Hearing the KOL, Listening to the Call

Yitro 5780 / 15 February 2020

In this week’s parashah, Yitro, we have the scene of the first Revelation at Mt. Sinai. I say first, because we who have read the Book of Shemot many times, know that because of the sin of the Golden Calf, these tablets are shattered, and there is a second Revelation scene later in parshat Ki Tisa.

When I read the verses this time around, I was struck by some details I had not noticed previously. The scene is more complicated and nuanced than I had remembered – perhaps because of the influence of films like “The Ten Commandments” and “Prince of Egypt.”

First, before the Israelites receive the Ten Commandments, God tells Moses to check in with them to make sure they are ready for this big moment. This is what Moses does, and the Israelites say: “Yes. Everything God says, we will do.”

Moses then goes up the mountain to receive God’s words.

But God seems skeptical. God tells Moses to go back down to keep the people at bay, lest they get too close to the mountain. God senses they seek something tangible to equate with God and may storm the mountain. So Moses goes back down, and then God utters aloud to all assembled these words that we refer to as the Ten Commandments. God knows the people want something to grasp onto to maintain faith in a Higher Power, so God speaks in a human voice (“KOL”) human words (“D’VARIM”).

Then something surprising happens. The Israelites tell Moses that they do not want to hear directly this Divine “KOL” and these Divine “D’VARIM”. They ask Moses to be their intermediary. Moses tells them that as long as they obey these words, there is nothing to fear. But apparently, this is not enough to allay their fears, because Moses then ascends the mountain, and God tells Moses to tell the people that they can communicate with God less directly, but not through creating idols; rather, through sacrifices. They CANNOT build statues to represent God, but they CAN build altars to make sacrifices to God.

This is telling as it foreshadows the sin of the Golden Calf. As soon as Moses disappears into the cloud for forty days and nights to receive the tablets of the covenant (the לוחות הברית), as soon as there is no one to mediate, they lose faith and break the covenant and build a huge idol.

They are not capable of doing without a tangible representation of God in the absence of their human intermediary. An intangible God is too ephemeral for them, and even a “Kol,” a Divine Voice, is not tangible enough.

Apparently, the Israelites had been too quick to agree to the terms of this covenant, which they did not even hear before they agreed. Clearly, they spoke too soon. But once they heard that idolatry was forbidden as part of this covenant, and once they realized it required a more personal and direct relationship with the Divine, they were already trying to back out. They were not ready for the kind of Revelation God had in mind.

The Israelites at this time are unable to grasp the notion of a God that permeates all, even themselves, a Divine presence in the world that is not located in a specific place outside of themselves. And they cannot believe that they as individuals-created-in-God’s-Image could hear or understand it for themselves. They need to capture it in a statue or through the mediation of another human being. Although the Israelites hear the Divine Voice with their own ears, they cannot believe they are worthy. Perhaps because they were slaves, the notion that they are just as worthy to hear the Divine Voice as Moses, is too much for them.

This story makes it especially easy to understand Rambam, Maimonides’ approach to the sacrifices in his Guide for the Perplexed Part III, Ch. 32, as meant only for a certain time and place, as a way to wean the people off of this kind of worship by limiting it only to worshipping the One God.

As Bible scholar Nechama Leibowitz explains: “The general mode of worship in which the Israelites were brought up, consisted in sacrificing animals in temples containing images, to bow down to those images, and to burn incense before them. It was in accordance with the wisdom and plan of God, as displayed in the whole creation, that God did not command us to give up and to discontinue all these modes of worship; for to obey such a commandment would have been contrary to the nature of humans, who generally cling to that which they are accustomed. For this reason God allowed these rituals to continue.

And here Nechama Leibowitz quotes our own parashah: “An altar of earth thou shall make unto Me” (Ibid., 20:21)…” Then she continues:

“By this Divine plan the traces of idolatry were blotted out, and the truly great principle of our faith, the Existence and Unity of God, was firmly established.”

The people needed a familiar and tangible ritual act to feel the connection to God, and they needed it to feel less personal, more distant, and with an intermediary, like a priest, to offer the sacrifice. It was only once the Temple was destroyed that prayer completely replaced the sacrifices. We do have tangible rituals to accompany prayer, like tefillin, tallit and reading from the Torah scroll that is kept in a special ark; but these are not idols but rather ritual objects or tools to accompany prayer.

And while we do have a prayer leader, this person’s role is to keep the service going and the community unified and literally “on the same page”, but not to represent the community to God. Each person is meant to do their own spiritual work while praying .
To take this one step further, even prayer is not the final end. One could argue that the liturgy itself is simply a tool to feel the Divine Presence. As humans, we are meant to be continually evolving, and if we find ways to connect with God that work better for us than reciting the same prayers in their entirety three times a day, perhaps as Judaism evolves, we will find different ways to connect. In fact, some Jews already are, as Jewish meditation and chanting becomes more and more popular. Even leaving the synagogue building and praying or chanting in nature, by the sea or even on top of a mountain.

In her book, Expanding the Palace of Torah, Dr. Tamar Ross describes Revelation as a cumulative process with historical moments when these continual and smaller progressive Divine Revelations take place. Revelations that can even overturn traditions and practices from the past. But only when we are ready to receive these Revelations collectively as a society. She considers feminism to be one of those moments. She writes that this approach “grants religious significance to the events of history and the development of the human spirit.”

To this understanding of Revelation, I would like to add that of Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, which he refers to as “Paradigm Shift” theology.

According to this approach, Judaism evolves organically with cultural cosmic paradigms that change over time. Based on a Hasidic understanding of the Kabbalistic work Sefer Yetzirah, there are actually three stages Judaism must go through along with the rest of society in order to reach a repaired world. The first stage, or paradigm, was Olam (literally “world”), which ended roughly around the destruction of the Second Temple (the space where God was felt to be located). In other words, in that paradigm, it was in space where the Divine was felt to be located and locatable.

Shanah (literally “year”) then took over as the dominant paradigm, which is when Shabbat, holidays and other time-oriented rituals became the locus of the Divine energy. Instead of Temple sacrifices, we offer our time up to God. Shabbat, which has been described by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel as replacing the Temple with a sanctuary in time, is the best example of this. It is the day each week when we stop doing and instead simply be. As Heschel writes: “The Sabbath is the presence of God in the world, open to the soul of man.” God is not in things of space, but in moments of time.”

Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi maintains that we are now shifting away from that paradigm, into Nefesh (literally “soul”). Today it is not in Space or Time that we find the Divine, but rather inside each and every one of God’s creations. We are in the age of human rights, human dignity, and self-fulfillment, which is why certain Jewish concepts and practices that are either space- or time-oriented – even prayer in the traditional sense — may no longer work for us. When we practice them, we may experience dissonance. They are part of the paradigm which we are in the process of shifting out of.

This week’s parashah, in my mind, fits well with this idea. That moment in our parashah when God speaks directly to the people was a “Nefesh” moment, but the Israelites, who were in “Olam” mindset, two paradigms behind “Nefesh”, could not handle it. They needed to be able to point to a tangible place where they could locate the Divine. Even hearing a Divine voice with no form was not sufficient for them. Or, I say — was beyond their capabilities at that moment in history. Thus the Judaism of Mishkan and Temple was created, to be replaced later with a Judaism that revolved more around time (holidays and time-based prayer).

This reading is supported by the verse in Deuteronomy (D’vraim) 5:2 that recalls the story of our parshah:

2 “God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 It was not with our ancestors[a] that God made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. 4 God spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain.”

We are commanded each and every one of us, even today, to see ourselves as having been standing there at the foot of Sinai. In fact, perhaps we today are more able to receive that Divine Revelation and to hear God’s “KOL”.

Could it be that we today are reaching a period capable of the original Divine intention for connection with humanity as expressed in our parashah? We may not ever be able to hear a Divine Voice as described in our Parashah. But it seems that even this audible “KOL” was a kind of compromise so that the Israelites could locate the Divine presence in something.

I would argue that today that audible voice is not necessary. Rather, I think that each and every human can hear a Divine Call. Not “KOL” but “CALL”. We are all here on this earth for a purpose. We all have a unique contribution to make to this world. It is not always easy to “hear” that CALL, to discern what our calling is. And even once we’ve heard it, it is not always easy to manifest it in the world. But that is my wish for you, Odelia, on this occasion of your bat mitzvah:

That you be blessed with the ability to hear God’s Call and find your own unique calling in the world. And that, like Moses, you will be able to garner the courage, even if it is not easy or does not come naturally, to follow this Calling. Even if it goes against the grain of societal norms or requires of you sacrifice or the summoning of strengths and talents you did not even know you had.

I would like to end by reading one of my favorite poems, Showing Up, by Carrie Newcomer:

Yes, you are holy
And sacred
And utterly unique.
There are gifts you were born to give
Songs you were born to sing
Stories you were born to tell.
And if you do not give it,
The world will simply lose it.
It is yours alone to offer,
No one can give it for you.
And dearest,
Listen, because this is important,
This wonderful world
needs all the songs we can pull from the air,
every story that helps us to remember.
It needs every single gift,
Large and small.
And yes,
Dearest,
This grateful world does rejoice
Every courageous time
We are true to ourselves and to our gifts.
And so it is,
Dear heart,
We embrace the song,
And the story,
And all our gifts,
Because the world has such great need
And because the world exceedingly rejoices
And because there is no sadder thing
Than to leave this world
Having never really shown up.

Rabbi Dr. Haviva Ner-David

Mikveh Consultant and Immersion Guide

Chairperson, Shmaya: A Ritual and Educational Mikveh 

Author, Chanah’s Voice: A Rabbi Wrestles with Gender, Commandment, and the Women’s Rituals of Baking, Bathing, and Brightening