The Autobiographical Notes of Moses

Dreamt by Rabbi Ben Scolnic

Introduced & edited by Altay Coskun

Picture from the article ‘Isolated Characters in the Bible”, with permission of Christianity.IQ.com

It all started when the Rabbi taught a class on Biblical History …

He retold the coolest stories of Genesis and Exodus, compared them with Near Eastern and Greek mythical traditions where good points could be made. The students were hanging on his lips, more interested in his gripping narratives than in his scholarly digressions. And so the course moved swiftly from the creation stories over the Noachian Flood and the Patriarchs to the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt, God’s calling on Moses, the crossing through the Red Sea, and the reception of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

“So far for today,” the Rabbi paused. “Next week, we’ll continue with Moses and also cover Joshua and the Judges.” Simon, the laziest student, had already run out of the classroom. Joshua, the brightest student, unleashed a big sigh when getting up, murmuring “finally we will transition from the mythical episodes to the early history of Israel with the Prophet Samuel.” Eli , standing besides him, stared at him with an expression of surprise. “Did you not like the class so far. I never heard such an intriguing presentation on Exodus.” “This may well be,” Joshua responded, “but I am more interested in real history rather than folktales.”

Eli responded: “So, you don’t think that the first two books of Moses have something foundational to say about Israel? I mean, I get it that we need not take the seven plagues or the mysterious divide of the Red Sea literally. And there is obviously some lore about the birth of Moses. But look at the figure himself: does he not appear as a man of flesh and blood? So unlike Hercules or Superman. He’s a man who loves and fears and doubts - just like you and me - and then eventually rises to the occasion. And the whole narrative of the people of Israel, is it not really dependent on Moses’ agency? Why should we not rather believe that he was indeed the first historically tangible leader?” “Nonsense,” Joshua retorted: “fact is fact and fiction is fiction. That’s it!”

Ben, who was overhearing the conversation, smiled. “Is it,” he gently intervened. “Ultimately, we cannot know whether there was indeed a man called Moses who opposed the Pharaoh, led the Israelites out of Egypt, gave them divine law, and headed their march through the desert for decades. Many alternative are possible - but it is probably the more difficult assumption that all this old tradition came out of nowhere.” Eli nodded and added, now more directed to Ben than to Joshua: “You know what strikes me most? The loneliness which Moses experienced, at the court, on his flight, but even later when presumably leading his people: there is a sad loneliness hovering over him, albeit one that really explains how he was the one in his time to be open for God’s message.” “Interesting, Eli, very interesting,” Ben responded. “I’ll think about it.” And so he did.

Later in the evening, he turned to preparing his next archaeological campaign in the Negev, browsing through pictures of wide landscapes, archaeological sites, and satellite images to get a clue of where to start his next dig. He did not find the clue that night, and went to bed. Fallen asleep, he woke up in his dirty clothes, sweaty and covered in dust, while picking and digging and shoveling … until his spade hit something hard. He quickly uncovered a bronze chest, whose content would turn out to be the most precious thing he could have ever imagined: not gold or jewelry, but clay tablets with an archaic Canaanite script. He withdrew to the next shady spot and started deciphering, and was delighted when he realized that this was the oldest Hebrew he had ever seen. Letter by letter, word by word, he recovered the most amazing text that proved Eli’s intuition right. No one other than the real Moses was talking here ...

  • I have spent part of my life writing torot, which tell the stories and give the laws and state the commandments that, I pray, will stand for all time. Just as I stood at Mt. Sinai, and God spoke to me and I spoke His words to the people, so I have written down an account of everything that has happened and everything that has been transmitted to me. Someday, all the torot will become one Torah and will be the light for our people’s path.

    But what I have attempted to keep out of those torot is what I have experienced and what I have felt and how I have reacted.  This has been intentional; I am but a vessel of the LORD. Though many, including my jealous cousin Korah and his followers, and the Reubenites, and my own sister and brother, have said that I have taken too much on myself, and thought too much of myself, I have never thought or acted in this way. When I experienced the power of God, I knew immediately that I am a mere mortal, a mere vessel. I may not have always acted with humility before others, but I have always been humble before God.

    Still, I am a human like every other human, and I am not above feeling every emotion one can feel, including love, glory and triumph, but also crushing disappointment, humiliation, and loneliness.

    It is that personal part of my life that I want to write down, though I do not intend to share this with anyone. Indeed, since I am older than I ever expected to be, I am concerned that I will forget some or all of these things, and I do want to remember them as I think about my life.

    I will start with my first memory. I am two or three years old, and my mother is bringing me to the palace. I am terrified, and I do not understand why my mother is saying that I will have a new mother and a new home. She is not crying, but I am. She is saying that this has to be, and that she believes that I will grow up to be a great man who, she says, will save my family. This makes no sense to me. The princess is very kind, and shows me my new home, and it is beautiful and grand. But what I sense, even on that day, even while I am being showered with care and gifts, is that I will always be alone, and that I will never truly belong anywhere.

    How could I have understood that by being of both worlds, the world of poverty and slavery, and the world of riches and power, I would be the only one who could speak to both peoples? And how could I have known that by being alone, I would be able to hear the Voice of the God? For He is alone, too.

  • My mother might have pretended that she did not know who I was, and everyone went along with the pretense, including Pharaoh, and while I was a child, there was no problem. But I felt that there was a Horus-eye on me as I got older.

    Everything would have been all right, except something was welling inside me. And when I went out of the environs of the palace to see how the Hebrew slaves were being treated, and I saw a taskmaster beating one of them to death, I could not contain myself. I thought that no one was looking, and I killed him, and buried him in the sand. I thought: The slave I saved, who slid away, would never tell anyone, and despite my royal clothes, would not know my name. Looking back, this was naïve of me. Just as the palace knew who I was, the Hebrews always knew about one of them who was being raised in the Great House. So when I went out again, and saw two Hebrews fighting, and tried to intercede, they rudely shouted, “Will you kill us like you killed the taskmaster?” I knew that my secret was out. I was right about Pharaoh’s suspicions. Pharaoh did not summon me to listen to an explanation; he sent his men to kill me, and I fled.

    As I ran out into the desert, at one of the lowest points of my life, I understood that I was neither Hebrew nor Egyptian, that I had no identity. I was welcomed into a Kenite’s household, married the leader’s oldest daughter, became a shepherd. I was safe; I was a husband, then a father; I had a home.

    I thought that this would be my life, and I thought I was content.

    But then came the moment that changed my life. I have thought about it a thousand times, and I still believe that I heard the Voice. I had never heard it before. It sounded like my voice, but somehow grander and deeper. More than the fact that the bush was on fire but did not burn up, it was what the Voice said that was astonishing. I was not meant to be a shepherd of desert sheep. Somewhere inside me, I knew this, but I tried to ignore that voice inside me, and when I heard that I was to return to Egypt, I was not surprised.

    No, that was not the incredible part of what the Voice said. The astonishing part was that the Voice said that just as I had to achieve the destiny set by my miraculous survival as an infant, He had to change how He had related to His people. He could no longer remain at a distance, watching. When I would go to Egypt, I would not be alone as I had been when I left. We were to become what we were to become, together.

  • The Burning Bush has been an image seared into my mind, but at the time, despite my certainty that I had been called, and that the Becoming One was the god of my Hebrew ancestors, and that He would be with me when I went back to Egypt – with all that, I was deathly afraid.

    Even after that experience on the mountain, I was not sure I would go. He had to call me through a miracle just to get my mind moving in the right direction. When I came home to my wife and two sons, especially the infant, I remained reluctant. It was only when I learned that the Pharaoh who sought to kill me was dead that I set out with my family.

    Again, identity was front of mind. I was an Israelite, then an Egyptian, then a Midianite shepherd. I was careful about revealing too much, lest the Pharaoh’s spies heard something in the desert wind. So, I did not circumcise my sons, in order to keep my identity quiet.

    But the Becoming One knows all, and when we were at an inn on the way back to Egypt, He struck me with some terrible illness which put me near death, though I cannot remember any of the details. Tzipporah told me, and not a few times, that she understood why I had been punished, and circumcised my son, placing the foreskin on me and calling me a Bridegroom of Blood, warding off the evil, re-asserting my Hebrew identity, but making her own attitudes very clear.

    Why would this act be so necessary? Since Abraham, the covenant of fertility had been fulfilled on both sides, with the Divine making our people so fertile that even the killing of infants and enslavement could not deter our astonishing growth, and the Hebrew circumcising their sons. How could I go back to lead the circumcised Hebrews with an uncircumcised son? The Becoming One had said that Israel would be his first-born son, but that the first-born sons of the Egyptians would die, but not the Israelite first-born, so I have imagined that my son had to be clearly marked so that he would be redeemed.

    That bizarre night convinced Tzipporah to take the two boys back to her father and the sheep, while I went on to Egypt, convinced by a miracle and a near death experience who I was and who I was becoming.