Itró 5776 - English

By Rabbi Guido Cohen

Asociación Israelita Montefiore Bogotá, Colombia.

In these past few weeks, the Torah readings challenge us to test our faith and our creativity, and to bring us closer to a text that narrates some events that to the modern mind are difficult to believe.  

Questions about whether or not the sea really opened as we read in Parashat BeShalach, or if the theophany in Sinai happened just as it is described in Parashat Yitro that we read this week, are very common when we study the text in a group.  

The contemporary mind –growing further away from poetry and creative reading- has gotten used to reading things in a linear way, stuck in the literal with messages that cannot escape the explicit. The Torah, as the Jewish people for millennia have read it, must allow us to rise from those linear ways of reading and encourage us to understand it in a different manner by expanding the limits of our creativity.  

To ask then if it is true that the sea parted or if God’s voice was really heard in Sinai among thunder, clouds and the sound of the Shofar, is to limit the text in its endless potential for meaning, and to transform it into a mere source of information which is irrelevant to the heart thirsty for faith. I do not know if 3500 years ago there was a tsunami in the Red Sea, or if there is some kind of phenomenon in the region of Sinai that makes the wind form something similar to an impressive cloud, or if the dryness of the desert allows a bush to catch fire without burning away. What I do know is that if these are my questions, then probably I will find books that can better explain all this through science.  

The Torah –the revelation of which we revisit in Sinai this Shabbat- must awaken in us other questions. It must encourage us to reconnect with a world of poetry and wonder that we have suppressed. To ask if Moses really spent 40 days and 40 nights with food or drink at the top of Mount Sinai is like asking if carriages can really transform into pumpkins after midnight. The point isn’t if it is true or not. It is that we confuse the literary genre and we wear the wrong glasses.  

Our tradition has a text that takes this idea of reading in a different way, reading beyond what the words appear to say, to its fullest extent.  It is the Midrash Shir HaShirim Rabbah, the rabbinic interpretation of Shir Hashirim, a text that seems to be a love poem but one that our people have always interpreted as an allegory of the bond between God and Israel. One of the verses in Shir Hashirim that refers to this week’s Parashah is the one that says: “My dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the coverture of the steps, show me your appearance, let me hear your voice, for your voice is pleasant and your appearance is comely.” (Shir Hashirim 2:14)

As logical literal readers we could ask, what does this verse have to do with the revelation in Sinai that we will read about this week?

Rabbi Akiva responds in the aforementioned Midrash:

My dove, in the clefts of the rock – refers to the people of Israel hiding in the shadow of Sinai

Show me your appearance – as it is written, “and the people saw the voices”

Let me hear your voice – it is the voice heard before the commandments, as it is written, “All that the Lord has spoken we will faithfully do!” 

For your voice is pleasant – it is the voice that came after the commandments, as it is written, “Hear everything the Lord has spoken (…) and we will hear and obey”

And your appearance is comely – as it is written, “the people saw and were afraid and stayed away.”

The question that arises when reading this beautiful Midrash is: does this verse from the Shir Hashirim really say all of this?  And I think it is in this question that we get lost.  It should not be about defining if the verse says this, but about discovering what our people have read in this verse for so long. It is not about finding the ‘real’ meaning of the text according to Western reading conventionalism, but about encouraging us to read the Biblical texts with Midrashic creativity.  Rabbi Akiva did not think he was ‘inventing’ something, he thought he was deciphering the profound wisdom that lay hidden in the text.  

In the words of the Zohar: “Woe to the man who says that the Torah came simply to relate stories and tales of mundane matters. If it was so, even at the present day we could produce a Torah from simplistic matters, and perhaps even nicer ones than those. If it came to illustrate worldly matters, even the rulers of the world have among them things that are superior. If so, let us follow them and produce from them a Torah in the same manner. However, all matters in the Torah are of a superior nature and are uppermost secrets.  (…) Come and see: There is a garment that is visible to everyone. The simple people, when they see a person dressed beautifully do not observe any further, and they consider the garment as the body [of a man] and the body like his soul.  Similar to this is the Torah. (Zohar III: 152a)

This Shabbat we witness the revelation in Mount Sinai again, just like we crossed the Red Sea again last week.  I challenge you to open your hearts to a different reading of the text.  Let us not wonder if something ‘was true’ or if ‘it could have really happened’.  Let us open our souls to hear the poetry that emanates from the text.  Let us dare to open our eyes with Midrashic creativity to make the text a spring of vital wisdom that may transform us.  Let us not wonder if it actually happened or if science could explain it, let us ask how, by taking advantage of the supreme potential of the text, we can be transformed by it.  

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Guido Cohen

Montefiore Israelite Association