Exodus Cycle 6 Yitro

The Essence of Divinity

There’s a lot happening in Yitro and maybe that’s why there’s so much thunder and lightning. As we all know, a huge amount of energy within a confined space might cause some drama.

Think of a bottle of champagne. If it gets shaken up you may as well stand back when you pull the cork. You just may get a fountain shooting to the ceiling. Think of ourselves  as that bottle. Depending on circumstance if we lift our cover our soul just may fountain up to the amazing heights as well. Concurrently, the amazing heights just may want to get closer.  There is a moment-of-meeting. We call it revelation.

Forget our soul though, these days many of us feel that we have bubbles enough to fountain up without it. Yes, it’s easy to think (these days) that the path to God isn’t inside us but outside us…in the beautifully carved and published lines of our prayer books or in the daily steps we take with our investments or in our often cut-out smiles. We can think that the path to God is right there emblazoned in how often we go to schul on Shabbat and how well we craft our daily deeds and mitzvoth.

A visit to schul on Shabbat though is as good as a bubble-less bottle of champagne if the visit is just rote inebriation. And any commandment that crafts our days (by rote) is a commandment easily broken.  No  fountain there. Just a fine label on the bottle, possible glass on the floor and a stomach ache.

What interests me the most though this time around in Yitro is not the fine wine. It’s not this  inner energy. We each have a champagne-of-a-soul. The question is how to focus it ever so carefully so it can be an energy of love and compassion.

Therefore let’s jump (or leap) to the use of the Hebrew word mul in line 18:19. The word (in every translation/interpretation I have found) refers to before. It is certainly one of the meanings of mul.  The obvious meaning therefore of the phrase mul ha’elohim is before God.  The truth though is more often than not, in Torah, the word  before is represented by lifnay and mul means something else. It means circumcise.

Hebrew specialists might pan this interpretation. They can also pan excellent champagne if they want. And they would have a point.  Grammatically it seems a bit of a stretch.  But it won't be the first time the rules have been stretched. How about bringing the conjugation of the shoresh mul to the third person past? All we are doing is adding the vowel vuv where the vuv has been dropped. And it won’t be the first circumstance in which an aleph-vuv verb has taken on the vuv in the 3^rd person past.  The spoken sound is the same. Finally even Gesenius brings up the fact that the word mul can come from either the shoresh mul and refer to circumcision or to the shoresh aleph-vuv-lamed. This latter shoresh does refer to "before". So there’s a rational choice and my point is valid. Given commentary from Rashi (Mechilta and  Onkelos) the metaphoric idea of circumcision is inferred if not the exact meaning. In all, please note I can't find any solid support for this except metaphoric. What though in Torah is not metaphoric?

In that case the whole line would read something like (dialogue from Yitro): You will be to the people who God has circumcised and you will bring the matters to God.

In short (if we are to act like Moses) we listen to  Yitro and allow ourselves and therefore our souls to be circumcised by God so we can discern our various inner-selves  and reach to the people…and also to God.  Jeremiah in 4:4 refers to our circumcision to God to take away the foreskins(pl) of our heart.  Circumcision implies the layers. Circumcision implies an inner spiritual hierarchy within each man.  Moses certainly applies such layers to his world in order to bring the word of God to the people. He allows himself…his layers and his various essences… to be delegated by God within so he can delegate the people on the outside.

Please though: We don’t attempt to circumcise the outside as if by God.  We don’t use sharp tools to carve steps to God’s altar. That’s when we mistake God for the altar and the inside for the outside and the essence for the bottle. That's when we (even with good intention) confuse the whole process and...in the name of God....hurt Him and  expose ourselves a bit more than we please. 

But this is all just my opinion. Do as we feel, we may want to try and be real with love and compassion. We may want to try and please God and the people concurrently and not fake it and not think that quotidian and carved step by step superficial methods are the same as divine.

Because they aren’t.  As any connoisseur of champagne might know: Divine is divine.