Moses: A Human Life (Jewish Lives)

Not knowing underlies all of Pharaoh’s persecution policies.

Precisely when he witnesses human suffering, a new fraternal consciousness arises within him. Once he allows himself to see, he arrives obliquely at a knowledge of brotherhood. This is the meaning of va-yigdal—“he grew”: this is his first crisis of maturation.

An epidemic of deafness makes language futile. How should Moses speak in such a world?

The term that is used in classic mystical texts to describe this constricted condition is Galut ha-dibbur—the Exile of the Word. Language itself suffers a kind of alienation; it loses its force and is lost to human access. At

Unable to comprehend their own history, they cannot truly hear God’s message or speak their own redemption.

I was allowing myself—my I—to be read by the text.

Buber’s articulation of the paradox of prophecy comes to mind: “It is laid upon the stammering to bring the voice of Heaven to Earth?”

These words emerge “from out of the Burning Bush,” from the thorny complexity of human pain.

The creation of a third subject (that exists in tension with the writer and the reader as separate subjects) is the essence of the experience of reading.