Rabbi Howard Morrison

The origin of wearing a mask may have started long before Purim. In this week's Parsha, after Moses descends the mountain for a second time with a new set of Ten Commandments, the Torah states, "Afterwards, all the Israelites came near, and he (Moses) instructed them concerning all that the Lord had imparted to him on Mount Sinai. And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a VEIL over his face (Exodus 34:32-3)."

In the following verses, we learn that when Moses did not wear the veil, his face was radiant, harkening back to when Moses descended the mountain with the new Ten Commandments. The Hebrew expression for the skin of his face being radiant is "Ki Karan Ohr." In his commentary, Rashi writes, "'Keren' is an expression connected with the word 'Karnayim (horns)', and the phrase 'Karan Ohr - the light-horned,' is used here because light radiates from a point and projects like a horn."

Sadly, the famous artisan Michelangelo misunderstood this text and depicted Moses as having horns stemming from his head. This unfortunate stereotype led to ignorance and anti-Semitism in which many non-Jews have claimed that Jews have horns in their heads. This experience happened to me personally when I was the only Jewish student in a U.S. Armed Forces chaplaincy course. There, one of the students who had never met a Jew before honestly thought that I had horns in my head, based on his childhood education. After I clarified the myth and its Jew-hatred overtones, he felt bad. I encouraged him in his ministry to correct the falsehoods to the communities he would serve as a minister.

In any event, there you have it - the origin of a Jew wearing a mask took place long before Purim, but in the weekly Torah portion which overlaps with Purim this year.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Howard Morrison