Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach

[Drasha on Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach, 4 April 2026]

Chol Hamoed means “the weekday of the holiday” and the Shabbat that falls during Pesach is Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach We’ve been reading from Leviticus but during Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach we go back to Exodus. Not to the parts about Passover, of course, but to just after the incident of the Golden Calf.

Moses says to God, “Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways”¹ followed by “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!”²

God has so far spoken to Moses from a burning bush³, turned a staff into a serpent, brought about the ten plagues, freed the Hebrew slaves, parted the Sea of Reeds and “had come down upon [Mount Sinai] in fire”⁴ to speak to the Israelites. Moses has spent 40 days on Mount Sinai talking to God and God had written the first ten commandments on stone tablets. Yet only now does Moses ask to see God.

We can interpret this in two ways: Either Moses has established a strong relationship with God and wants to take it to the next level, or, despite everything that’s happened so far, Moses still does not trust God. There are arguments for both sides.

The verse before this portion, Exodus 33:11, says, “God would speak to Moses face to face [panim el panim], as one person speaks to another.” In Numbers, God tells Aaron and Mirian, “With [Moses] I speak mouth to mouth [Pe el Pe], plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds God’s likeness.”⁵ In Deuteronomy, after Moses dies, it says, “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom God singled out, face to face [panim el-panim]”⁶ These passages speak to a very close relationship and it seems natural that Moses would want to put a face to the name.

I had a similar experience in 2013 when I received an unsolicited email from someone I’d never met, a woman in New Zealand, a country I’d never heard of. (Coincidentally, I was on holiday in Israel at the time, though I was in the Negev, not on Mount Sinai.) After some back-and-forth emails, I said I wanted to have a video chat and she said, absolutely not, no way, not going to happen. I said something along the lines of I’d have to stop communicating because I didn’t want to be catfished by a 40-year-old guy living in his mom’s basement. She reluctantly agreed to a video chat and, long story short, I moved to New Zealand and married her.

But I digress.

As for Moses still not trusting God, remember at the burning bush, after God lays out the entire plan for freeing the Israelites, Moses says, “Please…make someone else Your agent.”⁷ God becomes angry, ignores Moses’ request and continues telling Moses what to do. That sort of bullying does not engender trust.

And when Moses accepts the task and is on his way to Egypt with his wife and sons, one night God seeks to kill Moses! Zipporah saves Moses when she takes a flint and cuts off her son’s foreskin.⁸ Not the sort of thing you see at a trust-building workshop.

Later, after God gives the Israelites manna, they cry out, “If only we had meat!” Moses complains to God, not for the first time or the last time, “Why have You…laid the burden of all this people upon me?” God replies rather testily, “[I] will give you meat and you shall eat…until it comes out of your nostrils”⁹ Then Moses responds sarcastically, “The people who are with me number six hundred thousand foot soldiers [alone]... Could enough flocks and herds be slaughtered to suffice them? Or could all the fish of the sea be gathered…to suffice them?” God responds just as sarcastically, “Is there a limit to God’s power? You shall soon see whether what I have said happens to you or not!” None of this speaks to a close collaboration between friends.

And the final straw was at Meribah, after Miriam dies and God tells Moses, “Order the rock to yield its water.” But Moses strikes the rock, twice. God reacts badly: “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.”

Even at the end, when Moses pleads with God, “Let me…cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan,” God says, “Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again!”¹⁰

Either way, whether Moses trusts God or not, he asks to see God and God partially agrees, saying “I will make all My goodness pass before you…. But you cannot see My face, for no mortal may see Me and live.”¹¹

As God does this, God says about himself, “God! God! a Deity compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin—yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”

From this narcissistic run-on sentence the sages derived the 13 attributes of God:

1. Compassion before a person sins
2. Compassion after a person has sinned
3. Possessing the power to bestow kindness
4. Merciful [helps people avoid distress]
5. Gracious [God saves people from distress once it has overtaken them]
6. Slow to anger [God is patient with both the righteous and the wicked. He gives people time to reflect, improve, and repent instead of punishing sinners immediately]
7. Abundant in kindness
8. Truthful (fulfilling His promises)
9. Keeping kindness unto thousands (of generations).
10. Forgiving iniquity [corruption of the heart],
11. Transgression [a willful sin] and
12. Sin [sin committed out of apathy or carelessness]
13. And pardoning. [If one repents.]

According to Maimonides, these attributes are not qualities inherent in God, but rather are methods of His activity.¹² In other words, God does not possess human emotions or passions, but these attributes outline God’s ways of governing the world.

Similarly, in the Talmud¹³ these are called derakhim (ways), which calls back to the beginning of today’s portion: “Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways.”

Maimonides goes on to say that by imitating God's goodness we become, in a sense, agents of divine rule and providence. Perhaps we experience God’s presence through the goodness we create in the world.

These attributes are central to the S’lichot (prayers for forgiveness) and High Holiday services, often recited as a plea for divine mercy. The Talmud¹⁴ explains that God showed Moses a vision of Himself "wrapped" like a communal prayer leader, promising that whenever the people would sin, they could call upon these attributes to evoke mercy.

At a superficial level, we’d all like to “see” God, but I will finish with a warning from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

"I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "The Babel fish could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Shabbat shalom and chag Pesach sameach.

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1. Exodus 33:13 ↩
2. Exodus 33:18 ↩
3. Exodus 3:2 ↩
4. Exodus 19:18 ↩
5. Numbers 12:8 ↩
6. Deuteronomy 34:10 ↩
7. Exodus 4:13 ↩
8. Exodus 4:24-26↩
9. Numbers 11:4-23 ↩
10. Deuteronomy 3:25-26 ↩
11. Exodus 33:19-20 ↩
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Attributes_of_Mercy ↩
13. Sifre, Deuteronomy 49 [ed. Friedmann, p. 85] ↩
14. Rosh Hashanah 17b ↩