––– Briefly D’var –––

Yitro: Exodus 18:1 - 20:23

Get out your groggers - time for Purim!

Well, actually we’ve got about a month to go so you’ve got a minute to figure out your noisemakers this year. Nevertheless, preparations are under way for a fantastic Purim “CAR-nival” - COVID-safe merriment for young families (2/27) and some Hamilton-inspired purim-shpieling for everyone on Purim (2/26). February isn’t a long month, and Purim will soon be upon us. Not only that, but Purim is connected to this week’s Torah portion in a way you might not imagine at first glance.

In Parashat Yitro we read about the at Mt. Sinai – the moment our tradition tells us that God spoke to the Jewish people through our faithful servant . And because God revealed the Torah on that day, we agreed to be God’s people and to follow the guidebook we were being given.

That brief summary gives rise to innumerable questions about who/what/where God is, who/what/why we are the Jewish people, how/when/why we follow the rules as given and if/when/how we change them…and so on and so on. These questions arise in our own times but also throughout our history. The ancient tied their questions to linguistic oddities in the portion.

On the third day, as morning dawned, there was thunder, and lightning, and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the horn; and all the people who were in the camp trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp toward God, and they took their places at the foot of the mountain. (Exodus 19:16)

The word ‘b’tachtit’ in Hebrew can be translated as it is above ‘at the foot’ but it could also be understood as ‘under’ the mountain, as it is in this passage from the Babylonian :

And they stood under the mount: R. Abdimi b. Hama b. Hasa said: This teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He [sic], overturned the mountain upon them like an [inverted] cask, and said to them, ‘If ye accept the Torah, ‘tis well; if not, there shall be your burial.’ R. Aha b. observed: This furnishes a strong protest against the Torah.

Continued >>> 1 Abdimi, son of Hama, son of Hasa imagines that God was literally holding the mountain over the heads of the as they gathered. ‘Why would anyone agree to the rigors of all those commandments if they were not coerced?’ he seems to be asking. From our vantage point in history we might add, ‘why sign up for thousands of years of oppression, persecution and death because of who we are if we have any other choice in the matter?’ Rabbi Aha, son of Jacob, takes it a step beyond and suggests that if we understand God to have been saying ‘my way or death,’ then the coercion itself is an argument against any obligation we have to follow the Torah, to be .

The passage concludes in a surprising and interesting way when Rabbi Raba chimes in:

Said Raba, “Yet even so, they reaccepted it in the days of Ahasuerus, for it is written, [the Jews] confirmed, and took upon them [etc.]”: [i.e.,] they confirmed what they had accepted long before.

In the linguistic shorthand of the Talmud, this passage cuts through the questions and reminds us that whether we know why or how, we did and we do reconfirm our identity as Jews and our commitment to the Torah in generation after generation. The reference to Purim (in the days of Ahasuerus) is to a time in which our identity as Jews was threatened not only by those who hated us – Haman - but also by the potential for assimilation, as Esther’s place in the King’s palace suggests. She could have gotten away with NOT being Jewish, but the story tells us that would have meant the end of our people just as surely as Haman’s hatred itself.

As we read Parashat Yitro and prepare for our upcoming Purim festivities, perhaps we too should give some thought to reconfirming our Jewish identity time and time again, despite or because of all the questions.

Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sachs-

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