There are no more exciting parshiot in the Torah than the ones that we read last week Beshalach and this one Yitro. None that have a greater impact on Jewish fate and Jewish faith; none are lived more intensely by the Jews to whom they occurred and by the Jews who reenact and re-experience their occurrence.
Last week we read of the Exodus and the splitting of the Sea and the Song of the Sea and this week we stand at Sinai at the ultimate, at the formative meeting between God and Israel.
The verse of the Torah that intrigues me the most this year is not what was said at Sinai for I have learned to question not only what was said but also what was heard and how it was heard by the collective people Israel but also by each one of the sixty myriads of Israelites who drew close to the mountain.
This year especially, after having reread Abraham Joshua Heschel masterpiece: Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations, this time aided by the superb translation and commentary by Gordon Tucker I understand that each utterance, each event and every moment within each event has been probed by generations of Jews seeking in part of understand what happened to Moshe and the Children of Israel by seeing in this paradigmatic story their own experience of God and of commandment, of their own attempts to draw close.
The Biblical language is clearly a vertical language, YHWH is above, Moshe and the people down below.
How does one reach up to, reach out YHWH and how does YHWH reach down to – and out to the people Israel.
Let’s us read the verses together using Everett Fox marvelous translation:
19: 3 Now Moshe went up to God, and YHWH called out to him from the mountain saying. Say thus to the House of Yaakov (yes,) tell the Children of Israel….
7 Moshe came, and had the elders of the people called, And set before them these words, with which YHWH had commanded him.
8 And all the people answered together, they said: All that YHWH has spoken, we will do. Moshe reported the words of the people to YHWH….
Verse 3 describes the ascent as Moshe’s initiative: "Now Moshe went up to God."
The initiative may have been Moshe’s own but as with all revelation: initiative alone does not suffice. For a meeting to occur there has to be a response.
The Ascent of Moshe was met with the call of God who answered the ascent – seemingly at Moshe’s initiative -- with the call, which is indeed the response from on high.
Moshe ascends – he moves toward God. Moshe descends he moves toward the people. He report on God’s words to the people and on the peoples’ response to God. He mediates between the world above and the word below and becomes so much a part of the world above that a second mediation is required: the elders. The people are ready without hearing the content they are ready to commit:
8: All that YHWH has spoken we will do.
The commitment is to respond in action, to respond to the unspoken, to the unsaid. It is the Israelites response of Hineni, the response of Abraham, the antithesis on the response of Adam. Still, preparation is required for the Israelites, scrubbing clean, separation, isolation, boundaries are established. One may draw close but not too close. However close there is a separation between the blockquoteine and the human. It is a boundary that they will soon be broken in a moment of concretization, in the creation of a tangible God – the Golden Calf -- who fully appears and not shrouded in a thick cloud,
Verse 20: tells a very different story:
20 And YHWH came down upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. YHWH called Moshe to the top of the mountain And Moshe went up. God descended, called unto Moshe and only then did Moshe ascend.
It was God’s initiative and not Moshe’s; God who called and this time Moshe who was ready to respond. In their previous encounter Moshe backed away, hid his face, protested the call, and feared his own inadequacy and also the readiness of the Israelites to listen
From a theological point of view to Torah seems to be wrestling with the question how do the blockquoteine and the human make contact. It is at human initiative or the blockquoteine prerogative? Can Moshe ascend of his own desire? Or is the blockquoteine –human encounter at God’s initiative God somehow descends calls and Moshe responds by ascending. Descent, call, and ascent -- only then the spoken word?
Having responded to the call:
25: Moshe went down to the people and said to them
20:1 God spoke all these words, Saying:
2 I am the YHWH your God…
For years I have struggled to read this encounter by asking the Midrashic questions:
What was said?
What was heard?
Were they one and the same or were they different?
How restrained was God?
How present was Israel: what could they hear? What could they handle?
Martin Buber asked: how much of what was heard was blockquoteine: was there content to the encounter or merely the encounter itself. Franz Rosenzweig suggested a fluidity in which that question is answered ever anew in the life of the Jew responding to Sinai.
And Heschel suggested that we ask the question with ever greater urgency; that our questions are not heresy, that we are not the first and hopefully not the last Jews to ask them. Tradition provides so many answers provided we know how to ask the question.
Some in tradition argue most loudly in our time that the content is complete, the transaction was two Torahs, the written and the oral; to imagine otherwise is heresy.
And some today think that they see God’s clearly, certain that God is punishing New Orleans with Katrina, Sharon with a stroke, or America with terrorism. God foes not speak in darkness but in the fullness of the light they can discern.
I return to Sinai and stand at the bottom of the mountain: wondering how does one ascend; how does one prepare: how does one listen and what can one discern grapple with the voices of tradition and the silence of our time.