In this portion, we will hear for the first time the ten commandments. The Torah seems to begin to shift from a story of our people to principles and rules for our people to set up the society G-d seeks to create through partnership with us. The narrative, however, seems to provide a number of cautions about how to understand G-d’s instruction; cautions that should humble and empower us; humble us relative to other peoples and empower us relative to other people.
Humbled Relative to Other Peoples
At the very beginning of this shift, the very first set of guidelines for organizing society come not from G-d, not from Moses, not from any person of Israel, but from Yitro of Midian, Moses’ father in law. At the beginning of the parashah, Jethro teaches Moses how to set up a system of judges so that the task of leading so many people will be manageable. Perhaps this instruction from Jethro comes before we receive the ten commandments and the instructions that follow to teach us to remember always that we learn and gain from interaction with other peoples. We are not as much as we have become nor can be, nor can we reach our potential if we insist on being entirely self-sufficient. From the very beginning of the organization of our people, we have learned from the cultures and insights, habits and traditions of other peoples. There is no contradiction with being entirely Jewish in this so long as we know ourselves well enough to understand the difference between learning from other cultures and crossing the line to becoming something else.
The teaching that we not only can, but should and even need interaction with other cultures in order to find the ideas that will help us make the compassionate, just society G-d seeks through partnership with us to create seems to be reinforced by the metaphor that ends the parashah: the altar of unhewn stones.
וְאִם מִזְבַּח אֲבָנִים תַּעֲשֶׂה לִּי לֹא תִבְנֶה אֶתְהֶן גָּזִית כִּי חַרְבְּךָ הֵנַפְתָּ עָלֶיהָ וַתְּחַלֲלֶהָ
“And when you make for Me an altar of stones, you shall not build them of hewn stones, lest you wield your sword upon it and desecrate it.”
Consider our culture and peoplehood as a stone. We are not asked to shape it and change it to fit with others, nor are we asked to change or cut away at other cultures to make them fit with ours. The Midianites gave up nothing of who they are, made no apologies for who they are and neither did the Israelites, and yet there was an exchange of ideas and sharing of practices that could only facilitate peace and cooperation within and between cultures.
The Bible’s metaphor is not one of a salad bowl, nor a melting pot, but one of an altar of unhewn stones. We need to be proud of who we are, recognize and support other cultures in being proud of who they are, and find a way to fit ourselves together in the great altar G-d really wants – a cooperative interdependent society. As we go into MLK day tomorrow, this message seems all the more appropriate. Dr. King’s message was not that we should all become one people. It was that injustice to any people threatens justice for all peoples and we must be responsible for protecting each other’s freedom in order to have freedom ourselves. Dr. King’s message of integration was not a message of assimilation. Rather, Dr. King’s dream was that we should be able to “..work together, to pray together, to struggle together…”; that we should stand with strength as who we are and stand up for one another.
Too often, we try to shed our heritage and culture, apoloigize for it, mask it. Dr. King’s message and this parashah’s message are to come together as unhewn stones and in figuring out how to come together, build the altar G-d really wants, one of cooperation and interdependence.
A note on interdependence: This is a word used much in the modern self help literature. Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits of Effective People explains that one cannot be dependent and interdependent. He wrote that “interdependence is a choice only independent people can make.” Mahatma Gandhi put it differently. He wrote:
“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.”
Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, March 21, 1929, p. 93
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdependence
The parashah further describes the altar. We are to build an altar of earth – that from which we are made and to which we will return – with no stairs. It is not an altar of one over the other but an altar of strength in togetherness. It is about power-with rather than power-over as Starhawk might put it. Often when we try to ascend rather than to serve, our greatest vulnerabilities and embarrassing flaws are most exposed. Later there are guidelines for elaborate bejeweled gilded structures but here we see expectations for humble structures.
Empowered Relative To Leadership
While the parashah admonishies us to remain humble in relationship to other peoples, it lifts us up in relation to our own leadership. We are here called a kingdom of priests. We do not need intermediaries to communicate with G-d. In this parsashah, the people ask for intermediaries rather than being told they must have them.
A further illustration of the point is that there seems to be confusion between G-d and Moses about who is supposed to be where right before the revelation of the ten commandments. Consider Chapter 19, verses 21-23:
21 The Lord said to Moses, “Go down, warn the people not to break through to the Lord to gaze, lest many of them perish. 22 The priests also, who come near the Lord, must stay pure, lest the Lord break out against them.” 23 But Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for You warned us saying, ‘Set bounds about the mountain and sanctify it.'” 24 So the Lord said to him, “Go down, and come back together with Aaron; but let not the priests or the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest He break out against them.” Translation Source: http://www.jtsa.edu/prebuilt/ParashahArchives/jpstext/yitro.shtml
G-d seems to be saying that the priests should prepare themselves to ascend. Moses seems to remind G-d that they cannot ascend. G-d seems then to say that the priests will not ascend, just Moses and Aaron. It sounds like bickering of parents trying to figure out who already told the kids what about where to sit. That there is confusion here may be intended to teach us that understanding G-d’s will is not an easy thing, for if even Moses and G-d had to engage in back and forth to get it straight, certainly we should engage directly with text and with G-d rather than take as divine any human interpretation.
Ultimately, the priests were not allowed up. There is then no human being nor set of human beings who have a monopoly on understanding G-d’s intentions, and we humans have as much a responsibility as anyone else to try to understand G-d’s intention for us. We are not to follow anyone thoughtlessly. We have a responsibility to do what we have done for thousands of years: interpret, debate and try to understand G-d’s desire of us in a changing and evolving world that we might make the peaceful just society G-d intended for us humans as G-d’s partners to complete.