Recognizing Moses

"Who is this Moses?" (name that quote)

Right about the time I posted the Moses and Pharaoh giveaway, I updated my iPhoto software. It has a face-recognition feature that freaks me out a little.  I played around with it last night, what with being awake at 2:30am and feeling generous with my time. It automatically scrolled through my pictures asking me to name and then confirm whom was whom. Until I did so, all faces were tagged “unnamed.”

And then, up popped Moses. Pictures of my action figures were in there, for the blog post.  There he was, his vinyl visage targeted in a square and captioned “unnamed.”  Maybe I was a bit woozy, but I thought it was funny.  And, it was kind of cute, the helplessness of iPhoto when faced (literally) with Judaism’s biggest prophet.  I can’t fault iPhoto for the egregious cultural illiteracy of not recognizing Moses, can I?

Then again, Passover is just around the corner, and perhaps this is a reminder that Moses is never named in a traditional haggadah. The Rabbis who codified it wanted to keep God as the central player. Wasn’t it enough that Moses got so much face time in the Torah?  The Rabbis didn’t want to risk folks like us deifying a human, turning him into a larger-than-life, super-powered hero, someone who might someday get made into an action figure . . .    Oooops.

Link:
Here’s an article in MyJewishLearning.com about the no-Moses-in-the-haggadah thing.

Quote: I think Edward G. Robinson says “Who is this Moses,” rather than Yul Brynner, but I won’t know for sure till I watch the Ten Commandments again.