Parashat Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:23) for Feb. 18, 2006
This week's parasha study has been generously sponsored by Susan Kitchell in loving memory of her mother Dora Kitchell.
Is God not speaking, or are we not listening?
Study with Baruch Sienna
This year's cycle of weekly Parasha study explores what connections and insight we can find by examining the Torah portion together with the Haftarah.
Last week's triumphant crossing at the sea now brings the Israelites to the foot of Mt. Sinai. In this week's parasha, the Israelites encounter God and hear the Ten Commandments. The Rabbis selected a portion from Isaiah that has similar language and imagery: wings, holy, smoke. (Ashkenazim read Is. 6:1-7:6; 9:5,6; Sephardim read a shorter selection: Is. 6:1-13). This week's text includes the famous verse: kadosh, kadosh, kadosh (holy, holy, holy) that is recited during the sanctification prayer (Kedushah) found in the Amidah.
Like the theophany at Sinai, Isaiah also describes a vision of God. Isaiah deliberately evokes the image of Moses by describing himself as a man of impure lips. (As an aside, a few week's ago we encountered the language of 'kvad peh' 'heavy of speech,' and the image of 'uncircumcised lips' and the famous midrash of the burning coals. Few people realize that this image already appears in this week's haftarah text: Then one of the seraphs [angelic beings] flew over to me with a live coal, which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched it to my lips and declared, 'Now that this has touched your lips, Your guilt shall depart and your sin be purged away.' (Is. 6:6))
Isaiah lived in the southern kingdom of Judah in the latter half of the 8th century B.C.E. During this turbulent period, the larger, Northern Kingdom (called Israel) hoped to conquer the southern kingdom of Judah. After Isaiah's description of the futile attempts of the Northern Kingdom, the Rabbis append a two verse epilogue of a messianic vision from Isaiah: the throne of King David will be established.
God's revelation at Sinai is the central event of the Torah; God took the Israelites out of Egypt in order to meet them at Sinai. The dramatic imagery of the giving of the Ten Commandments is described with smoke and thunder and lightning: a spectacular sound and light show! The text seems to be saying: 'If you were there, you couldn't miss it!' But the late philosopher Emil Fackenheim has suggested that if an agnostic had been present at Mount Sinai, he would have heard all the thunder and seen all the lightning and wondered what all the fuss was about.
We know that Israel is on the Syrio-African rift and no stranger to seismic activity, so a rational approach would understand this as the description of an earthquake. Earthquakes are occasionally accompanied by combustible gases that escape the earth's crust and ignite. Clearly this event was literally and metaphorically 'earth-shattering.'
According to Exodus, it was 'all of Israel' who witnessed the thunder and the lightning. In the Haftarah, Isaiah also describes a vision of God and even though his lips have been purified, this time his message is not heard. Like Pharaoh's hardened heart, their ears will be stopped up; their eyes dulled. Today, it seems that God no longer speaks like the Torah describes. If we hear God's voice, most of us do not feel the earth move.
The Torah text says that the Israelites did not hear God. They saw the thunder (the Hebrew kolot can also mean 'voices'), (Ex. 20:15) and God says, "You yourselves saw that I spoke with you from the very heavens." Saw? Shouldn't the text in both places say, 'hear'? This should strikes us as unusual, since in Judaism, the central verb is 'Shma' to listen (and to understand). The use of the verb 'ra'ah' (literally, to see) for audible phenomenon suggests to the Rabbis that the Israelites 'saw the sounds' and 'heard the visions.' In other words, the experience of Revelation was so unique and overwhelmingly intense, the normal boundaries of our senses were not observed. Arthur Green writes that seeing God's voice means 'that each one uniquely experienced the divine voice speaking within his or her own soul. To this all the rest of religion -- indeed, perhaps all the rest of life-- is merely commentary.' (The Language of Truth, pg. 106)
The midrash (which connects the giving of the Torah and Isaiah's 'Holy, Holy, Holy' found in the Haftarah) suggests that what was unique about Sinai, was not that God spoke, but that the world was silent:
R. Abbahu said in the name of R. Yohanan: When the Holy One gave the Torah, no bird chirped, no fowl flew, no ox lowed, not one of the ofannim [angelic beings] stirred a wing, not one of the seraphim said, 'Holy, Holy, Holy.' The sea did not roar, creatures did not speak -- the whole world was hushed into breathless silence; it was then that the voice went forth: "I am Adonai your God."
Lawrence Kushner has called this: God’s Dolby Noise-Reduction System. Kushner asks us to imagine turning off the sound of the television and watching. And to play with the contrast/brightness till there is no picture. Now- "You see nothing. You hear nothing. But you continue staring at the black soundless glass rectangle. For something is there. Someone is speaking and looking. Only you can't see them. From within a darkened space a message issues." (Honey from the Rock, pg. 33)
What was it that the Israelites saw/heard? What was it about Sinai that was so transformative for those present? If we were there would we have experienced more than thunder and lightning? Perhaps only when we turn off all the noise and distractions around us, can we start hearing. Perhaps when we are ready to acknowledge that our lives have meaning, we will start seeing. The question we must ask ourselves is, is God not speaking, or are we not listening?
Shabbat Shalom,
BDS
