Later, when I saw him gently shepherd his flock, and heard him sing hesitantly to the newborn lambs, that is when I came to love him, this human, simple and complex at the same time, always trying his best, and getting it right as much as he was getting it wrong, but trying nevertheless.
Both he and I had to learn to overcome frustration with the other, and my anger, reflecting his, had to be curtailed a number of times. But like two people in a marriage we learned each other’s ways, and grew in intimacy even when we wavered in our trust.
Because I love him, dear Angels, that’s why I chose Moses to lead the people, not because he was smarter or better or stronger. I hoped love was going to make him all these things and more, but I understood it was not going to make him perfect. And like a great love he broke my great heart in the end. Were I human, he would have crossed into the promised land at the head of the Israelites, horns and cymbals sounding in triumph. But I have to be who I am.
None of this means that I am disappointed. Seeing his struggles, his backsliding, his arguing with that ragtag lot—and with me, too—made me understand that creating people less than perfect was not a mistake. It was a promise; it was a love song to the world. Love songs, too, are never perfect.
When things were at their worst, with his people (whom he at the time referred to as My people!) behaving badly, and Aaron behaving badly along with them, Moses dealt with the situation and came back up the mountain to receive that second set of tablets. I knew I had made the right choice when he showed himself to be a true mensch, no longer speaking of himself as one apart from his people, but as one with them: “Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own!” (Exodus 34:9)
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