Parshat Ki Tisa: A veil of light

How did Nathaniel Hawthorne dream it up? How did he come up with his short story “The Minister’s Black Veil?” The Puritan minister of an old New England town one day inexplicably covers his face with a black veil that casts a shadow of gloom between him and his community to the day of his death. Hawthorne read this week’s parshah, no doubt.

After Moshe received the second Luchot, all the way at the end of the parshah, we are told that Moshe’s face beamed forth with Divine light (“karan or panav”), a light so strong he needed to cover his face with a masveh, a veil, to shield his frightened people from that light.

Let’s perform a thought experiment. Imagine an everyday interaction between Moshe and the people, on a typical day during their forty years in the wilderness. Now, in that picture was Moshe wearing a veil? He should have been. Because our parshah depicts Moshe’s beaming face and the veil it required as a permanent reality. Indeed Rav Saadya Gaon and Ibn Ezra confirm what is implicit in the passage itself – that the veil was necessary for the entire forty years from the day he donned it to the day of his death.

Didn’t Moshe’s veil get in the way of his teaching the People Torah and facilitating their relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu? Did such a major barrier really exist between Moshe and the Jewish People? Is it possible that Moshe’s light-blocking veil had the same impact as the minister’s black veil?