Moses and the Apter Rebbe

• In Event: Potpourri: Mysticism and Rabbinic Literature

Abstract

In the volumes, TORAT EMET and OHEIV YISRA'EL, Avraham Yehoshu’a Heschel (the Apter Rebbe), who died in 1825, referred to Moses in the most laudable terms. He viewed Moses as embodying the SOD, the very mystery of Divine Oneness; through his agency, the role of God was revealed to the world, and he viewed Moses’ leadership as rooted in his having attained the level of ‘AYIN, a mystic state of being in which he completely transcended all consciousness of self.
The same Apter Rebbe, relating to God’s refusal to allow Moses to live and enter the Land, explained Moses’ plan -were he to enter the Land- as involving his proceeding to the designated Temple-site where he would pronounce the Ineffable Name of God in its written form and thus eradicate all evil from existence. Seemingly, the preacher and commentator believed that Moses would have been able to achieve that aim, but God –he indicated- would not consent to his strategy.
The Apter Rebbe who viewed Moses as having nothing less than a metaphysical role, explained that Moses had to die because it was not God’s will to achieve the redemption of existence itself merely through such a cultic act rather than through the efforts of countless generations of devout, righteous persons who would wrestle with the evil present within their very makeup.
That repudiation of Moses’ aspiration and way of thinking –which was said to represent a reliance simply on God’s graciousness rather than upon ongoing human effort- constituted the high dramatic point in the Apter Rebbe’s commentary in which Moses remained a spiritual giant who also suffered from a fatal flaw in his thinking. The core and ultimate difference between Moses’ strategy –as presented in the homilies- and the thinking of the Apter Rebbe himself, might be understood as two decisively different conceptions of evil. While Moses retained his exulted standing in the two volumes containing the homilies of the Apter Rebbe, the preacher recognized that, at the same time, no one, not even Moses, has a claim to perfect, infallible understanding.

Author

• Aryeh J. Wineman, Independent Scholar