Angelic escapades - Review

Judaism, Wntr, 2002 by Joel Streicker

Moses and the Angels. By ILEENE SMITH SOBEL (paintings by Mark Podwal). New York: Delacorte Press. 1999.

Moses and the Angels is a unique, yet ultimately unsatisfying, children's book. The author splices fantasmagorical stories of angels from midrashim and legends into the Torah's version of Moses, making the Torah's account, with its burning bushes, parting seas, and divine voices, seem downright tame. One wonders what to make of the irruption of angels into a children's book about Moses. I imagine that the author, as Elie Wiesel suggests in his introduction, seeks to appeal to children's capacity for the magical. Perhaps it is a kind of religio-cultural prophylactic: we Jews have as much weird, magical stuff as any Disney movie or hundred-armed Hindu goddess, so there is no need to stray from the flock in search of the fantastic. Perhaps the angels occupy the same niche that talking or otherwise human-seeming animals do in the secular imaginary of children's literature. Both talking animals and angels have magical qualities, the most important being the power to calm the fears arising from our sense of powerle ssness-for children, powerlessness before the adult world; for adults, powerlessness before tragedy, the inevitability of death, and other painful facts of human existence.

Many people will not recognize much of the Moses story told in Moses and the Angels. The sheer outlandishness of some of the incidents is, at times, an oddly refreshing antidote to the sober image of Moses the wise leader-or his more recent incarnation as the model manager or CEO (David Baron and Lynette Padwa, Moses on Management: 50 Leadership Lessons from the Greatest Manager of All Time; Robert L. Dilenschneider, Moses: CEO: Lessons in Leadership). For example, the text recounts a tale in which Pharaoh captures Moses and sends him to be executed for killing an Egyptian taskmaster. As the executioner's sword descends, Moses' neck miraculously turns into a pillar of marble (the author does not state clearly whether an angel caused this), bending the blade. The Angel Michael then appears and takes on Moses' form; the executioner pursues Michael, allowing another angel to lead Moses to safety in Ethiopia. The unsettled feeling one gets when confronting such a different version of a well-worn story can be hea lthy.

However, on balance, adding such a heavy dose of angels impoverishes, rather than enriches, the Torah version of the Moses story. The stress on angels diminishes Moses'-and the people Israel's-humanity, in the process leaching most of the dramatic tension from the story. The drama depends on a credible representation of human agency under extreme conditions. The angels' primacy distracts us from more closely considering Moses' relationship with God and with the people Israel. The angels efface the most interesting and consequential implications of Moses' actions. Little attention is given, for instance, to the fractiousness of the band that Moses led nor to Moses' strengths and failings as a leader. Instead, in Moses and the Angels, angels of varying shapes and dispositions intercede at critical junctures, turning Moses into a passive recipient of angelic favors.

Of course, miraculous intercession occurs in the Torah version, yet there it does not overshadow the human dimension of the problems that Moses and the people faced. For example, Moses and the Angels relates that the evil angel Samael tricked the people into believing that Moses would not return from Mount Sinai. In despair, the people turned to Aaron to build them a golden calf. Upon returning, Moses was furious. He ground the calf to dust, cast it on the water, and compelled the people to drink. Those who had worshipped the calf turned to gold (and, presumably, died--though in a book filled with miracles, who can be certain? The author does not tell us). The people are portrayed as dupes of the evil angel, and their subsequent punishment seems correspondingly less just. In contrast, in the Torah version, the people are understandably tom by fear and doubt, yet nonetheless they are accountable for what they have done.

The book's language reflects and contributes to its lack of drama. The writing is understated to the point of colorlessness, evoking little passion or humor. Moreover, a distracting tic in the writing periodically surfaces. In describing the incidents at Marah, the author writes: "After three days in the desert, the Hebrews ran out of water. At Marah, their spirits soared. Water was found. But soon it was discovered that the water was bitter. While the Hebrews grumbled about their leader, Moses spoke to God. The Lord showed Moses a laurel tree and told him to write His name on its wood. Moses threw the wood into the water, and the people were able to drink. The water had become sweet" (37-39). The author describes an event and only afterward points to its significance.

My quarrel with Moses and the Angels stems, in part, from distaste with this ample mystical vein of the tradition itself. Yet I also think that it is a question of proportion: I find angel stories interesting and enlightening in small quantities. Using the presence of angels as the main unifying thread results in a narrative that feels as grotesquely misproportioned as that angel in the third heaven with its 70,000 heads, each with 70,000 tongues praising God. There is simply not enough humanity in the narrative to make me care deeply for the protagonists nor probe the implications of their actions.