Exodus Cycle Four Yitro

Yitro

We were walking down the path. I turned to my friend and teacher and asked him bluntly why several years ago he didn’t want to include me more in Temple services. I was a first year rabbinic student at that time.

You didn’t speak in a way the community would understand, he said. All you ever spoke about was light. Then he looked at me smiling. You do remember that, don’t you?

I nodded my head, kept walking. I did remember. This friend had suggested I use that bothersome word…light… once in each of my weekly teachings and to avoid it at all costs during Torah study. I had been fairly successful. Though I had also been quite frustrated by what seemed to me at the time an insane request.

That moment, while hiking, I could think of a whole panoply of Talmudic tractates and mystical writings that would make my obsession with light look like shadow play. Why could Rabbi Johanon from the 1^st century CE write about light and I couldn’t? Rabbi Kook? What about the Zohar? I didn’t mention any of this to my friend/rabbi/teacher. It would have been a waste of time. That’s because he would have responded immediately, why do you think this community would be so interested in Rabbi Kook or the Zohar? Some of it, yes. But not all of it all the time.

Joseph Campbell seems to reflect this idea when he speaks about a Greek myth in which the classic hero brings gold from a heightened meeting with the gods and tries to offer it to the community. The community though never having seen this gold can see nothing but ash. My question now is…is this hero really a hero?

This brings me to another story. I’m getting on an airplane at LAX. As I walk down to the runway I see in front of me a woman who must be in her mid 70s struggling with her bag, her cane and the rickety old metal steps. There are many. I suddenly have a huge thought, the kind that sinks into you. You not only hear it. You taste it. This woman is going to fall, I think. But she doesn’t …yet. We walk on the runway and then up the next set of steps to the plane. This is when she does fall hard. I drop my carry-on bag and grab her arm, help her up.

That evening I write to another teacher describing this…and saying (in my analysis) that I should stop focusing on safety in the downward climb…and place my efforts in helping with the climb up. He writes back in agreement saying this is holy work indeed but in order to help any angel climb up the ladder we (all of us) need to know how they climb. What is, in short, the human-climbing language? How do we use it? In order to help a being rise to a higher level how do we really know that person? How do we see the steps? No doubt, we need to know the multiplicity of emotions, struggles, daily concerns, lifestyle values, fears, and joys that have been branded on the body of each being year after year struggle after struggle.

Now think of this. We’re watching a film. The beloved main characters are caught in some questionable place…in a war zone maybe…or in a huge fire. The helicopter comes and a ladder gets dropped. And the characters climb the ladder to safety. This all works just fine in our eyes. Perfect ending. However, what if our main characters can’t see the ladder, or the rungs on it, or the ropes attaching the rungs? What if they trust that the ladder is there but still can’t see it? Hold onto that question for a second.

Now let’s look at another story. There’s a man who relates intimately with God. He wants to show his community what he knows….and help his people. The problem is there are a million ways of being within this one community….a million steps. There are also a million vibrations between the community and God…a million steps. And there are also a million funnels within the very language of God….a million steps. I’m sure he would just love to say to everyone…see look, there’s all this light and we just need to embrace it… and some people might see that…. but some might not. His people not only move about on many different levels, life continually transforms them. And more…they want to see with the eyes not the mind. They want to know, not just trust. How can Moses show each person, each with his or her own human experience, each with his or her own chronicle of pain and endurance, how to make fair and just decisions, how, in other words, to climb?

This is the answer we receive in Yitro: Moses is taught (by Yitro his father-in-law) to stand and delegate. In other words to teach the community in levels and help them one step at a time. One man illuminates the next who illuminates the next.

In this parasha we also experience the process of transmission. We do get thunder and lightning and even more song (from the shofar). We get a lot of juice…just like with Beshelach. The juice though is not the structure. And it’s the structure that we need to know. Why? So we can allow it to help us to raise ourselves every moment of our lives to divine revelation (in other words not just now and not just a few thousand years ago). And revelation doesn’t mean just running around in a happy-trip. It means doing the work to help enable in each person the divine behavior that merges us all finally and completely with God.

How does Moses do this work? Just as Yitro taught him, he allows us to see the structure…the ten commandments….the rungs to the ladder. Rashi says that at first God says the words all with one sound. Nobody catches on. Then God begins to say them with more distinction. The people though say to Moses that it would be better if he said them personally because the force of God was getting so powerful it could kill them. So the first two are said by God and the remaining eight are said by Moses.

What fascinates me though is what God says to Moses right before the Ten Commandments are conveyed to the people. God does not say, hey Moses I have these laws to deliver. Can you do that please? Instead God says, go get Aaron… bring him up to see me. So, Moses does the practical thing. He delivers the commandments….the light of God made solid… the steps for Aaron to climb up… Because as we all know, as much light and gold and trust as we might have, there isn’t any going to that helicopter promising salvation if we can’t see the rope that connects the rungs…that rope of faith…nor if we can’t see the rungs…one at a time…the rungs that speak to us as human beings…the rungs of our behavior…so that we might climb even higher.

The Ten Commandments therefore are as mystical a piece of writing as any in the Zohar. Or even more so since they are even more concealed. The next time we say a kind and compassionate word therefore…and bless the God in each other…honoring our holiness…may we see clearly that we are engaging in perhaps the most sacred act of our amazing tradition.