Welcome to KOE's project, dt@oke. Thank you to Evan Farber for writing this week's dvar torah. If you'd like to participate in this project through writing or receiving divrei torah, please contact Jason Herman ar dt@koe.org. Shabbat shalom.

Although the normal Haftarah this Shabbat would be trumped by either of two special Haftarot, we will be, in fact, a day off. For the first of the two special Haftarot (besides the Haftarah for Parshat HaChodesh) is that which we read on the day before Rosh Chodesh. But it would be much more fitting if this Shabbat and this Rosh Chodesh coincided exactly.

The Parshah this Shabbat reaches not only the end of the Book of Exodus, but the Book's third and final climax: the completion of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle or roving Temple that Moses and the people built in the desert. As we will read tomorrow, "And it was on the first month, in the second year, on the first day of the month, the Mishkan was erected" (Ex. 40:17). Yet Rosh Chodesh Nissan – the actual date to which that verse refers – falls this year on Sunday.

The date on which the Mishkan was completed was indeed a momentous day, and it is referred to again at the beginning of the Book of Numbers. After the biblical narrative takes a detour for the entirety of Leviticus and the census at the beginning of Numbers, the "story" resumes again right where it left off: on the day the Mishkan was completed. Numbers 7:1 tells us that "on the day that Moses finished erecting the Mishkan" the Princes of the Tribes brought their famous offerings, and after a small juggling of the chronology, we return again to "the day the Mishkan was erected" in Numbers 9:15.

The grandeur of that day must have been striking for the people of Israel who witnessed it. In the past 11 1/2 months, the nation had left Egypt, stood at Sinai and received the Ten Commandments, and then sunken quickly out of God's favor upon sinning with the Golden Calf. Although the nation had witnessed God personally at Sinai, it could only weep at its distancing from God after the Golden Calf: Moses moved the Tent of Meeting outside the camp, and it was only there that God's Cloud of Glory would descend (Ex. 33:9). What was more, the people could do nothing but watch and bow, for the Cloud descended only when Moses entered the Tent, and the nation was excluded. And although Moses did afterwards receive the second set of Tablets along with a promise that "before all your nation I will perform wonders" (34:10), when Moses finally did descend with the second Tablets it remained more a personal moment for him than a national event: we are not told of any such wonders at t! hat point, but rather only that Moses' face shone with such brilliant rays of light that the people were afraid to look at him (34:29-30). Thus, imagine the people's sense of satisfaction and joy once the Mishkan was built. The people had played a central role in funding it (36:3) and indeed, in actually building it (39:42). And now, God's Cloud of Glory validated their efforts: "And the Cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Glory of God filled the Mishkan" (40:34). It was a complete reconciliation of God and the people, and it was a total fulfillment of the promise God made at the beginning of the project: "And they will make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them" (25:8).

One odd thing happens amidst all this national joy. As a stark contrast to the time of Moses' greatest closeness to God at the moment of the nation's greatest distress, in this moment of reconciliation Moses finds himself thrust remarkably away from its center: "And Moses was unable to enter the Tent of Meeting because the Cloud dwelt on it" (40:35). Our Rabbis pounce upon the problem here: How is this possible? It is clear from elsewhere that Moses could and did enter the Mishkan. Rashi cites Numbers 7:89 – "And when Moses went to the Tent of Meeting to speak to Him" – but offers as a resolution that the latter verse referred to a time when the "Cloud" was not present upon the "Tent," as it was only then that Moses could enter. But other rabbis object. First, we are told that "so it was continuously, the Cloud covered it" (Num. 9:16), and second, we know that the Cloud of Glory was not an obstacle to Moses: "when Moses came to the midst of the Cloud, he ascended the mou! ntain" back at Sinai (Ex. 24:14). The verse from last week's reading, after the sin of the Golden Calf, is even more problematic: "And when Moses came to the Tent, the Pillar of the Could descended and stood at the entrance to the Tent and spoke with Moses ... And God spoke to Moses face to face, as a man would speak to his neighbor" (Ex. 33:8, 10). Our rabbis are deeply troubled, and rightly so: Moses' inability to enter at this supreme juncture was more deeply out of the ordinary.

Perhaps one answer is that Moses was not physically unable to approach the Tent, repelled by a Divine Force. Perhaps his inability was not because the Cloud came to rest upon the Mishkan, but rather because the Cloud came to rest upon the Mishkan. The Mishkan was the people's project and its completion was the people's day, and Moses was unwilling and unable to set himself apart from that. He resumed the role of a member of the people. And it was probably a role he had longed for. For after he returned from Sinai with a second set of Tablets and with a literally shining countenance, the people feared speaking to him "and he placed over his face a veil" (34:33). Only blind people, it is likely, can imagine the depth of isolation and alienation that Moses must then have felt. And, knowing Moses as we do from the many depictions of his selfless pleading on behalf of the people, we can be sure that he would have quite willingly traded away the proximity to God that his glow! reflected and the isolation from his people that it engendered in exchange for a national reconciliation with God, even if it meant Moses' own distance from the Divine would increase. Indeed, this very episode affirms that assertion: Moses willingly recounts to the people that God had chosen Bezalel and Aholiav for the Mishkan's construction work, and he is quite content to allow the Princes of the Tribes the very first sacrifices that dedicate the Mishkan. He need not place himself at the center; he is happy for the rest of the people to be there. It is a frame of mind and not simply a sudden retort when he later tells Joshua that "Would that all the people of God were prophets, if only God would place His Spirit on them" (Num. 11:29).

We should not, of course, be surprised at any of this. For the Torah tells us that Moses was the most modest man to walk the Earth (Num 12:3). Yet it is comforting that while Moses may not have been willing or able to enter the Tent at that particular moment, the respect that he garnered from God and from the people continued only to increase. For it is immediately after the mention of this momentous day in the Book of Numbers that God instructs Moses to make for himself trumpets (Num. 10:2). And it is further comforting that only four verses later – though that, already, is the beginning of the next Book – we are told that "He called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting" (Lev. 1:1). Perhaps most satisfying is the thought that for a brief moment, Moses had managed to achieve the quintessential goal of a national religious leader: he had managed to encourage such national participation in the worship of God that he essentially made his role as a leader a! n invisible one. He himself was probably most gratified that the Book of Exodus closes by stressing not only that the Cloud of Glory rested upon the Mishkan throughout its travels, but that it rested there "before the eyes of the whole House of Israel" (40:38). The entire people once again had access to God.

Alas, however, this Dvar Torah is just one day off. For this Shabbat is still not yet the first of Nissan, the day when the Mishkan was in fact completed. But as we approach that day and the more major holiday that shortly follows, it is worth reconsidering our own place in this story. Moses' absence from the Hagadah is usually taken as a way of stressing that God is the central Actor in the Exodus story. But as we are supposed to be not only retelling, but reliving, the Exodus, it is worth pushing this point a bit further: Yes, Moses' absence does stress the centrality of God's role. But doesn't it also tell something about us?

For more information, please contact us at www.koe.org