Moses the Independent Partner
As we begin reading the Book of Exodus this Shabbat our minds turn to the man Moses and his prophecy. The job of the prophet is to convey God’s message with precision. By contrast, the job of the teacher is to make the message accessible to the learner. These two roles can sometimes clash, especially when the messenger feels that there is incompatibility between the message and the audience. While Moses is identified as the greatest of prophets, the appellation ascribed to him in Rabbinic tradition is rabbeinu, our teacher.
In TRADITION’s Winter 2025 issue we featured Zvi Grumet’s “Moses: The Independent Partner” (open access). This essay reads the Biblical text focusing on God’s instructions to Israel regarding the Pesah in Egypt and the future celebrations and commemorations, alongside Moses’ surprising method of implementing those instructions. The reader is led through the text to discover that Moses is more creative than one might have imagined, and that God’s receptivity to the creativity proves equally surprising.
That essay has now been included in Grumet’s recently released Exodus: The Genesis of God’s People (Maggid Studies in Tanakh).
Read “Moses: The Independent Partner” as we enter the Book of Exodus.
Rabbi Dr. Zvi Grumet is Director of Education at The Lookstein Center.