Yitro 5773 Volume XX Number 20 Toras Aish Thoughts From Across the Torah Spectrum like "democracy" (rule by the people) are Greek in CHIEF RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS origin. The Greeks were gifted at abstract nouns and Covenant & Conversation systematic thought. However, if we look at the "birth of the modern" -- at figures like Milton, Hobbes and Locke he revelation at Mount Sinai -- the central episode in England, and the founding fathers of America -- the not only of the parshah of Yitro, but of Judaism as book with which they were in dialogue was not Plato or Ta whole -- was unique in the religious history of Aristotle but the Hebrew Bible. Hobbes quotes it 657 mankind. Other faiths (Christianity and Islam) have times in The Leviathan alone. Long before the Greek claimed to be religions of revelation, but in both cases philosophers, and far more profoundly, at Mount Sinai the revelation of which they spoke was to an individual the concept of a free society was born. ("the son of G-d", "the prophet of G-d"). Only in Judaism Three things about that moment were to prove was G-d's self-disclosure not to an individual (a crucial. The first is that long before Israel entered the prophet) or a group (the elders) but to an entire nation, land and acquired their own system of government (first young and old, men, women and children, the righteous by judges, later by kings), they had entered into an and not yet righteous alike. overarching covenant with G-d. That covenant (brit From the very outset, the people of Israel knew Sinai) set moral limits to the exercise of power. The something unprecedented had happened at Sinai. As code we call Torah established for the first time the Moses put it, forty years later: "Ask now about the primacy of right over might. Any king who behaved former days, long before your time, from the day G-d contrarily to Torah was acting ultra vires, and could be created man on earth; ask from one end of the heavens challenged. This is the single most important fact about to the other. Has anything so great as this ever biblical politics. happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Democracy on the Greek model always had Has any other people heard the voice of G-d speaking one fatal weakness. Alexis de Tocqueville and John out of fire, as you have, and lived?" (Deut. 4:32-33). Stuart Mill called it "the tyranny of the majority". J. L. For the great Jewish thinkers of the Middle Talmon called it "totalitarian democracy." The rule of the Ages, the significance was primarily epistemological. It majority contains no guarantee of the rights of created certainty and removed doubt. The authenticity minorities. As Lord Acton rightly noted, it was this that of a revelation experienced by one person could be led to the downfall of Athens: "There was no law questioned. One witnessed by millions could not. G-d superior to that of the state. The lawgiver was above the disclosed His presence in public to remove any possible law." In Judaism, by contrast, prophets were mandated suspicion that the presence felt, and the voice heard, to challenge the authority of the king if he acted against were not genuine. the terms of the Torah. Individuals were empowered to Looking however at the history of mankind [The covenant at Sinai deserves to be seen as the since those days, it is clear that there was another single greatest step in the long road to a free society.] significance also -- one that had to do not with religious disobey illegal or immoral orders. For this alone, the knowledge but with politics. At Sinai a new kind of covenant at Sinai deserves to be seen as the single nation was being formed and a new kind of society -- greatest step in the long road to a free society. one that would be an antithesis of Egypt in which the The second key element lies in the prologue to few had power and the many were enslaved. At Sinai, the covenant. G-d tells Moses: "This is what you are to the children of Israel ceased to be a group of individuals say to the house of Jacob and tell the people of Israel. and became, for the first time, a body politic: a nation of 'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how citizens under the sovereignty of G-d whose written I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to Me. constitution was the Torah and whose mission was to Now, if you obey Me fully and keep My covenant, you be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." will be My treasured possession, for the whole earth is Even today, standard works on the history of Mine. You will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy political thought trace it back, through Marx, Rousseau nation...'" Moses tells this to the people, who reply: "We and Hobbes to Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics and will do everything the Lord has said." the Greek city state (Athens in particular) of the fourth What is the significance of this exchange? It century BCE. This is a serious error. To be sure, words means that until the people had signified their consent, 2 Toras Aish the revelation could not proceed. There is no legitimate government without the consent of the governed, even TORAS AISH IS A WEEKLY PARSHA if the governor is Creator of heaven and earth. I know of NEWSLETTER DISTRIBUTED VIA EMAIL few more radical ideas anywhere. To be sure, there AND THE WEB AT WWW.AISHDAS.ORG/TA. were sages in the Talmudic period who questioned FOR MORE INFO EMAIL [email protected] The material presented in this publication was collected from email whether the acceptance of the covenant at Sinai was subscriptions, computer archives and various websites. It is being completely free. However, at the heart of Judaism is the presented with the permission of the respective authors. Toras idea -- way ahead of its time, and not always fully Aish is an independent publication, and does not necessarily reflect realised -- that the free G-d desires the free worship of the views of any synagogue or organization. free human beings. G-d, said the rabbis, does not act TO DEDICATE THIS NEWSLETTER PLEASE CALL (973) 277-9062 OR EMAIL [email protected] tyrannically with His creatures. The third, equally ahead of its time, was that the biblical interpretation, and according to the first Mishna partners to the covenant were to be "all the people" -- in Avot, the corpus of the Oral Law. men, women and children. This fact is emphasised later What actually occurred? Did G-d speak in on in the Torah in the mitzvah of Hakhel, the septennial words that were heard by the Jews at the foot of the covenant renewal ceremony. The Torah states mountain? Does G-d have a voice, in the physical specifically that the entire people is to be gathered sense of a larynx, which admits of speech emanating together for this ceremony, "men, women and children." from the Divine? Or was it the "active intellect" of Moses A thousand years later, when Athens experimented with that "divined" or "kissed" the active intellect of G-d, democracy, only a limited section of society had political enabling Moses to understand and communicate the rights. Women, children, slaves and foreigners were Divine will to the entire assemblage, as suggested by excluded. In Britain, women did not get the vote until the Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed? The only twentieth century. According to the sages, when G-d thing we can say with certainty is that the Sinai was about to give the Torah at Sinai, He told Moses to encounter miraculously transformed a bedraggled and consult first with the women and only then with the men beaten group of Hebrew slaves into a G-d-enthused ("thus shall you say to the house of Jacob" -- this and Torah-intoxicated nation. This nation dedicated means, the women). The Torah, Israel's "constitution of itself to a concise and exalted moral code that has not liberty", includes everyone. It is the first moment, by been rivaled by any other nation, philosopher, ethicist or thousands of years, that citizenship is conceived as theologian in the past 4,000 years. But can we attempt, being universal. nevertheless, to describe this numinous, fateful and There is much else to be said about the political glorious experience with any precision? At the risk of theory of the Torah (see my The Politics of Hope, The complicating our understanding even further, permit me Dignity of Difference, and The Chief Rabbi's Haggadah to cite a commentary on our portion of Yitro written by as well as the important works by Daniel Elazar and Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Lerner (1800-1854), the Michael Walzer). But one thing is clear. With the Izhbitzer Rebbe, in his masterful work Mei Hashiloah. revelation at Sinai something unprecedented entered The Izhbitzer explains that while the first of the the human horizon. It would take centuries, millennia, Ten Commandments begins "I am the Lord your G-d," before its full implications were understood. Abraham the word used for "I" is not the normal "Ani." The Lincoln said it best when he spoke of "a new nation, Hebrew word "Anochi," which is used instead, could conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition also be read as "I am like the Lord your G-d." Had it that all men are created equal." At Sinai, the politics of simply stated "I am the Lord your G-d," the implication freedom was born.