What Covenant Can Mean To Us • Boundaries, People!
I want to share the D’var Torah I delivered this past Friday night on the week’s parashah, on the eve of our student Alex Howe’s Bar mitzvah:
I was drawn to a very specific part of this week’s parashah, this week’s Torah portion. Perhaps you’ll be able to sense why.
First a couple of verses to give the context of where we are in the story of the Israelites: “On the third new moon after they had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on that very day, the Israeltites entered the wilderness of Sinai. Having journeyed from [the Sea of Reeds], they entered the wilderness of Sinai and encamped in the wilderness. Israel encamped there in front of the mountain, and Moses went up to God. יהוה called to Moses from the mountain, saying, “Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob and declare to the children of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, וָאֶשָּׂ֤א אֶתְכֶם֙ עַל־כַּנְפֵ֣י נְשָׁרִ֔ים how I bore you on eagles’ wings וָאָבִ֥א אֶתְכֶ֖ם אֵלָֽי and brought you to Me.
Any guesses why this is the passage that jumped out to me?
But no this is not going to be a D’var Torah on the Eagles chances against the Chiefs or whether the Eagles top to bottom talent is going to be too much for the preternatural abilities of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes to handle.
No, this D’var Torah is about what comes in the very next verse, as part of the section that will also serve as a jumping off point for Alex’s D’var Torah.
“You have seen how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me,” יהוה says, “Now then, if you will obey Me faithfully and keep My brit, my covenant, you shall be My treasure.”
This is the first mention of brit, of covenant, one of the foundational symbols of the Jewish story, the Israelite story, since the covenant’s inception, when God called forth to Abraham and family to be the embodiment of the divine-human partnership that permeates Jewish tradition, symbolized as it was through the bris, the yiddish word for brit, covenant, inaugurating a different lifecycle moment than the one Alex is celebrating this Shabbat.
So what is this Brit, this covenant, and why does it have such a powerful hold on the Jewish imagination? What is the content of it? And what does it have to do with any of us here in this room; does it have any relevance for us?
On one level the brit, the covenant, is just the verse I just read: “Now then, God says, if you will obey Me faithfully and keep My brit, my covenant, you shall be My treasure.” If you follow the laws that I’m about to list off, God says, including the ten commandments, which will be chanted as part of Alex’s Torah portion, and all of the sacred actions that flow from that, then you will be a treasure to me. Pretty simple.
And yet, to build a tradition around a covenant between God and the people is so much more groundbreaking than that.
The scholar Arnold Eisen writes that, through the notion of Brit, covenant, “the awesome creator of [hu]mankind is brought into the human camp.” In other words, one conception of God—a God that created the universe, a God that transcends anything and everything—is far beyond anything we could begin to describe or name, let alone form a relationship to; feel supported by; feel nourished through; serve. The notion of Brit/covenant “draws God into the human camp.” All of a sudden, we can relate to God—feel in relationship with, feel in service to, feel buoyed by.
That’s Revelation. Sinai, the words Alex and family are going to chant tomorrow. Revelation is the understanding that the very Divine spark at the source of the universe is in relation to us; wants something from us; calls to us; is, if in that sense only, comprehensible, discernible.
Through the notion of Brit/covenant, “the awesome creator of [hu]mankind is brought into the human camp,” Eisen writes, “demanding a decree of ritual and ethical purity that mere mortals are hard-pressed to achieve.” The notion of covenant, he is suggesting, contains within it so many laws and rules and callings. How can we keep up with it all, Eisen—and we all—wonder? And yet as Eisen suggests, these very callings—the mitzvot, the ways in which we are called upon to act in the world; Alex celebrates becoming Bar Mitzvah tomorrow, someone who takes on an adult relationship to the mitzvot, to the sacred callings of his people—Eisen suggests that these manifold callings, the way our tradition calls upon us to act in the world—loving our neighbor and the stranger, brushing our hands over a mezuzah as we cross the threshold of a doorway, noticing the divine even then— these mitzvot, how we act is the very way in which we can facilitate our relationship to the Divine, who would be otherwise indecipherable. “The mysterium tremendum,” he writes—a fancy Latin phrase for “the terrifying mystery” is “thereby rendered accessible.” We cannot “penetrate the fire and cloud of God’s presence,” he says, but we can seek to discern what God wants of us.
That is brit. That is covenant. To be in covenant with God is a means of being in relationship to the otherwise unrelatable, through our actions, through our way of being in the world. Alex’s penchant for justice, for advocacy, is, according to Jewish tradition, a way of being in relationship to the divine.
But as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches, this isn’t just mental gymnastics, a metaphorical device. Covenant isn’t just an idea we use to trick ourselves into thinking we can have that relationship (though it is an idea that no doubt makes connecting to God more accessible). Covenant, he suggests, is at the very core of the religious experience. “Religion—” Heschel writes, “its human side— begins with a sense of obligation, ‘with the awareness that something is asked of us.’”
That’s real—we are really called upon. Are we able to discern the exact nature of the call? That’s the hard part. But the divine call to us is real, Heschel suggests.
And, he says, it’s not only we who have a role to play. “There is only one way to define Jewish religion,” Heschel writes. “It is the awareness of God’s interest in humanity, the awareness of a covenant, of a responsibility that lies on God as well as on us.” Heschel’s experience of the Divine is that it is a two-way street; it’s not just us conjuring up a way of approaching God. “God,” he writes, “is in need of humanity for the attainment of God’s ends, and religion, as Jewish tradition understands it, is a way of serving these ends, of which we are in need, even though we may not be aware of them, ends which we must learn to feel the need of.”
God needs us to help heal this fractured world, fractures humanity experienced all too literally this week, in the earthquakes in Turkey. God nees us to help heal this fractured world, a need we have, too, if we would but allow ourselves to feel it.
The covenant requires us both. In this partnership, Rabbi Art Green writes, “humans are needed to take a fully active role, for only they can act on the material plane,” while, “God is the source of inspiration and the ever-renewing center of strength for this ongoing struggle.
“God,” Heschel concludes “is a partner and a partisan in humanity’s struggle for justice, peace and holiness, and it is because of God’s being in need of humanity that God entered a covenant with humanity for all time, a mutual bond embracing God and humanity, a relationship to which God, not only humanity, is committed.”
If only that commitment extended to the guarantee of an Eagles win on Sunday. Go Birds and Shabbat Shalom.
Finally, I want to lift up the words Alex himself taught at his Bar Mitzvah celebration. For Alex, the intriguing part of the Torah portion was not the fireworks and explosives associated with the revelation of the Ten Commandments, or even with the grand themes evoked in their contents. No for Alex, an important part of the Torah portion came just before and just after their revelation.
As Alex observed, both God and the Israelites set and enforce boundaries in their relationship with one another.
The covenant at Sinai has often evoked a marriage metaphor for rabbinic commentators. God and the Israelites essentially declared their commitments to one another at Sinai.
Still, Alex noted, even if this was to be a relationship for all time, even their most important relationship, both parties to the relationship—God and Israel—set boundaries with one another.
God’s were quite explicit: “‘Let the Israelites be ready for the third day;’ [God said to Moses,] ‘for on the third day יהוה will come down, in the sight of all the people, on Mount Sinai. You shall set bounds for the people round about, saying, ‘Beware of going up the mountain or touching the border of it'” (Exodus 19:11-12).
And the people’s, while less so, were no less strict: “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking [associated with the revelation]; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance. ‘You speak to us,’ they said to Moses, ‘and we will obey; but let not God speak to us, lest we die'” (Exodus 20:15-16).
Each party recognized the importance of establishing and enforcing boundaries if they were to go forward in their relationship. God, so that God had space to enact divine workings without endangering the people, and the people so that they would not be overwhelmed by God’s presence.
Alex made this observation, and offered that even in our most loving relationships, we need space, and need to give others space, so that we do not lose our sense of self.
It isn’t easy: Alex noted how hard it can be to hear when someone enforces a boundary with you, and also who easily people can lapse into overstepping such boundaries. And so Alex offered a message of compassion to ourselves and to others when trying to facilitate respect of boundaries. But he underscored their importance nonetheless. And he noted their profoundly biblical, and profoundly Jewish, nature.
