This week’s Torah portion, Yitro, recounts the climatic moment in the Exodus story when the Israelites stand at Sinai to enter into covenant with the Divine, receiving the Ten Commandments (and in later tradition, the entire Torah). There is an enormous amount of midrash and traditional commentary about this moment, as our rabbinic ancestors imagined what it must have been like to be present there at the mountain.
One stream of commentary emphasizes that in order to receive Torah, the Israelites were unified as a community; it was their connection to one another that allowed them to receive the holy words and enter into the covenant. Another stream is quite different: it emphasizes that the moment of revelation was a singular experience, that each person present at Sinai received the Torah that was particularly suited to them. The Pesikta d’Rav Kahana, an early collection of midrash, states that the manna that the Israelites collected in the wilderness tasted according to each person’s capacity, appropriate to what each individual needed to be nourished. The midrash goes on: “Now, if each and every person was enabled to taste the manna according to their particular capacity, how much more was each and every person enabled according to their capacity to hear the Divine Word!”
Taken together, these two midrashic streams provide a powerful teaching about what it means to create holy, covenantal community. Somehow, we are invited to both come together “as one,” even as we celebrate the uniqueness of each of us as individuals and our differing “capacities.” This interweaving of connection and difference feels important in this moment, when there is so much that threatens to tear us apart. Whether the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza, the tensions here in Newton over the teachers’ strike, or a myriad of other difficult issues, the reality is that this is a moment when it can be hard to remain committed to one another across differences. But our tradition seems to be telling us that it is precisely the ways in which we are different—the different capacities we have to discern the “Voice from Sinai” that, as Hasidic tradition teaches, is still calling to us—that allows us to collectively access the deeper truth we call Torah. We somehow need one another, even when we disagree. May our collective journey in the wake of Sinai help us access both the sense of connection and the celebration of difference, and may each of us receive the Torah that is particularly nourishing for our own well-being.
