Parshas Ki Sisa

The climax of history arrives. We are finally brought back to the beginning of time when man took his first steps on Hashem’s earth. Hashem gives us the Torah, the climax of creation and with it the opportunity to rectify man’s first sin of eating forbidden fruit from the `tree of knowledge’, the single act that broke the world and introduced death and suering to the tapestry of history. Moshe said he would be up on the Mountain for forty days and we, not realizing we were o by a day, grow concerned. Thinking Moshe passed away we try to build a conduit for connecting to Hashem, like Moshe but one not of flesh and blood but of gold, that can never die. This act, again, broke the world, reintroducing death and suering. Moshe sees this betrayal and the Two Tablets, given to us by Hashem, are shattered. Moshe then returns to the top of Mt Sinai to plead on our behalf for Divine Mercy. Hashem hears Moshe’s cry and agrees to `stay His anger’ and once again gives us a set of Tablets and agrees to stay with us as we travel to Israel, our promised homeland. During this conversation, Moshe makes a seemingly odd request. He asks to `see’ Hashem. Hashem responds He will `pass before him’ but he “cannot see My face, for no mortal may see Me and live.” (Exodus 33:20).

Why was Moshe asking to `see’ Hashem and what was Hashem’s answer? I heard a beautiful explanation based on the Talmud Berachos 7a. There, it says Moshe was really asking the biggest question in all of philosophy: why do bad things happen to good people? Hashem respond that to know such a thing requires at minimum a full knowledge of every event that ever took place to anyone in all of history and more. And “no mortal may see Me and live.” But Hashem agreed to pass by him and show Moshe the `knot on the back of His tefillin’, a knot from which two straps extend. Hashem was saying that one strap represents Divine strict justice and one represents Divine mercy. And while they may seem to be separate and incompatible, they are tied together at the source, the know that represents loving kindness.

Ultimately, we yearn for the days of Moshiach when the light of Hashem is revealed to the world and He grants us the ability to se the full history and how while we truly suered, it was precisely through that suering that Hashem showered us with his greatest love. May those days come soon.