Parashat Va-Etchanan 5769--Jewish Knowing

I recently sat with a woman who was weeks away from her formal conversion to Judaism. She and I had studied together for two years, she was raising a Jewish family, and she was actively engaged in adult Jewish learning and prayer. She said to me, “I don’t feel Jewish yet.” As we talked, I assured her that many Jews don’t feel fully Jewish yet. But, she was not calmed. The dissonance between her and her Jewish identity had come to light for her during the Passover seder. As she imagined the Israelites and the Exodus and the desert and the wandering, she thought: Who is this Israel and where is my part in it? What is this desert and where are my steps in it? What is this Mount Sinai and where is my place at it?

In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Va-etchanan, Moses, nearing the end of his life and the Israelites’ entrance into the Promised Land, stands before his people and reminds them of who they are and what they have seen. He says:

But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And make them known to your children and to your children’s children. …You came forward and stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was ablaze with flames to the very skies, dark with densest clouds. …Adonai spoke to you out of the fire; you heard the sound of words but perceived no shape — nothing but a voice. God declared to you the covenant that God commanded you to observe, the Ten Commandments; and God inscribed them on two tablets of stone. (Deuteronomy 4:9-13)

There is a shocking secret behind this beautiful passage. The Israelites that Moses addresses in his passionate speech are not, on the whole, the Israelites who stood at Mount Sinai. As Rachel Farbiarz writes in her D’var Tzedek, distributed by American Jewish World Service, “The generation to which [Moses] speaks was born in the desert, to parents now buried beneath its sands. And it was those parents who saw the revelation at Sinai, who trod the dry depths of the split sea.” Yes, Moses is reminding a people of events they never witnessed.

Our tradition teaches all of us, young and old, that we ourselves went out from Egypt and that we ourselves stood at Mount Sinai. These traditions, which are central to our people’s identity, go beyond imagination and empathy. We, like the second generation in the desert, were freed from slavery, were wanderers in the desert, were amongst those who stood at Mount Sinai. Even those of us who were not born Jewish. Even those of us who feel disenfranchised. Even those of us who question or challenge or rail against tradition. We all wandered and we all stood. We just might not know it.

The foundation of Jewish learning and living, for Jews of any age and stage, is the continual reworking of the metaphor, the ongoing bending of the mind, the active stretching of the soul until the impossible knowing is reached: I too was freed. I too wandered. I too stood at Mount Sinai.

On this Shabbat, I believe we are invited to join the second generation standing before Moses. We are invited to stretch our minds, just as they were invited to stretch theirs. We are invited to open ourselves up to this fundamental knowing. We are invited to join the Jewish people. Again.