Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Yitro, the name of Moshe’s father in law. We’ll start with a brief recap:
Moshe’s father in law, Yitro, hears about the Israelites' escape from Egypt and comes to meet them in the desert with Moshe’s wife and two sons. The two of them have a warm reunion and offer sacrifices, and Yitro sticks around for a while to see how things are going. He notices that Moshe is working himself to the bone dealing with every little thing, so he counsels Moshe to appoint judges and elders to deal with the minor stuff, freeing up Moshe for bigger issues and teaching Torah. Moshe agrees with this suggestion and implements the new system, and then Yitro goes back to Midian. Six weeks after leaving Egypt, the Israelites arrive at Mount Sinai, where God gives them a series of laws to purify themselves, and calls the Israelites “a kingdom of royalty and a holy nation”. Moshe’s like “You ready to make this thing official?” and the people say “Yes, for sure, we’re in for whatever God says”, so they spend three days getting ready and on the third day, Moshe climbs a shaking, booming, flashing mountain, leaving the Israelites at its base. God comes to the top of the mountain to meet Moshe, and offers 10 utterances: Believe in me and only me, don’t worship idols, don’t take my name in vain, keep Shabbat, honor your parents, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, and don’t covet anothers’ property. The Israelites are pretty traumatized by all the sound and sensation, and ask Moshe if from now on he can just serve as their intermediary with God, which he agrees to. The parsha ends, as so many do, with a bunch of laws, this time about idolatry and building an altar.
The experience of the revelation always gives me goosebumps, but it also makes me wonder: why was it like that, and how would I have felt if I was there? By the end, the people are so terrified and overwhelmed that they don’t want to interact directly with God ever again, and ask Moshe to be their go-between. Was that God’s goal? Why does God manifest with such a bang, literally, in this moment? I’m struck that in the story of Elijah, who also encounters God directly, God specifically DOESN’T manifest in a sensory experience- in that story, Elijah encounters light and sound and sensation and God is not in any of those; God appears to Elijah in a still, small voice. So what’s the story with this first revelation?
Though the Israelites express being overwhelmed by connecting with God like this, I actually wonder if the “still small voice” version would have been even harder for them to experience. The Israelites have been through a tremendous amount of trauma and stress over the last few months, transitioning from slavery to freedom through a series of major, high octane plagues and a miraculous journey across the sea. Their experience of God, therefore, went from being completely absent to present with the volume turned all the way up- for God to turn it all the way back down again might have led to the Israelites feeling abandoned, or disappointed. It takes experience for us to recognize nuance, in anything but especially in our conception of divinity. If we’re not used to silence, or stillness, we might initially find that space filled by our thoughts. So perhaps God’s initial approach, to match the tenor of the Israelites previous encounters with divinity in this moment of revelation, was actually the sensitive way to go. Over the rest of the Torah, we will see that the Israelites are more able to experience God in different ways, learning to use the Mishkan and Moses as points of access, but the point that most sticks out to me is that it is a process. That there isn’t one way in which it is most effective or meaningful for them to encounter God, but that their capacity to be with Divinity morphs and changes with time.
I want to offer the Israelites a blessing that they are able to take this moment of overwhelm in stride and remain open to the possibility of other ways to experience God, and the world, as part of an ongoing relationship. And I want to extend that same blessing to you, and to myself, that we will feel resilience in our relationship with the Divine, and the ability to navigate moments that feel like God is too present, or too absent, from our lives with patience and, yes, faith.