Shabbat Thoughts -Ki Tissa

Wherever you grew up you probably heard that Jews were/are thought to have horns. For centuries, we have been accused of being different and the charge of a genetically transmitted deformity would go a long way to reinforcing  negative attitudes against Jews. Some authorities trace this allegation to the famous statue of Moses, crafted by Michelangelo, wherein two horns are plainly evident. Obviously, we are not horned and our human bodies are the same as all human bodies;

(If you prick us do we not bleed –Act 3  The Merchant of Venice- another artistic source contributing to European anti-Semitism).

      It is this week’s Parshah (Ki Tissa) which bears a cryptic passage referring to Moses’s appearance after descending from Mt. Sinai.  “And the children of Israel saw that Moses’s face was KEREN OR  PANAV and they stood away from him.” (Ex 34:35).

‘Keren’ can mean horn or beam. It is obvious that in some places in our Hebrew Bible, ‘keren’ refers to a horn because the passage refers to animals. But the Hebrew word ‘keren ‘is attached to ‘or’ which means skin and ‘panav’ which means face. Thus, the phrase has something to do with Moses’s face’s skin.  Other contexts plainly point out that light can be conveyed by ‘keren’.

     The issue arises because a Latin translation of the Tanach known as Vulgate, renders ‘keren’ as horn. It is plausible that the Vulgate which was widely available led to Michelangelo’s inclusion of horn in his famous sculpture. How else could Michelangelo have conveyed the effect of a halo within a marble statue?

     To maintain the offensive and insulting assertion that Moses (and therefore his descendants) are horned reinforces centuries-old antipathies which only serve to brook racist paranoia. Rather than appreciating the symbolic power of a mortal’s appearance being transformed by a deeply spiritual encounter, there are those who seek to perpetuate stereotypes for the sole purpose of delegitimizing people who are different.

How contrary this bias is to the episode described in this week’s parshah—wherein we learn of Moshe’s interaction with the Creator of the universe for the purpose of presenting principles of law and justice to be shared with all humanity.

Shabbat Shalom. Rabbi Steve Silberman