Parashat Mishpatim, Exodus 21:1-24:18

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Be Here Now

Study with Baruch Sienna

David Bader has written a number of humourous books that combine Japanese aesthetics with Jewish content: Haikus for Jews, (for example)

In the ice sculpture
reflected bar mitzvah guests
nosh on chopped liver.

Or his volume, Zen Judaism,

Learn of the pine from the pine. Learn of the bamboo from the bamboo. Learn of the kugel from the kugel.

You can learn more about them on his website: www.extremely.com. In his 'Zen Judaism' book, one of my favourite aphorisms is: "Be here now, be somewhere else later. Is that so difficult?" With a perfect Yiddish flavour, Bader has captured the essence of Zen, and one might say, the point of living a religious life. Much of Jewish ritual I think, is to sensitize us to the moment, to be aware of the present. How hard is that? But as we'll see in this week's parasha, it is more difficult than it sounds.

To recap: if you remember from last week, Bnei Yisrael had just received the Ten Commandments orally. Although immediately after the last commandment there is a brief exchange between Moses and the Israelites, it is not clear where Moses is. As the Torah has not described him going down, we are left to assume that he is still on top of the mountain. This week's parasha, Mishpatim, continues with a list of legislation, beginning with rules regarding slaves (interesting for a group that have just experienced slavery!) and contains a collection of laws on a variety of topics. Scholars call this section the 'Covenant Code.' After three chapters of rules, God now says to Moses, "Come up to Adonai, with Aaron, Nadav and Avihu and seventy elders of Israel" (Ex. 24:1). Confusingly, in the next verse, Moses is told that he alone should come near Adonai.

The parasha ends with Moses ascending the mountain (again? I thought he was already there) and remaining there for 'forty days and forty nights.' However, we don't read of Moses getting the stone tablets yet. The chronology at this point breaks down- as the narrative is interrupted for two weeks by descriptions of the Mishkan (tune in next week), and only in Ki Tisa do we read of Moses getting the stone tables and then the catastrophic incident of the Golden Calf. It is not clear whether this break is a literary device only, and we should understand that the Golden Calf in fact comes immediately after in the narrative, or if the Torah should be read in its order, that the instructions for the Mishkan preceded the Golden Calf. The rabbis argue as to the order of events here, and both solutions have their respective merits and problems, but I'll leave that for now.

The Rabbis conveniently blur the distinction between the Ten Commandments, the stone tablets and the Torah, so for example, Shavuot, the 'Giving of the Torah' is calculated to be the day that we received the Ten Commandments. But the day of God's revelation (theophany) is clearly not the day we received the stone tablets. The Ten Commandments were delivered orally, as we heard last week in Parshat Yitro. In this week, at the end of the portion, we read of Moses ascending (and ascending and ascending) and staying on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. Even though the Torah cannot be given yet (we're only half way through the story), the Rabbis understand that in some cosmic way, the entire Torah is encapsulated on the tablets.

The Rabbis see evidence for this in the seemingly unnecessary threefold repetition describing the tablets with the Decalogue, "...and I will give you the stone tablets with the teachings and the commandments which I have inscribed to instruct them" (v. 12). For them, the stone tablets refers to the Ten Commandments, the teachings (in Hebrew Torah) refers to the Torah or the Tanach (the Jewish Bible, or Torah shebikhtav) and 'commandments' refers to the Oral Torah (Talmud). According to the Rabbis, all 613 mitzvot were somehow encoded in the Ten Commandments. Rashi mentions that R. Saadia has even made a list of the mitzvot organized into the ten categories.

But I am struck by one other oddity. God tells Moses to ascend the mountain, and 'be there' and Rashi adds, 'for forty days.' Rashi supplies this missing language because otherwise he is probably bothered by the same problem: Why does God have to add 'and be there' to the instructions to Moses to ascend the mountain? Where else would he be? The Kotzker Rebbe gives a different answer:

But from this apparent redundancy we find proof that even one who strains himself to ascend onto a high mountaintop, and is indeed able to reach the summit, it is nevertheless possible that he is still not there. Even though he may be standing on the very peak itself, his head may be somewhere else.

Some argue, if God is everywhere what is the point of climbing the mountain. It is a good question. The Rabbis make the point that Mount Sinai was actually the lowest mountain to teach that you don't have to go to the highest peak to find God (a similar lesson is learned from the lowly, humble 'burning bush'). The answer is that there are some places (for many of us) where God seems more accessible than others: the Grand Canyon and the giant redwood forests and snorkeling on coral reefs seem more spiritual than shopping malls and downtown office cubicles. Some sanctuaries and cathedrals inspire awe, while others leave some people cold. But our surroundings definitely impact on our ability to connect to the Divine. Mountain tops seem to be a good place.

But the other ingredient seems to be the journey itself. Yes, I suppose, we should be able to find God without taking a single step. But for us to go somewhere 'spiritually' most of us need to go somewhere 'physically.' Hence the need for pilgrimages in almost every religious tradition.

But the most important lesson to remember, is that no matter where you are, or where you are going, you also have to be fully present. If you are on the mountaintop and worrying about your flight home, or at the birth of your child but thinking about your next meeting, you will miss the moment.

Be here now, be somewhere else later. How difficult could that be?

 

Shabbat Shalom.

BDS