Posts Tagged ‘Sinai’
Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Mount Sinai
1. On Shavuos we tell the children that Mount Sinai was chosen as the place for giving the Torah to the Jewish people because, being the lowest of the surrounding mountains, it represents humility, an attribute required for receipt of the Torah.
2. But there is another aspect to this symbolism. If we all set out to climb Mount Everest, we will all reach different points before giving up: only a very few will reach the summit, from which they will look down on the rest of us with the self-satisfaction born of having achieved what the rest of us could not. But if we all set out to climb a small hill, we can all make it to the top: of course, some of us will have to give others a helping hand, but one way or another we can all make it and reach the summit together.
3. Torah is intended to be a lifestyle that is realistically attainable by everyone. If it becomes a set of standards that are so demanding – whether financially or in terms of time or other commitments – that in practice only a very few can meet them, we know that we have gone wrong. Judaism is not about setting high and exclusive targets so that I can look down on all those who fail to meet them: it is about travelling together, on a spiritual journey from which nobody need feel excluded.
4. When I hear about terrible and inhuman things happening around the world, such as the recent genocidal violence in Rwanda or the present intimidatory violence in Zimbabwe, I worry about the numbers of people involved in making it happen. There will always be resho’im – wicked people – and for obvious reasons many of them will choose to wield political power. But if ordinary people were imbued with ordinary standards of human decency, the few resho’im would lack tools to carry out their wicked plans. It is the moral and ethical vacuum inside thousands of ordinary people that enables them to be corrupted into tools of other people’s wickedness.
5. It should be literally impossible for one person to beat another with sticks until he is bleeding on the ground. It should be literally impossible for a group of soldiers to be incited to rape a group of women in a village. Our education and cultures around the worldwide should make it simply beyond the range of activity that an ordinary human being will permit himself or herself to undertake.
6. To have enclaves of people leading conspicuously holy lives is not a reflection of the Torah as given on Mount Sinai, a mountain representing universal attainment of basic spiritual goals. If religion is failing to set basic standards of universal morality that protect each of us from our worst sides and from corruption by the relatively few actively wicked minds, then religion is failing to achieve the task for which the world and it were created.
Sight and sound: how we see and hear the world
1. In this morning’s Torah reading Yisro hears and reacts (Shemos 18:1). He hears world news available to everybody else – news about the Jews’ exit from Egypt – but he has a greater than normal capacity to understand the implications, and to allow them to cause him to change his entire mode of life and to become a monotheist.
2. Later in the reading we have a physical impossibility – the Jews at Mount Sinai see voices (Shemos 20:19). That could indicate an entirely transcendental experience; or it could suggest merely a heightened perception, an enhancement of the natural sense of vision to a degree at which it was capable of perceiving the sounds. We can prove which it was from Rashi: he comments (from the Mechilta) that “all the nation saw” shows that no blind people were at Sinai. If by seeing sounds we were referring to something wholly unnatural, why should blind people be less able to do it than sighted people? So it must have been a natural use of sight, but enhanced to an unusual degree of refinement.
3. Both these are the essence of the Jewish approach to the world. We do not claim to be able to hear or see things that other people cannot. But we believe that concentration on spiritual values can lead human beings to be able to understand more of what they hear, and to see aspects of happenings that other might miss. The world is full of blessings and miracles, but we need to train ourselves to notice them and to understand their implications.
4. This also explains something about the nature of ruach hakodesh. Some people have trained their spiritual sensitivities, by close adherence to Torah values, so that they understand more than I do of what God wants from the world and is doing to the world. By consulting them I may not learn things that I did not already know, but I may come to understand them better or to see aspects of them that were hidden to me. Similarly, when chassidim seek a brochoh from a Rebbe they are asking him to apply his more refined understanding of the world to confirm whether they are moving in paths that make proper use of their blessings and that reflect understanding of events around them.
The Jewish All-Blacks – double-sided tefilin straps
- Before the new fashion for double-sided tefilin straps (black on both sides) takes hold, it is important to try to squash it, on a number of grounds.
- First, these will certainly be more expensive than the single-sided straps. So this is just one more attempt to raise the stakes in the observance game, making it an increasing burden on those of limited income to feel that they are doing justice to their religious obligations and providing unnecessary extra opportunities for those who wish to play holier-than-thou games of one upmanship.
- The Torah was given on the smallest mountain – Mount Sinai – to teach a lesson: if we all set out to climb Everst, most of us will fail, and only one or two of the fittest will be able to dance around on the top looking down on the rest. But if we all set out to climb a small hill, we can all get there: some of us will need to help others, and we will proceed at different paces – but soon we will all be able to stand there together and draw on each others’ strengths and weaknesses in worshipping God as a united whole community. So we should always be suspicious of anything that purports to set the standards of religious observance in a way designed to exclude – or likely to have the effect of excluding – being beyond the easy reach of everyone who wishes to be part of the Jewish community.
- Secondly, since we have a principle of yeridas hadoros – that the further we get from Sinai the less our religious instincts are to be trusted – we should be suspicious of anything that implies that the religious observance of former generations was lacking. If a new technological development enables us to achieve standards not available to our fathers or grandfathers, we should welcome it as they would have. But our grandfathers had black ink – if they had wanted to colour both sides of the straps they would have done.
- Thirdly, it is a halachic requirement that the straps be straight at all times when I am wearing my tefilin. At present I can quickly see when they are crooked, because the raw leather shows: with two black sides it will be more difficult to notice.
- Devotion to mitzvos is the essence of our religion. Endlessly seeking to make religious life more difficult for ourselves and others is not. (Personal chumros – stringencies – that do not impinge upon others, directly or indirectly by making them feel inadequate, are a wholly different matter.)
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