On Shabbat Chol HaMoed Sukkot, we read these very famous words of Torah:“HaShem! HaShem! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and remitting!”
On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we chant those words 18 times. Reading them so soon after Yom Kippur, and in the context of the Torah story in which they appear, has led me to see them in a new way.
The thirteen attributes are a revelation, equal in importance to the revelation on Mt. Sinai. They are a specific response to a cry of pain that comes from Moshe. They are instructions to Moshe for beginning to learn divine qualities of compassion and forgiveness. These instructions are available to all of us when we genuinely realize we need them.
Here is the peshat, or the literal version of, the background story:
Less than forty days after the Israelites are given the Ten Commandments, Moshe is with God on Mount Sinai. They become aware that the Israelites are worshipping the golden calf. God decides to kill all the Israelites, but Moshe talks God out of this. Moshe then comes down the mountain; breaks the tablets of the law that God made for him; destroys the golden calf, grinds it into dust, dissolves the dust in water and makes people drink the water. He confronts his brother, gathers up the Levites, and orders them to execute some 3,000 people, including close relatives if necessary. He berates the rest of the people. Then he asks God to forgive the people.
God says, “You can go into the land I promised you, under the protection of my messenger, but I’m not going with you. Because when we meet, I’ll be giving you the punishment you deserve.” The people hear about this and mourn.
Moshe goes to the ohel mo’ed, his special place for meeting with God panim el panim – “face to face” or “presence to presence.” He tells God, “If I’m to be the one to lead, show me your ways.” God says, “stand in this place in the rock, and I’ll pass by, and then you’ll see achori – ‘my back’, or ‘my aftermath.’ First carve yourself new tablets, and I’ll write on them what I wrote on the first ones. Come up the mountain tomorrow alone.”
Moshe follows the instructions. God passes by. The thirteen attributes are declared. God makes a new covenant with Moshe, with a few new added provisions. Moshe stays on the mountain for 40 days (which is the Torah’s version of the idiom “for like a million days!”). When he comes down, his skin glows so strangely that people are afraid to approach him. He wears a mask when he is with the people, and takes it off only when he communes with God.
Some interpretation, on the level of sode, instructions for spiritual development:
Moshe is badly in need of help. Although Moshe talks God into forgiving the people, he personally, is not at all ready to forgive. He confronts, berates, humiliates, and orders executions. And then, in that emotional state, he goes to straight to his place of meditation where he approaches God to ask for forgiveness for the people.
The answer Moshe receives in prayer is “I’d rather send a messenger to lead them, because I want to punish them!” Moshe realizes the answer mirrors his own spiritual state. It is a reflection of what he thinks and feels as a leader. So, in desperation he says, “Well, then, if I have to lead them, show me your ways!” To this more genuine, honest, internally congruent prayer, God responds, “I will show you tuvi, my goodness.”
When God passes by over Moshe’s face, someone calls out, “HaShem! HaShem! A God compassionate and gracious…” But Torah does not say whether God or Moshe calls. Perhaps Moshe calls out each attribute with the deep longing he has to receive it. Perhaps God calls out each attribute as God transmits it to Moshe. Perhaps Moshe calls out each attribute in wonder as he receives it from God. Perhaps Moshe and God share a kind of spiritual Vulcan mind-meld, where God’s qualities begin to flow into Moshe’s heart, expand there, and take root in Moshe’s personality. So that, in the future, whenever people are in the presence of Moshe, they are in the presence of God’s qualities. The revelation originally received by Moshe is shared.
The integration of these qualities into Moshe’s thought, feeling and action takes some time. Moshe’s process of letting go of his anger, even with the new qualities, takes time – 40 days and 40 nights of meditation. But the aftermath is dramatic. Moshe comes home with his face so changed that people don’t recognize him. They are afraid to approach him with the usual questions and problems.
Torah does not tell us how Moshe spent his time in meditation, or how he changed his face, or whether this kind of experience is intended for Moshe alone, or whether it is available to all of us.
But the Ramak, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, leading sixteenth-century Kabbalist of Tzefat, does. In his book Tomer Devorah, the Ramak explains how each of us can transform every feature of our face as we learn to imitate God’s Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. How we hold our foreheads, how we listen with our ears, how we see with our eyes, the quality of the smile in our cheeks, the quality of our breath as it passes through the nose, the quality of the speech that comes out of our mouth. Each of us can learn to live in the image of God. Although it is our birthright, we have to learn how to manifest it, just as we have to learn everything important in life.
Why read about this on Shabbat Chol Hamo’ed Sukkot? It’s a reminder to follow up on what we asked for at Yom Kippur. It’s the beginning of the season where we hunker down inside, that is, inside ourselves, to lay the groundwork for new growth. May growth and mercy be ours!
— Laura Duhan Kaplan, 2008
Image: Moses by Gustave Dore