Living a Sinai Life
a response to the Torah reading for the coming week
I have long wanted to establish and build a practice of reading from scripture daily, which works well with a conversion to Judaism, where study of Torah is a mitzvah, a requirement that God asks of us. We wrestle with Torah as we wrestle with God, knowing that it is a collection of ancient documents gathered and written over centuries, comprising different genres of literature, but containing true meaning for us and our struggles today.
This week’s Torah portion included the receiving of the ten commandments (the set we encounter first in scripture, because there are others and they are different), and it was this big, beautiful moment. But the portion for next week, titled Mishpatim (Exodus 21-24), is more difficult. It begins with laws about slavery, including girls and young women sold as bed slaves, and it ranges through a bunch of instruction about theft, intentional and unintentional harm to people and their belongings, and God’s plan to commit genocide so that the Israelites can have a home. So yeah. Difficult. Problematic. What the f**k.
As I build my practice of studying and engaging with Torah, I’m wanting to approach the reading a little differently each day. And today, on the eve of Shabbat, is the day for a creative or artistic response. I expected this to take the form of a poem, my typical artistic response, but instead it appears to be prose. As I started to reflect on why I don’t have a poem for this reading today, I realized that I wrote the poem yesterday, not realizing it was my response to Mishpatim. So here’s the prose. I’ll prepare the poem to post and share it with you soon
The poem I wrote yesterday ("God is big, and I am small.") may have been my real response, even if it wasn't created with that intention. But some of the elements are there... the mountain, the clouds, the vastness of God, the smallness of us. I was just thinking about those elements, the mountain, the cloud, the "consuming fire," when I realized this.
I admit that I've found this week's parashah difficult, problematic. I don't want to be okay with slavery, even if it is humane. I don't want to be okay with "eye for eye." I want a world that's better than this.
I'd prefer a world where cheeseburgers are okay but true repentance and forgiveness are present. Where the consuming fire lives inside each of us, burning away our selfishness, greed, violence, fear. Where the mountain is not held over our heads but we are invited with Moses to the top. Where we extend God's sapphire pavement, building it out from Sinai's peak a bit more in every generation, until everyone wants to live on it and work on it and be on it.
Like the highway of Isaiah, it is a place of holiness and the redeemed shall walk there. Where we all return with joy and live in joy and act in peace because our hearts are aligned with God's. I mean, yeah, we get stuff wrong and we mess stuff up. We may be aligned with God but that doesn't mean we are no longer human. But when we mess stuff up, we realize it and we own up to it and we trust that those around us will be generous with us, as generous as God is. Then the sapphire pavement will appear beneath us both, and we will know that Hashem is ours and we are Hashem's.