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Photo by Hans-Joachim Bartsch/Collection Jüdisches Museum Berlin

“You shall not cross there,” God decrees as Moses gazes across the Jordan. In this 1928 pastel by Lesser Ury, heavenly light illuminates the promised land that Moses has sought almost all his life but will never enter. Rather, Moses dies on Mt. Nebo—a strange and solitary death for a strangely solitary man. The biblical portrayal of Moses as distant and unapproachable, as the only biblical leader to see God “face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10), presents Moses as representative of the Israelites—a people apart. At the same time, it encourages readers to concentrate more on the law he gave than on the life he lived.