This past Shabbat we studied Parashat Yitro, the Torah portion in the Book of Exodus known as Yitro, named after Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, who witnesses the intense burdens Moses is under, navigating the many disputes of the Israelites, and helps him organize a system of judges who can help adjudicate the minor matters so that Moses is able to focus on bringing the laws and the teachings of God to the people of Israel.
The portion is famous, however, not for its namesake, but for those very laws, for it is in this portion that the Ten Commandments are revealed.
“Revealed” is an important verb because it signals a foundational understanding of Jewish life: that God revealed these commandments to the Israelite people—or, to put it another way, how we now understand the concept of revelation as central to the Jewish people: in one significant moment, God pierced the silence that otherwise appears to exist between God and humanity and revealed a set of commandments and principles for the Israelites to carry out for all time.
So this is the question we reflected on in our discussion in the sanctuary, held every Shabbat morning during the service at approximately 10:30 a.m. : how do we now understand, in our world today, the teaching of revelation—that God in one moment pierced through this silence, revealing a teaching to God’s people? Can we still experience revelation? Was it a one-time event? Was it an ever-time event—what is meant by the notion of God speaking to the people in this way?
Reflecting on the notion that it’s possible to understand this moment in a non-literal way, I shared an anecdote about my father, Rabbi Daniel Kamesar, from when he was a panelist while rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, who was pushed on these non-literal understandings of Torah, and asked by a questioner, “do you believe that God gave the Torah to Moshe on Mount Sinai?” To which Daniel responded “Well, it depends what you mean by God, it depends what you mean by gave, it depends what you mean by Torah, it depends what you mean by Moshe, and it depends what you mean by Mount Sinai, but YES, absolutely!”
In other words, how might we understand the notion of God speaking to us? His and my teacher Rabbi Jacob Staub cites a teaching from the Baal Shem Tov, the 18th century Jewish mystic and founder of Hasidic Judaism, to the effect that, “There is a bat kol (a divine voice) that perpetually ‘sounds’ at Mount Horeb (Sinai), saying: ‘Return, you wayward children.'” He continues, “It is the cause of our yearning for the Infinite: However struck we are in our wayward ways, there is a whisper, a subliminal vibration that stirs within us and moves us to yearn to get closer to God. That is, revelation was not a one-time occurrence. The call continues to ‘sound’ today, at every moment. The variable is whether we are open to hearing it.”
Or, put another way by Rabbi Shefa Gold, “When in our wanderings, we come to Sinai, God speaks to each of us directly. The mountain of revelation appears to us on our journey when we are ready to receive the awesome truth of our connection to the Source, to each other, and to all of creation.”
While the idea of God speaking to to our hearts may not be something our modern eyes and ears are comfortable with, it has been a central element of Jewish teaching throughout the generations.
Others in our Torah discussion observed that revelation is fundamentally a collective event meant to be experienced in community and that sometimes the revelations we experience most profoundly are those that happen relationally. Still others observed that revelation is not something that just happens—we need to till the soil for it. Just as the Israelites were not immediately ready following their redemption from Egypt for their revelation at Sinai but rather had to prepare themselves during their initial wilderness trek, so, too, do we need to till our own soil, attuning ourselves to that subliminal vibration, that divine hum. It’s an experience our ancestors have undertaken for generations.
