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Last week we discussed the Dubnah Magid’s perspective on this festival, namely, that it is not just about thanking G-d for our freedom but about thanking Him for the slavery and the oppression as well. It is the total Egypt experience – the suffering and the liberation, the pain and the miracles – which made us who we are as a people, establishing the very essence of Jewish destiny and identity.
This idea is captured in a magnificent image, in the verse which describes how Moses, Aaron, and the seventy Elders were on the mountain and saw G-d. Of course, they did not really “see” G-d, because G-d has no physical form; G-d’s incorporeality is one of the basic tenets of Judaism. Rather, what they saw was a representation of G-d, in the form of livnat hasapir uch’etzem hashamayim letohar – “the brickwork of sapphire and like the essence of the heavens for purity” (Exodus 24:10).
What was this “brickwork of sapphire”?