Unmistakable, Irreducible, Recognizable, Treasured
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Parashat Yitro
The rabbis say there 10 songs
The Song of the sea, the song of Deborah, songs of the Pslams, the song of David, of Solomon
But one has yet to be sung
It will happen in the future, in the world to come
We learn it will sung without shame, without embarrassment
Without self consciousness
Just a full throated song
But I wonder on this shabbat Yitro
It is my intuition, I wonder
If this song already exists
Right here
In the hearts of all of us right here tonight
And I wonder if this song might be sung, not in the next world, but now
2.
There are many deep and mysterious stories about what happened when we received Torah
When God, all that is holy and ineffable reached across dimensions and time and worlds to offer us the possibility of holiness and justice and truth
Surely, something that happened on the exterior
Fire, a call, voices, thunder
An experience we could not help but leave changed, imprinted, embossed
But also
I learned this week from my teacher Avivah Zornberg
Sometime in that event
Something also happened, very much, in us
I don’t just want to say something in us was moved
Although that is surely true
I don’t want to say this shabbat we were moved
Because this implies we were fundamentally altered by the experience
And although it was true
I don’t want to say something was kindled
Because this implies some kind of chemical, physical, biological transformation, that something in us was illuminated, empowered
And although you could surely suggest it, it is surely true
This shabbat, I don’t even want to say something in us was born
Because that implies a transformation took place, an evolution
That we were somehow different before and after
It is true
But this shabbat
I want to say in addition to whatever happened on the outside
In addition to whatever changes invariably took place from what happened
This shabbat, when God offered us the Torah
At that moment
We experienced a moment of recognition
That all God was offering us was already, unmistakably, irreducibly in us
We could now feel its contours
Identify it as obvious as the mountain in front of us
Undeniable as the fires in the skies
Incontrovertible as the fact that we were surrounded by people
The shock and shudder of recognition that what God was offering was already in our hearts
“Lo b’shamayim hi / It wasn’t in heaven”
Whatever it is that animates Torah, and gives us life
We experienced it, not only from above, but in ourselves.
3.
The Sfat Emet, our Chasidic teacher, puts it this way:
When Torah is telling the story of what happened at Sinai
And it says, mysteriously,
וְכָל־הָעָם֩ רֹאִ֨ים אֶת־הַקּוֹלֹ֜ת
“All the people saw the voices”
What does this mean — what does it mean to see the voices?
He says, what the verse means is, specifically,
When we first heard God’s voice:
When God said the very first words:
אָֽנֹכִ֖י֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑֔יךָ
“I am the Lord your God”
God spoke in the singular, God said: I am the Lord YOUR God, YOUR — God spoke to each one of us, not collectively, not YOU ALL together
So in that moment
Each person felt that the divine voice was coming from within him / her / them
Not only that
The fact Torah says we saw the voices means
That our experience of this voice coming from a deep place inside each of us
This seeing was not something to be demonstrated or proven or even believed
It was not necessary to say anything out loud
In that moment, it was just self evident
“The voice is coming from within me —
There is a fragment of a divine song in me”
Each one felt it, each one knew it
No transformation, no alchemy had to take place
וַֽיְהִי־כֵֽן
It was just so.
We saw we had always been this way
We were created to be in just this way
That’s how it is when you talk to God, says the Sfat Emet. (1)
And I imagine hearing (or seeing) that voice was like finding a long lost relative
Only, we were realizing, still trying to shake slavery off, we had been the lost ones
4.
There were many stories I heard after the high holidays this year that moved me a great deal
Especially because I could not see or experience for myself all that was going on in your homes — hearing the stories took on new significance
One family told me that on Kol Nidrei
They got dressed up in white and feeling a bit self conscious, it was all so strange, they turned on their computers and stood near their window to pray
But as they neared their window, onto a porch
They heard something across the park where they lived — they heard Kol Nidrei
They looked out and across the park
And saw a man, someone they did not know
Also dressed in white
Standing close to his porch
His window also open
And he, too, was praying the same prayers, watching, witnessing, our same service
He too was reaching out, trying to sing
The story reminds us, even now, divine voices still find other divine voices
Doesn’t matter if we ever meet
Doesn’t even matter if we are in the same space or time zone
The voices of our souls are still calling across gardens and oceans
From Sinai to now
Across generations
Unmistakably
Just as sure as our hearts beat in our chests
5.
In the past few weeks
Archeologists in Israel found three scraps of cloth from 1,000 BCE, from the time of King David.
And what is remarkable about this cloth,
besides the fact that it is 3,000 years old
Is that it is dyed a vibrant purple
A purple that is referred to in Torah, a purple that is associated with royalty and the honor of the priesthood
A purple that is made from sea snails
The same snails, with a slightly different process
That make techelet / the special blue that Torah describes us using for the fringes of our tallitot
But the other thing that was remarkable about this purple cloth
Is that until now, many archeologists thought that the place where they found this precious and royal purple
Deep in the desert
Was the site of a simple nomadic tribe
But finding this cloth
Which indicated a willingness and capacity to travel many miles to the nearest sea shore to try and obtain it, as well as the ability and desire to manufacture and transmit this purple to this remote place
Finding this argaman, royal purple
Meant all the theories must be changed
It meant that everything else we thought about this tribe must be re-understood, reorganized in light of it. (2)
6.
The rabbis say that Yitro, too, needed to do some reorganizing
Remember Yitro, in one of my favorite moments of Torah
Although I do say that about a lot of moments —
Yitro, who is not part of Israel and in fact, as the rabbis would have it
Is maybe even a very status-y courtier for the Pharaoh
Has a lot to lose, if you know what I mean
Yitro comes out into the middle of nowhere
Far into the middle of the desert
Why he does this is up for great debate
It seems he heard something that changed his life
Something that made all his honor and achievements pale in comparison
Maybe it was the miracle of the splitting of the sea, maybe it was another story, we don’t know
Regardless, he arrives
And, my teacher Avivah Zornberg showed us
That after Moses tells him the full story, the full run down of everything that happened for Israel the text says
וַיִּ֣חַדְּ יִתְר֔וֹ
Simply, “and Yitro rejoiced” over all that had happened for Israel
But Rashi says that this verb can also be read as חיִדודין /
Not that Yitro felt joy but rather Yitro felt small prickles, as we say, pins and needles all over his body (3)
Because, according to Talmud, something about the story Yitro heard
Created a kind of internal conflict, a physical response
Because that story made Yitro see his life in an entirely different way
In other words, there was something so powerful and treasured in what was called out of him by that story
He knew, he was compelled —
Everything in his life now would be understood and organized around the story he had just heard
All the things he had worked for, the little statuses, the old prizes — money, ego, clever distractions, protective alliances — now they all looked like golden calves to him
They were exposed as insignificant, trivial
He realized: Going into the wilderness would be just the start
We could say Yitro received Torah in that moment
He heard something and felt the voice in himself, knew the song:
Unmistakable, irreducible
Recognizable, treasured
7.
It is possible that this kind of re-organizing, this receiving, this recognition
Is this kind of thing that has to happen again and again
We forget and remember, we forget again and remember again
I had the pleasure of learning a little from the great teacher Melila Helner (7)
And, since she is a kabbalist, someone who is deeply spiritual
And someone who is also very much involved in activism, rights, local political alliances
I asked her something like, “Does your spirituality, your religious mystical thought provide you with strength for your work on the streets? How do you use it, how do you channel it, how does it fuel the daily battles you have to fight?”
Very kindly, she let me know I had organized everything backwards. She said something like, “No, you don’t understand. We want to be closer to the other world, we don’t try to ground or apply heaven or apply it to our problems. Instead, in remembering, we start with the realm of the soul, this changes us here, it changes everything. If we forget this, we will soon be lost.”
8. Wind in the Trees
When we received Torah (Ex. 20:15) right after we hear about seeing the voices it says,
וַיַּ֤רְא הָעָם֙ וַיָּנֻ֔עוּ וַיַּֽעַמְד֖וּ מֵֽרָחֹֽק
When the people saw what was happening, they fell back — and stood from afar.
But it is possible that the verb וַיָּנֻ֔עוּ
It is possible that here this word does not mean to fall back or move back or wander at all
But rather says Rashi, says Sforno, says Mekhilta, says Avivah Zornberg, it could mean something
Like a trembling, or a quaking
כְּנ֥וֹעַ עֲצֵי־יַ֖עַר מִפְּנֵי־רֽוּחַ
like the way the trees tremble from the wind — in Isaiah (7:2) (5)
It is as if, once the wind blows through the branches of the trees
The tree feels not only the ruach / the wind rushing by but realizes, in a flash of recognition, the ruach Elohim / the spirit of God is very much within itself.
That is, the trees, from their very composition, from the construction of their branches,
from the make up of their fine leaves
In this moment they understand:
We were created just this way to rustle in the wind !
To make these generous sounds
And all that is happening on the outside, (they realize)
All these generous sounds
Are also happening within.
Maybe at Sinai, we were like those trees
Moved by the wind but also trembling from the power of the divinity we recognized inside,
Seeing the voice, the song
And all that this voice would surely mean for our lives
And maybe, at last, we were trembling from the familiarity of what we found
After all, these were divine voices we somehow knew were ours
These were fragments of songs we’d heard somewhere before
Maybe we were holy after all, and maybe we still are
9.
They say there are 10 songs
Song of the sea, song of Deborah, songs of the Pslams, the song of David, of Solomon
But one has yet to be sung
It will happen in the future, in the world to come
One day it will sung without shame, without embarrassment
Without a shred of self consciousness
Just a full throated song
But I wonder if on this shabbat Yitro
I wonder if this song already exists
Right here
In the hearts of all of us right here tonight
And I wonder if this song might be sung, not in the next world, but starting now.
(1) Sfat Emet, Green Translation, Parashat Yitro
(2) https://www.timesofisrael.com/ancient-cloths-with-royal-purple-dye-found-in-israel-dated-to-king-davids-time/
(3) (See Rashi to 18:9; Sanhedrin 94a)
(4) You can hear this conversation on our site, it is in our Jewish Life is Waking Up series
(5) See comments to Ex. 20:15; See also Isaiah 24:20
