Yitro: Sinai and Creation

Yitro, this week’s portion, provides us one of the pivotal moments in the story of the Jewish People. Matan Torah - God bestowing the Torah to the entire Israelite people gathered at Mount Sinai. The moment of revelation that transforms the Israelites from a large family to a nation, to Am Yisrael. 

There is a beautiful midrash (rabbinical story) that describes the moment of revelation. It paints a picture of what the Israelites, and the mixed multitude the Torah tells us traveled with them, experienced together at Sinai:

Rabbi Abahu said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: When the Holy One Blessed Be God gave the Torah, no bird chirped, no fowl flew, no bull lowed, the angels did not fly, the heavenly beings did not say their litany of "holy, holy," the sea did not roll, none of the creations spoke; rather, the world was silent, and the voice went out: "I am the Eternal Your God," and so Moses said (Deut. 5:19): "The Eternal spoke those words—those and no more—to your whole congregation," a great voice, with nothing additional…The whole world was silent, and the upper and lower worlds were quiet, and the world was tohu vavohu - unformed and void - as if there were not a creation in the world… (Shemot Rabbah 29:9)

It is a powerful thing to imagine, a world that was silent, save for Sinai. It was as if the only thing happening in the world at that moment was the interaction between the Israelites and God, the only time that God is present in front of the entire nation. 

The rabbis used an interesting term to describe the state of the world in this moment: tohu vavohu. This phrase is typically translated into English as ‘unformed and void.’  It appears only one time in the Torah and is used to describe the Earth right at the beginning of creation in the moments before God began to shape the world. What the rabbis are suggesting to us by using this phrase is that the gathering at Mount Sinai is, among other things, the beginning of an entirely new world. All that was before - slavery, limitation, oppression - is past and all that will come after Matan Torah (the giving of the Torah) - freedom, opportunity, empowerment - is part of a new existence. 

What does it mean for us that Mount Sinai marked a type of second creation? I think it is a powerful reminder that our tradition teaches that creation is ongoing. That we are called, in our time, to be part in creating a world that aspires to the Torah’s high moral expectations for us. 

We are called to be a part of this ongoing creation process. Even so, it does not mean that we will succeed. There are endless examples of people who worked towards progress that did not see the fruit of their labors. This past Monday we marked the holiday of Tu B’shvat, the Jewish New Year for the trees. One of the Talmudic stories often taught on this holiday tells of a person walking down the path when they encounter someone planting a carob tree, which notoriously takes an exceedingly long time before they bear fruit. The pedestrian asks, “why are you planting that tree if you will never enjoy its fruit?” The one planting responded, "I found a fruitful world, because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise, I am planting for my children" (Taanit 23a).

We now enjoy the responsibility to take up the reins of helping build a world a little better than the one we found. Our portion this week reminds us of that great privilege. 

Shabbat Shalom.