Parashat Pekudei: The Charismatic Community

While it is important to teach our children that individual leaders can make an enormous impact on communities, it is also important to teach them that communities are most successful when individuals at the grassroots level choose to use their talents to benefit a cause greater than themselves.  Emphasizing this point, Shirley Sagawa and Deborah Jospin write in The Charismatic Organization that organizations can develop “charisma” by utilizing social capital in their day-to-day work:  

“...certain qualities of organizations are more important than charismatic leaders. Charismatic organizations attract people by achieving powerful results and building a community that others want to join. In other words, they build strong social capital. Social capital refers to a network of relationships that yield benefits to those who are part of the network.  These benefits flow from trust, norms of reciprocity, information flow, and cooperation embedded in these relationships...These networks lead to other essential forms of capital—financial, human, and political—that allows the organization to increase its impact and influence even more, beginning a continuing cycle of impact growth” (Shirley Sagawa and Deborah Jospin, The Charismatic Organization, page 4).

Sagawa and Jospin, each of whom work in organizations in the social sector, argue that any communal organization that wants to achieve maximal success cannot rely on money alone, but must actualize the talents of every person in the community, and make each person feel compelled to give of their time and energy to advance the organization’s mission, a vision echoed in this week’s parasha.

Close readers of Parashat Pekudei will notice that the Torah’s description of the completion of the Mishkan parallels the description of the completion of God’s creation in Sefer Bereishit:

• Shemot 39:32: Thus was completed all work of the Mishkan, the Ohel Moed, and the Israelites did according to all the Lord commanded and Moses completed the work.
• Bereishit 2:1-2: Thus were completed the heavens and earth and all their host and God completed on the seventh day His work which He had done.

Upon reading these two texts for the first time, one immediately notices how these passages use similar language to describe the moment when an incredible act of creation and construction came to a close.  However, when we look at the passage from Parashat Pekudei, we see the Torah tell us that the Israelites did “all the Lord commanded,” but “Moses completed the work,” leading the reader to the question of what it means to say that the Israelites “did” what God commanded.

Taking a general approach, Rabbi Obadiah Seforno, an early modern Italian commentator, argues that all Israelites made some kind of contribution to the building of the Mishkan, even if that contribution was not directly described in the Torah itself.  He writes:

“And the Israelites did”: “the work in its totality was attributed to all the people of Israel seeing that each one of them had a direct or indirect share in it, whether by contributing material, labor, or skill” (Seforno on Shemot 39:32).   

Even though the Torah describes specific responsibilities to individual Israelites, the Torah also makes clear that the entire nation was responsible for bringing donations and materials essential to the building of the Mishkan itself.   As a result, when the Torah says that the Israelites did the work, the text is referencing all kinds of contributions, both large and small.

Taking a halahkic approach, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, other known as the Netziv, writes that the work completed by the Israelites was purely halakhic in-nature, and the Torah wants to make clear that the Mishkan was constructed “by the book.”   The Netziv writes:

“Knowing the intense desire of the Israelites for the Divine Presence to reside in their midst, as I have noted...we might have imagined that to achieve this they want beyond what was required.  On this account the text observed “they did as the Lord commanded-so they did”- not a jot more” (Ha-Emek Davar on Shemot 39:32).

For the Netziv, a major construction project for the purpose of creating a sanctuary to God required meticulous preparation and execution on the part of the Israelites, thereby explaining why the Torah devotes so much detail as to how each object in the Mishkan must be constructed.  As such, the Netziv argues that when the Torah describes the completion of the Mishkan’s construction, it wants to indicate that the Israelites did the work exactly as God proscribed it, following the instructions necessary to create a divine sanctuary.

Finally, taking an educational approach, Rabbi Hayyim ibn Attar, also known as the Or Ha-Hayyim, argues that the Torah wants to remind us that the Mishkan was a collective endeavor on the part of the Israelites, and although certain people had greater responsibilities than others, each Israelite fulfilled a unique role.   The Or Ha-Hayyim argues that,

“...the text wished to indicate the mutual, interlocking character of Torah observance, by means of which the children of Israel brought reciprocal benefits on each other.  The Torah was given to be collectively observed by Israel as a whole.  Each individual would contribute his best to their mutual benefit…[However,] The Almighty gave us 613 precepts and it is impossible for one man to observe them all.  There are, for example, Priests, Levites and Israelite men and women.  Some precepts apply only to priests, others can only be fulfilled by Israelites, and others only by women.   In what way is it feasible for the individual to observe all the precepts, attaining the complete perfection symbolized in the correspondence between the number of precepts, negative and positive, and the 248 limbs and 365 sinews respectively of the human body?   The answer must be that the Torah can only be observed collectively, by the people as a whole, each individual deriving benefit from the observance of his neighbor and each individual’s performance complementing that of the other” (Or Ha-Hayyim on Shemot 39:32).

In this expansive commentary, the Or Ha-Hayyim makes the point that the Mishkan could not be constructed without the shared efforts of the entire Israelite nation, with each person making a contribution that uniquely suited his or her talents and capabilities.   As a result, when the Torah concludes the construction of the Mishkan, it wants to make clear that the construction was completed by a people united in purpose, a charismatic nation capable of great things.

From the first time a parent, student, faculty or staff member walks into the doors of Schechter, we have a responsibility to remind them that a Jewish organization only thrives when people feel able to give a piece of themselves that reflects their unique talents and strengths.   Just as the Mishkan required a little piece of each of the Israelites, whether direct or indirect, whether financial, physical, or artistic, a school requires a little piece of each of member of our community. When we succeed doing in this, we make our school a Mikdash M’at, a little sanctuary that could only be built through the efforts of a charismatic community.

Shabbat Shalom!

Parashat Ki Tissa: When Things Are Just Things

Mircea Eliade of the University of Chicago was one of the most important religious thinkers of the twentieth century, changing the way we understand what it means for a religion to call something holy.  In The Sacred and the Profane, Eliade argues that religion’s essence involves ascribing supernatural significance to seemingly ordinary things.  He writes:

“By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu. A sacred stone remains a stone...nothing distinguishes it from all other stones. But for those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into a supernatural reality” (Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane).

According to Eliade, anything can be made holy if we imbue it with sanctity.   However, anything holy can also be made profane, if our actions serve to deny the sanctity of that same item, and idea that is found in how commentators approach the story of the Golden Calf in Parashat Ki Tissa.

When God tells Moses that the Israelites have built the Golden Calf, no instructions are given to Moses as to what he should do about the tablets God spent days inscribing on the top of Mount Sinai.   At this point, the Torah describes the following scene:

“And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, with the two tables of the testimony in his hand; tables that were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written.  And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables. And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses: 'There is a noise of war in the camp.' And he said: 'It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome, but the noise of them that sing do I hear.' And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and broke them beneath the mount. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it” (Shemot 32:15-20).

In the above passage, the parasha tells us that Moses broke the tablets primarily because he was incensed at what he saw, not because of what God told him to do.  As a result, the question is raised as to why God was not angry at Moses destroying an incredible piece of divine craftsmanship, and what lesson we might learn from the fact that God saw something powerful in Moses’ decision to destroy these tablets.

The Meshekh Hokhmah, the Torah commentary of Rabbi Meir Simkha Ha-Kohen of Dvinsk, writes a lengthy commentary on what we can learn from Moses’ decision to smash the tablets.   Commenting on the verse “And it came to pass as he approached the camp,” the Meshekh Hokhmah says that asking how Moses could break the ‘holy’ tablets presumes that the tablets have inherent holiness.   However, the Meshkeh Hokhmah argues that,

“Torah and Faith are the essential to the Jewish nation.  All the sanctities--The Holy Land, Jerusalem, etc., are secondary and subordinate entities hallowed in virtue of the Torah…” (Shemot 32:19).

In other words, only “Torah,” or God’s divine teaching, and faith itself have inherent holiness, and cannot be de-sanctified under any circumstances.  However, any other person or thing, no matter how holy we might consider it, is not inherently holy, but is a secondary entity made holy only by virtue of Torah.

As a result, what made Moses furious about the building of the Golden Calf was what the making of idol implied about how the Israelites deemed things holy and profane in the temporal world.  The Meshekh Hokhmah writes:

“The people sought therefore to materialize for ways and means to materialize their conceptions, and when they saw that Moses was delayed, their faith was undermined and they sought to make a calf.   It was this that Moses condemned, that they should imagine he was unique, and that there existed any intrinsic holiness outside God Himself…”(Ibid.).

Taking this perspective, by building the Golden Calf, the Israelites sent the message that they there was something in the world outside of God that possessed intrinsic holiness.

On its face, we might assume that the tablets God inscribed were intrinsically holy, since they were made by God himself. However, the Meshekh Hokhmah argues that “Even the Tablets-”the writing of God”-were not intrinsically holy, but only so on account of God.”  As a result, he writes that,

“The moment Israel sinned and transgressed what was written thereon, they became mere bric a brac devoid of sanctity...For this reason God approved of Moses’ action and said “More power to thee for having broken them.” By this he had demonstrated that the Tablets themselves possessed no intrinsic holiness” (Ibid).

In the words, the tablets were only holy if and only if the Israelites lived lives that were worthy of sanctification.  The minute God and Moses saw them dancing around the Golden Calf, the holy tablets simply between rocks with chiseled words on them.  Furthermore, by smashing the tablets, Moses sent the message to the Israelites that even after receiving God’s Torah, holy things would only be a part of their community if they actualized God’s Torah in a way that made those things holy.  Should the Israelites choose to de-sanctify things with potential sanctity, those things will no longer be holy, but just things.

The above commentary alongside Eliade’s notions of the sacred and the profane have profound implications for what it means to build Jewish Community, for this commentary reminds us that nothing in the Jewish Community is inherently sacred; not our synagogues, not our holiest books, not our most special places.   These things only become sacred if we make them sacred, and we only make them sacred if people live lives that reflect God's vision for a holy world.   As a result, when we encounter someone who does not find Jewish life meaningful, it is because the things we want them to hold most dear are simply things, and the task is to get them to a point where an ordinary thing becomes a sacred thing. May we proactively teach our children at Schechter what it means to make every thing a sacred thing, so that the tablets we give to them become sacred things that they will imbue with holiness every day for the rest of their lives.   

Shabbat Shalom!

Parashat Tetzaveh: Holy Garments

Tal Ben-Shahar, and Israeli-born professor and teacher of the one of the popular courses at Harvard University, writes in his book Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment that an alignment between intrinsic and extrinsic priorities is essential for a meaningful life.  He writes:

“Most of our choices are driven by many factors, some intrinsic, others extrinsic...The question is whether the intrinsic or extrinsic is more fundamental to the choice.   If the primary driving force is intrinsic--in other words, the pursuit is self-concordant--then the person will experience it as something that he wants to do; if the primary driving force is extrinsic, the experience will be more of a have-to” (75).

Shahar’s analysis applies not just to happiness, but to all facets of our life, where the person most likely to feel satisfaction must try to develop the personal qualities on the inside that translate into being a positive example on the outside, a vision echoed in this week’s parasha.

Parashat Tetzaveh describes God’s instructions for what the Kohanim should wear when they ultimately serve in the mishkan, the tabernacle that is still being constructed, as this point in Sefer Shemot.   God’s initial instructions state the following:

“And bring you near unto Aaron your brother and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that they may minister unto Me in the priest’s office...and you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother for splendor and for beauty...that they make Aaron’s garments to sanctify him that he may minister unto Me in the priest’s office” (Shemot 28:1-3).

While it is obvious to most readers what it means to say that the sacrifices offered in the mishkan will be holy, it is not clear what it means when the parasha says that the garments of the Kohanim should be holy.  Are the garments because the work itself is holy, or is there something about the garments themselves that makes them holy, with or without priestly service?   Do the garments make the Kohanim holy, or is there something about the Kohanim as people that will make the objects holy?   While our commentators answer these questions in different ways, ultimately our commentaries are united by a belief that the priestly garments teach us something essential about the importance of creating alignment between our inner and outer selves.   

One way of looking at this passage is to take a holistic approach to our parasha’ context, and ask why God would want a specific group of people to wear holy garments at this point in time.  The Akedat Yitzhak, a commentary on Rashi’s Torah commentary, argues that the Kohanim needed to wear holy garments because every person’s status is somehow identified with what clothing they wear.  He writes:

“Just as man can be outwardly identified by his apparel whether he is a merchant, a knight or a priest, so we are able to recognize our inner character by our outward actions.  The latter certainly afford a clue to our spiritual powers.  Prophetic literature has already employed this association with respect to the Deity since He can only be perceived through His action: “You are clothed in majesty, the Lord is clothed, He has girded Himself in strength”” (Tehillim 104:1) (Akedat Yitzhak on Shemot 28:2).

This commentary takes the metaphorical statements from Tehilim that God is “clothed” in special garments and applies to that our everyday life, acknowledging that clothes inherently connote a special status.  Furthermore, because the Israelites are making the transition from the mindset of slaves to the mindset of free people, it would make sense that the spiritual representatives of the newly freed Israelites would be commanded to wear regal clothing that connotes the people’s new status.

Another way of looking at this passage is to focus on the Kohanim specifically, and how the commandment to wear holy garments intends to instill a certain kind of mindset in the priestly class.   Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin writes in his Ha-Emek Davar that by commanding Aaron to wear holy garments, Aaron would, by necessity, also need to sanctify himself:

“The reference is to Aaron, implying that Moses should inform the wise-hearted that I have filled Aaron with a spirit of wisdom.   All this serves as a preliminary to the next sentence: “They shall make the garments of Aaron to sanctify him.”  Since Aaron had been commanded to sanctify himself, the Omnipresent gave him holy garments to assist him in that task” (Ha-Emek Davar on Shemot 28:3).

Instead of connecting the priestly garments to the Israelite people generally, the Ha-Emek Davar focuses on how the priestly garments will benefit Aaron as a specific representative of the entire people.  In other words, if a person is given the responsibility of sanctifying themselves before God, it would be helpful if they dressed the part.

Finally, we can look at this passage and see how it relates to what we wear each day, and what clothing says about us at critical moments in our lives. Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser, otherwise known as the Malbim, writes that these garments are holy because they symbolize the inner spiritual life of the Kohanim:

“Now the garments ordained were evidently external ones and the text is concerned to relate how the artisans performed the work.  But in reality they symbolized inner vestments.   The priests were to invest themselves with noble qualities which are the vestments of the soul.  These vestments the artisans did not make.  But commanded Moses to make these holy garments, that is to instruct them in the improvement of their souls and their characters so that their inner selves should be clothed in majesty and splendor” (Malbim on “Holy garments”).

In this final commentary, the Malbim points out that the garments of the Kohanim could only be called “holy” if the people wearing them embodied the qualities of a holy person.   While this commentary limits itself to the Kohanim specifically, we need not look too far to see how it relates to us, as each of us are challenged to create synergy between our inner life and our “outer vestments,” whether those vestments are material, physical, or metaphorical.

Ultimately, helping our children grow up to embody Torah requires that they develop an alignment between inner life and their outer life.   Like the garments of the Kohanim, our children can display certain signs about who we think they are, but the people who are happiest are the ones who can say that what they really are is the same as what we think they are.   May we teach our children to embrace this challenge, so that we might be able to say our children wear “holy garments” each and every day of their lives.

Shabbat Shalom!

Parashat Terumah: The Eternal Mishkan

Every time we read the Torah’s account of the building of the mishkan, it is reasonable to ask why we devote so much time reading about a physical structure that no longer exists to make sacrifices we no longer offer.  This question was not lost upon our medieval commentator Isaac Abravanel, who argues that Parashat Terumah has a timeless meaning that transcends the historical question of whether or not a mishkan still exists.   Abravanel writes:

“Everything recorded in the Torah is designed to provide us with a permanent source of inspiration and Divine Wisdom, to perfect our souls therein….The doing consists in the study of the text and deriving of the spiritual lessons to be learned by the student and scholar, whether during the time they were actually performed or afterwards (when they were no longer in vogue)” (Abravanel on end of commentary on Parashat Terumah, Shemot 27).

According to Abravanel, when God says to Moses, “And let them Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell amongst them” (Shemot 25:8), we must see how the command to construct a sanctuary is eternal, rather than temporal.  This week, I would like share three different commentaries that take this approach, each providing us the opportunity to think about what lessons the mishkan holds for future generations of the Jewish people.

The first commentary comes from Rabbi Hayyim Ibn Attar, otherwise known as the Or Ha-Hayyim, who embraces the idea that the construction of the mishkan is not a one-time event, but a task whose completion represents a timeless symbol in the relationship between the Israelites and God.   He writes:

"And let them make Me a sanctuary (Mikdash)." We must understand why He called it a Mikdash, and immediately went back and called it a Mishkan, as it is written, "the pattern of the tabernacle (Mishkan)." It seems that "Let them make Me a Mikdash" is a positive precept that embraces all times, whether in the wilderness or after their entry into the land, at all times that Israel will be there for generations” (Or Ha-Hayyim on Shemot 25:8).

Or Ha-Hayyim notes that the Rambam states in his Mishneh Torah that, “There is a positive precept to build a house for God...as it is written, “And let them make for me a sanctuary” (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Bet Ha-Bekhirah 1:1, from Or Ha-Hayyim on Shemot 25:8)).  Given the fact that the Rambam acknowledges the mitzvah of building a sanctuary thousands of years after the command from our parasha, the Or Ha-Hayyim concludes that the command from our parasha represents a timeless mitzvah, rather than a liminal one.

In the modern period, the Italian rabbi and scholar Umberto Cassuto argues that the construction of the mishkan is inherently connected with the revelation at Sinai, thereby creating a timeless connection between the construction of the mishkan and God’s covenant with the Jewish people.  Cassuto states:

“...we must realize that the children of Israel, after they had been privileged to witness the Revelation of God on Mount Sinai, were about to journey from there and thus draw away from the site of the theophany.  So long as they were encamped in the place, they were conscious of God’s nearness; but once they set out on their journey, it seemed to them as though the link had been broken, unless there were in their midst a tangible symbol of God’s presence among them.  It was the function of the Tabernacle to serve as such a symbol.   Not without reason, therefore, does this section come immediately after the section that describes the making of the covenant at Mount Sinai.  The nexus between Israel and the Tabernacle is a perpetual extension of the bond that was forged at Sinai between the people and their God…” (Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus, 319).

According to Cassuto, the construction of the mishkan is a direct extension of the revelation at Sinai.  Therefore, the mishkan is a living, movable symbol of the perpetual bond between God and Israel, a symbol that need not lose meaning even in an era without a physical mishkan.

Finally, in his scholarly commentary on the significance of the mishkan in biblical literature, Harvard professor Jon Levenson argues that because God’s presence resides in the mishkan, the mishkan itself provides a physical testament to the divine-human relationship.  Levenson writes:

“The Tent is the vehicle for communication with God; in it oracles are received.  God’s visible “Presence” (kavod) renders the Tent and its sacrificial apparatus sacred.  But the sanctity does not preclude immediate human contact; it only restricts it to the chosen priesthood (kohanim), Aaron and his male descendants.  The Tent is a visible relationship between God and Israel, a relationship whose other great testimony is the exodus” (Jon D. Levenson, “The Jerusalem Temple in Devotional and Visionary Experience,” Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible Through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green, 37).

Reflecting both the commentaries of the Or Ha-Hayyim and Cassuto, Levenson argues that the mishkan alludes to the revelation at Sinai and the exodus from Egypt, thereby making the mishkan a living, breathing, eternal symbol of why God matters.  In turn, the Israelites are not commanded to built a mishkan in our parasha for themselves alone; they are commanded to be build a mishkan to be an eternal marker of their divine purpose.

It is entirely possible that the Jewish people will never engage in a collective spiritual activity on the level of constructing the mishkan (if wishing made it so).  That being said, our commentators challenge us to see the mishkan’s construction as a symbol of the relationship our people must maintain with God, one that transcends time and space.  By extension, when we succeed in helping our children reaffirm that relationship with God on a daily basis, we do more than strengthen their faith; we allow them to “build” sanctuary in which God will dwell for the rest of their lives.

Shabbat Shalom!

Parashat Mishpatim: Our Consuming Fire

Sometimes, when my faith is at a nadir, I wonder why God never appears to me, my family, or the Jewish people.   To be clear, there are moments in my life when I feel God’s presence, but it is difficult to read the weekly parasha, see how much God’s presence is known to Moses and the Israelites, and not wonder why that presence cannot be experienced in the same way today.   The conclusion of Parashat Mishpatim describes a confirmation of the covenant between God and the Israelites, where fire and clouds accompany God on Har Sinai.  The text states:

“When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Har Sinai.   For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called Moses from within the cloud.  To the Israelites the appearance of God’s glory was like a consuming fire on top of the mountain.  Then Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain.  And he stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights” (Shemot 24:15-18).   

Clearly, the above text is a miraculous event, almost beyond human description.  In particular, Nahum Sarna notes that the limitations of language leads the story to describe God’s presence as “like a consuming fire,” for using that metaphor translates “the supernatural reality into terms approximating human experience” (Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus, 154).   However, I cannot read this passage and not imagine how much different our collective faith would be if we could experience a moment even remotely like one from our parasha.

Commenting upon this passage from our parasha, Jack Miles writes in God: A Biography that God’s presence on the mountain underscores the significance of God making his presence felt in this liminal moment in the Israelites’ history.  Miles writes:

“The Lord is a menacing and, if for that reason alone, an overwhelmingly real figure in this long passage.  Despite the fact that Israel has shouted in unison, “All the Lord has spoken we will faithfully do,” no one knows whether the elders of Israel will be in danger when they enter his presence.  They manage to do so safely, however, and look upon him, and eat and drink.  The concreteness of these actions of theirs, not to mention the words the Lord speaks or the cloud or the fire, underscores his own concreteness.  There is not the slightest question that he is an active partner in the making of the covenant” (Jack Miles, God: A Biography, 388).

For Miles, this passage from our parasha makes explicit that God’s might and majesty is decidedly present in revelation.   However, when reading the verse that, “The appearance [mar’eh] of God’s glory was like a consuming fire” (Shemot 24:17), our commentators struggled with the question of whether or not the Israelites can ever be as close to God’s presence as they were in that moment.   Below, I will share two different perspectives on the issue, one which focuses on the misdeeds of the Israelites in the past, and the other focusing on our spiritual potential in the present and future.

On the one hand, we find an early midrash that argues that this verse from our parasha describes a contrast between how the Israelites received God’s presence before and after the Golden Calf.  The midrash states:

[R. Yishmael said]: “Before the Israelites sinned, what is written in their regard?  “The appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain before the eyes of the children of Israel”” (Shemot 24:17).   Said R. Abba bar Kahana, “There were seven veils of fire, one covering the next, and the Israelites gazed and did not fear or take fright.” But when they had sinned, even on the face of the intercessor [Moses] they could not look: ‘And Aaron and all the children of Israel feared...to come near’” (Shemot 34:40)” (Pisiktah D’Rav Kahana 5:3).

Prior to the Golden Calf, the Israelites were able to view God’s consuming fire, but not unable to gaze upon it.  However, following the Golden Calf, the Israelites would be consumed with fear when even approaching God’s consuming fire.   Taking this perspective, the midrash argues that this verse provides us a window for what could have been in terms of how the Israelites related to God, taking the position that the sin of the Golden Calf led to our inability to approach the divine presence  today.

On the other hand, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev writes in the Kedushat Levi that our verse from our parasha provides us a spiritual roadmap to join in a union with God, a roadmap that is conceivable for any Jew who takes Torah seriously. The Kedushat Levi states:

“One who serves God through Torah and mitzvot brings about great joy above.  But how do we know if God takes pleasure in our service?  The test lies in whether the person’s heart burns constantly with the ecstatic flame of God’s service...This is the meaning of the “the appearance [ma’reh] of God’s glory was like a consuming fire.”   [The word mar’eh can also mean “mirror” or “reflection.”]  When you want to know if you are truly gazing upon God’s glory and doing what pleases the blessed Holy One, see whether your heart is burning like a consuming fire” (Kedushat Levi on Shemot 24:17).

In this commentary, we are told that it is possible for anyone to feel God’s imminent presence, but it requires a passionate focus on the mitzvot and God’s Torah.    The Israelites in the pre-Golden Calf period were not the only one who could gaze upon God’s presence, but receiving that reward today requires an immersion in Torah through our mind, body, and spirit.

At some point, every person in the Schechter community will experience a spiritual nadir, a moment where they wonder if their faith is reasonable and will be, in some sense, rewarded.  In those moments, we need to decide whether or not we want our faith to be dictated by the midrash, or by Rabbi Levi Yitzhak.  We can believe that God’s imminent presence is a thing of the past that we cannot grasp or experience even if we wanted to, or that an awe-inspiring encounter with the divine is possible for anyone willing to immerse themselves in God’s Torah.  Although I can experience low-points in my faith, like any person, I try to remind myself of the Levi Yitzhak perspective every day, knowing if I approach my faith with passion and purpose, God’s fire will appear before in ways both unexpected and (yes) miraculous.   All the rest is commentary.   

Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Yitro: Our Sinai Moments

I used to think that one of the most cliche questions rabbi could ask was, “When did you experience a Sinai Moment?” For whatever reason, I found this question forced and naive, as it assumes that any of us can really imagine what it was like to experience Sinai, a moment shrouded in mystery.   However, as I studied this week parasha, and looked at how the commentaries understood the message implicit in the Israelites’ journey to receive the revelation at Sinai, the more I understood how a “Sinai Moment” is an experience that all of us can have, and is a challenge that every Jew must feel in their soul in order to be worthy of receiving Torah.

Parashat Yitro describes an encounter between the Israelites, Moses and God prior to the receiving of the Aseret Ha-Devarim, where individuals ascend or descend based on the needs of the moment:

“On the third day, as morning dawned, there was thunder, and lightning, and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the horn; and all the people who were in the camp trembled.  Moses led the people out of the camp toward God, and they took their places at the foot of the mountain.  Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the Lord had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently.  The blare of the horn grew louder and louder. As Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder.   The Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain and Moses went up” (Shemot 19:16-20).

In the passage, our commentators paid great attention to the dramatic scene painted by the Torah, and how the notions of ascending and descending reflected the powerful charge God would make to Moses and the Israelites.  In each case, our rabbis see the revelation at Har Sinai as a moment where the Israelites were commanded to elevate themselves, literally and figuratively, in their relationship to God, a message that would remain timeless for all generations of the Jewish people who would come afterwards.

Our rabbis imagined in an early midrash that the Israelites were completely unprepared for the physical experience of standing at Sinai, experiencing shock and awe when God descended towards the Israelites.   At the same time, the midrash states that God only sought to create a shocking experience because of the powerful message contained in the revelation:  

““Who shall not fear You King of the nations!” (Jeremiah 10:7).  This can be compared to a money-lender who filled his pocket with gold coins and stood calling out, “Whoever wishes may come and borrow!”  Everyone heard him and fled--thinking, “When he comes to reclaim his debt, who will be able to stand, to bear it?”  So, God came down to Sinai to give the Commandments and prevent the world from falling apart, as it is said: “The earth trembled, the sky rained because of God” (Psalms 68:9); and “The mountain quaked” (Judges 5:5); and “The pillars of heaven tremble” (Job 26:11).  And Israel shuddered, as it is said, “The whole people shuddered” (Exodus 19:16); and the mountain shuddered, as it is said, “The whole mountain shuddered violently” (Exodus 19:18).  Why all these tremors?  Because he spoke words of Life!  And the prophet cried out: “If a lion roars, who shall not fear?”  (Amos 3:8)” (Shemot Rabbah 29:3).

Lest we think that the experience at Sinai was one of shock and awe because God wanted to punish the Israelites, the midrash reminds us that because God had such a powerful purpose in speaking to the Israelites, God’s message was packaged in a way that made the Israelites feel the importance of that moment.   Additionally, because God’s message was so powerful, and was delivered through a powerful medium, the hope of the midrash is that the Israelites would heed God’s message and rise to the occasion.

Recognizing the metaphorical meaning of this passage, Isaac Abravanel argues that Moses’ ascent towards Sinai represents a spiritual, not physical, climb up the mountain, where Moses must prepare himself to be worthy of what he shall receive from God on behalf of the Israelites.  Abravanel states:

“And Moses went up to God”: This may be taken to imply that as soon as the Israelites encamped opposite the Mount, Moses communed in solitude in his own tent and “went up,” in the metaphorical sense of scaling the intellectual heights of communion with God, preparing himself for the prophetic experience whenever it would descend upon him.  Then in the midst of his self-communing: “The Lord called unto him out of the mountain” (ibid.) bidding him ascend.  Accordingly, the phrase “went up” implies a spiritual lifting up and not a physical ascent of the Mount” (Abravanel on Shemot 19:20).

For Abravanel, Moses knew meeting God in this revelatory moment required a spiritual preparation unlike any other moment before or since.  As such, the Torah reminds us that the vision at Sinai contained an implicitly aspirational message, one where Moses would only be worthy of God’s revelation if he lifted himself up spiritually.

Finally, Professor Jon Levenson of Harvard University writes in Sinai & Zion that Sinai is a typological moment, an example of what the Israelites can be, in the past, present, or future, if they choose to wholly devote themselves to God, a much-needed needed reminder at certain low points in the Israelites’ history.  Levenson writes:

“...the Sinaitic “event” functioned as the prime pattern through which Israel could re-establish in every generation who she was, who she was meant to be.  The experience of Sinai, whatever its historical basis, was perceived as so overwhelming, so charged with meaning, that Israel could not imagine that any with or commandment from God could have been absent from Sinai” (Jon D. Levenson, Sinai & Zion: An Entry Into the Jewish Bible, 18-19).

For Levenson, Sinai matters because it offers a vision for how the Israelites should live their lives, and how God entrusted them to represent a certain way of being to the rest of the world.  As a result, when the Jewish people fall short in their mission, they need only to look towards Sinai to remind themselves of what they are capable of being and becoming.

If I had choose one thing I wish every Jew would take away from this week’s parasha, I would say that the experience of Sinai challenges every Jew to ask themselves if they are elevating themselves in a way that reflect the ascent of Sinai as understood by our commentators.   Every day, we have the opportunity to elevate our families, our work, our Schechter community, and every aspect of who we are.  In this way, every day offers the opportunity to have a “Sinai Moment,” a moment when we elevate ourselves to be the best of what we can be, and what the Torah commands us to be.

Shabbat Shalom!