouldn’t think that only Moses was privy to such a revelation, but that we all have the ability to view what he saw through G-d’s creations. Moses saw G-d unmasked, we see Him through a bit of a veil. By connecting with our own souls, our vision of the souls of our friends becomes clearer. The veil becomes more transparent, and the sight becomes more vivid and real.
March 6, 2015 | From the Rabbi's Desk | 0

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