>> Torah portion
vrfitehe
Didn't We Meet
At Mount
Sinai?
Parshat Vitro:
Exodus 18:1-20:23;
Isaiah 6:1-7:6; 9:5-9:6.
H
ey, haven't we met before?
It might actually be one
of the oldest pickup lines in
the world — even our ancient rabbis
see it that way. You see, they taught us
that all people who ever lived and all
people whoever will live,
stood at the foot of Mount
Sinai when God gave us the
Torah.
So before you answer,
"Buzz off" — instead, your
response could be, "Maybe
we met at Sinai."
Yes, Mount Sinai is per-
haps the most defining
moment in the life of our
people. It was there that the
Israelites, newly freed from
slavery, received the Ten
Commandments and forever sealed
the covenant with God. Everything
that happens from here on out in
the Torah is based on this single
moment. At its essence, the Mount
Sinai moment is a moment about
profound learning and insight, about
the ultimate meaning and purpose of
our lives.
I am taken with the notion that we
all stood together at Sinai to accept
God's covenant because it means
that we are more than a collection of
histories and customs passed down
through the generations. If we all
stood at Sinai, it means we were all
there at the beginning. Each of us
made a covenant of our own — in our
own way, each according to our own
interpretation of the law.
The midrash, the rabbis' explana-
tion of text, teaches us this very idea
saying that, "When God's voice came
forth at Mount Sinai, it divided itself
into 70 languages so that that the
whole world might understand it ...
Everyone at Mount Sinai, old and
young, men and women, children, too
— heard the voice of God according
to their ability to understand."
With this phrase, "according to their
ability to understand," the midrash
reinforces that Torah has something
to say to everyone, at every age and in
every generation.
Imagine yourself standing at the
foot of that mountain. Imagine what
it must have been like to hear God
speak to you. What a profound experi-
ence! But anyone who has ever sat in
a classroom or listened to
a rabbi's sermon, or even
watched a movie knows
that your experience had
to have been different from
mine and what you heard,
different from what I heard.
Recognizing this gives us
the liberty to shape our
Judaism to reflect who we
are — our values and the
times in which we live,
even our very understand-
ing of the Torah text.
Inherent to standing at Sinai, to the
covenant, is the relationship we build
with God. Relationships provide room
to maneuver from within — meaning
there's room to experiment, to explore
and discover.
I don't believe the laws were given
simply as a code of conduct, but
as guideposts of how to connect
and approach the world. Observing
Shabbat, for example, means one thing
to me and another to you. But hope-
fully, however we choose to observe, it
provides us with great meaning and
with a deeper connection to God and
to our community.
At a glance, these Ten Command-
ments might seem like a series of
rigid laws, but if we consider them
open to interpretation by each of us
as individuals, they become a means
of connection and introspection. They
become an access point for looking
deeper into the text, to making the
text meaningful to us in our times.
The fact that each of us stood at
Sinai not only provides the answer to
the oldest pickup line in the book, but
gives us a common experience from
which to draw upon as we move for-
ward into the next generation. ❑
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February 9 = 2012 43