Moses’ Stammering Voice: A Jewish Paradigm for Disability
I wanted to begin by offering the D’var Torah I shared this past Friday night—something I offer every week at our musical Friday night Shabbat services from 6-7:15 followed by dinner in our social hall. This past week it was in the context of our participation in Jewish Disability Awareness & Inclusion Month (JDAIM),
a unified national initiative during the month of February to raise disability awareness and support efforts to foster inclusion in Jewish communities worldwide.
I’m blessed to have the opportunity to offer a d’var Torah on a Shabbat dedicated to Jewish Disability Awareness & Inclusion Month (JDAIM), spearheaded by a partner organization of ours, Jewish Learning Venture (JLV). I’m grateful to volunteer leaders Gail Massey, Erica Ginsburg, Staci Schwartz, Ellen Fennick, Robin Cohen, Debbie Stewart, Amy Goldman, Jared Susco, and Wendy Greenspan for helping organize our program here this evening, alongside fellow clergy and staff.
On the subject of people with disabilities in the Jewish community, I’m stating the obvious when I say that this is not a new phenomenon. In fact we don’t have to go any further than the paradigmatic leader in Jewish tradition to discover some with a disability: Moshe Rabbeinu, as the rabbis called him. Moses our teacher.
When God first calls upon Moses to be the one to lead b’nei yisrael out of slavery, Moses raises a number of objections: Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites? I’m just a humble sheperd these days. Plus, I don’t even know your name, Moses says. Who shall I say sent me? What if they don’t believe me and don’t listen to me, Moses says.
After being reassured on each of these points, Moses raises the concern that had been perhaps weighing most heavily on him all along. “Please, O Lord” לֹא֩ אִ֨ישׁ דְּבָרִ֜ים אָנֹ֗כִי. “I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to me.” כִּ֧י כְבַד־פֶּ֛ה וּכְבַ֥ד לָשׁ֖וֹן אָנֹֽכִי׃ “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Then later, when Pharaoh resists Moses’ entreaties, doubling the Israelites workload after Moses’ initial effort to have the Israelites freed, Moses pleads once again with God, using even starker language. “Even the Israelites won’t listen to me,” Moses says to God. They don’t believe me that you’ll deliver them from bondage into the promised land. How then should Pharaoh listen to me— וַאֲנִ֖י עֲרַ֥ל שְׂפָתָֽיִם׃, me a man literally of “uncircumcised lips,” a greatly debated phrase but one that is generally interpreted to mean, a man of impeded speech.
We can hear the pain in Moses’ voice. “God this is so hard for me,” he seems to be saying. Maybe there was even a sense of shame, hence why he raised other objections first. We can all imagine a situation where we don’t want to be chosen for something, reluctant to share the ultimate source of that reluctance. If Moses’s shame, fear, around his disability is the reason he seeks to evade leadership, God quickly seeks to disabuse him of that concern. מִ֣י שָׂ֣ם פֶּה֮ לָֽאָדָם֒ “Who gives humans speech?” God says. Do you think I’m unfamiliar with you? וְעַתָּ֖ה לֵ֑ךְ “Now go,” וְאָנֹכִי֙ אֶֽהְיֶ֣ה עִם־פִּ֔יךָ “and I will be with you as you speak,” or literally, “I will be in with you in Your mouth.” I’ll be present with you. We’re in this together.
God knows, God is present with us all, this teaching suggests. In fact, as the famous teaching in Torah offers, “Everyone is created in the image of God.” God might as well be reminding Moses of this fact in their conversation. “Do you think you weren’t created in the image of the Divine? You were,” God is saying. Whatever challenges you might be encountering, that, too, is part of the image of God, too. That is contained within the Divine.
The Mishnah, the rabbinic collection of oral Torah supplementing the written Torah, says הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא טָבַע כָּל אָדָם בְּחוֹתָמוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם הָרִאשׁוֹן “the Holy Blessed One, has stamped every human with the seal of the first human being,” everyone flows from the same source, everyone is fundamentally equal in their humanity, וְאֵין אֶחָד מֵהֶן דּוֹמֶה לַחֲבֵרוֹ “yet not a single one is exactly like their fellow.” Everyone is exactly equal and yet 100% unique. What the snowflakes say is true.
And because of this, the Mishnah, that sacred Jewish text, continues, כָּל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד חַיָּב לוֹמַר, “Everyone needs to say,” בִּשְׁבִילִי נִבְרָא הָעוֹלָם “For my sake the world was created.”
Our uniqueness, the distinct imprint we leave in the world, matters. No matter what condition, or better yet, because of whatever condition, we find ourselves in—whatever burdens we carry, whatever blessings we hold, that unique alchemy is sacred and leads to sacred things. We, all of us, every part of us, Jewish tradition teaches, is here for a reason. For each of our distinct sakes the world was created and our unique contribution matters.
Moses unique contribution, Moses’ unique voice, literal broken voice, was exactly what was needed in that moment
“They will listen to your voice,” God says in Exodus 3. Not simply Moses words but his voice. “What God wants of Moses is precisely his stammering voice, as the very ground of communication,” writes Torah scholar Aviva Zornberg citing Philosopher Alphonso Lingis. “There is no speaking without stammering, mispronunciations, regional accents.” She writes, “The aim of communication is not to eliminate the stammer, the interference, the ‘rumble of the world.’ It is Moses’ voice that God wants: ‘They must hear your voice!’ Only so will the tone and rhythm of redemption be heard by the others, still involved in their own murmuring worlds.”
The sacredness of our distinct spirit and body is what we need to bring to the world.
Now, the other side of the equation is not only what we bring as individuals, but how we are received, and as a Jewish institution, as any institution, the onus is on us and how we receive people at Society Hill Synagogue.
The phrase used to describe Moses’ condition is important. Aral sefatayim, as we said, literally translates to “uncircumcised lips.” It’s a very strange phrase, but the word aral in the Torah is often used to suggest that something is closed off. Moses’ lips were aral, he did not feel capable of opening up.
It’s not the only time that word is used. The prophet Jeremiah laments of the people of Israel that עֲרֵלָ֣ה אׇזְנָ֔ם their ears are blocked off, they wouldn’t listen to the pleas of the world. Similarly God laments, in the book of Leviticus, of the people Israel regarding levavam he’aral, their obdurate, their closed off hearts.
These are related. In order for the Moseses of the world to be received with love, to open up, we at institutions like SHS need to open up our ears and our hearts. Let’s not have closed off hearts. Part of tonight, and part of the ongoing work of our inclusion committee is that the work of facilitating connection, facilitating holiness, is opening up mouths, our ears, our mouths, our hearts, to share and hear one another’s stories, what it’s like to travel in one another’s shoes, so we can do our part to ease one another’s burden, to make the road smoother, more traversable.
Thanks to JLV, Jewish Learning Venture, thanks to the volunteer leaders I mentioned earlier who helped organize this evening’s program, we have the opportunity to do some of that opening up, in both directions. Looking forward to tonight’s discussion.
