Parashat Beha’alotcha recounts that in the wilderness Aaron and Miriam spoke out against their brother, Moses, complaining about his marriage to a Cushite woman and decrying the lack of recognition they themselves received as God’s prophets. God rebukes the siblings: “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make Myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream. With my servant Moses it is not so … Mouth to mouth I speak to him, and clearly, not in riddles.” (Numbers 12:6–8). Moses, God declares, is simply on a different level from his siblings and all other prophets. Other prophets see God in visions. Moses converses with God face to face.
Jewish tradition has always seen Moses as unique among prophets. The Zohar likewise addresses Moses’ special status:
He opened and said: “And God spoke to Moses face to face” (Exodus 33:11). Through many exalted and precious degrees, Moses — the faithful prophet — was distinguished above all the other prophets of the world, for all of them in comparison with him were like a monkey before human beings. The other prophets gazed through the mirror that does not shine, and even so they did not raise their faces upward to behold. Rather, as Scripture says: “I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground” (Daniel 8:18). Moreover, the words were not revealed to them openly.
But Moses, the faithful prophet, was not so. He gazed through the shining mirror and remained firmly established in his state. More than that: He raised his head to behold — like one speaking to his companion and saying: Raise your head and let your face look directly into mine, so that you may know the matter.
Thus Moses (received revelation) face to face: He raised his head without fear, his face uplifted, contemplating the radiance of the Supreme Glory, and neither his mind nor his face underwent any alteration, unlike the other prophets. For when they prophesied and contemplated, they departed from their own control and awareness; the radiance of their faces changed, and they knew nothing of this world. Moses was not so. Moses gazed upon that Supreme Degree itself and did not depart from self-possession or awareness. For at the very moment when he contemplated the radiance of the Supreme Glory, immediately afterward, “he returned to the camp” (Exodus 33:11), to speak with the people concerning all that they needed. His mind remained settled within him as before — and even more so. This is the meaning of: “he returned to the camp.”
Zohar 3:268b–269a
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The Zohar evocatively analogizes the difference between Moses and other prophets to the difference between humans and monkeys. It also explains what this means: While the other prophets perceive the prophetic vision through the lowest sefira, the sefira of Malkhut (“the mirror that does not shine”), Moses alone receives prophecy through a higher sefira, Tiferet (“the shining mirror”). Moses’ prophecy is direct, clearer, more concrete.
The Zohar is particularly interested in the prophet’s psychological stateduring a prophetic experience. It explains that while other prophets would routinely fall on their faces when receiving a vision, Moses would remain upright. The Zohar understands this to mean he did not lose himself in the process. God speaks to Moses “mouth to mouth,” reciprocal language that conveys the idea that Moses stood in the full depth of his humanity and sanity, experiencing God and the divine word more directly. By contrast, other prophets, when met with the word of God, underwent a mental transformation, “the radiance of their faces changed” — in other words, they quite literally lost their minds.
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This characterization of Mosaic prophecy compared to others is surprising, since it is generally assumed that the intensity of mystical elevation is proportional to the practitioner’s detachment from earthly life. The goal, we tend to assume, is to merge with another plane of existence — perhaps even to achieve unio mystica, union with God. Yet, here the Zohar that inverts that expectation: The greatest prophet is the one capable of receiving a prophetic vision with feet firmly planted on the ground. His superiority lies in his ability to receive the prophetic vision in full possession of his mind and consciousness, in full possession of his humanity.
The Zohar doesn’t stop there. Human prophecy — it contends — is bound up not only in the humanity of the prophet, but also in his social attachments. Indeed, the prophet’s capacity to receive prophecy stems from the community that surrounds him. The Torah emphasizes that as soon as Moses received the word of God, he returned to the camp. Moses, the Zohar contends, never left the camp, just as he never “lost his mind.” The other prophets, by contrast, removed themselves from community to experience revelation. After that, they needed a reintegration, time to reconnect their prophetic self with their earthly self, and with the human community from which they had withdrawn in order to receive the divine word.
The Zohar here overturns common conceptions of prophecy, seeking to impart to its readers the recognition that the greatness of prophecy and mystical vision is not measured by how much the spirit ascends and detaches from the prophet’s earthly life — but rather the opposite: by how much he succeeds in preserving his human, earthly, social self during the prophecy. It is the prophet’s ability to stand tall before God, in the full stature of his humanity, that provides the measure of his achievement.
While this passage conceives Moses as unparalleled, the difference between Moses and the other prophets is not a dichotomous. Rather, prophets are seen on a spectrum, from those who are more able to maintain their humanity while receiving divine communication, to those who are less. All are thus capable of becoming more and more Moses-like. The aspiration to ascend in prophecy, the Zohar teaches, is the challenge of prophesying while preserving one’s individual personality and humanity.
This piece was originally published as part of A Year of Zohar: Kabbalah for Everyone, an original series produced by My Jewish Learning and Sefaria. Sign up for the entire series here.
