The following d’var Torah was delivered Shabbat afternoon on 17 Shvat 5781/30 January by Tyler Vile.
This week’s parsha, Parshat Yitro, picks up on the other end of the Sea of Reeds. The Song of the Sea has been sung, and the muddy, bloody, procession through the narrow space between the walls of water has come to an end.
We are reintroduced to a character who we haven’t seen since the burning bush vision at the start of Shemot. Yitro, Moshe’s father-in-law, brings his daughter and Moshe’s wife, Tzipporah, and their children, Gershom and Eliezer, to the encampment. He watches Moshe, who has become the de facto mediator for interpersonal disputes among the Israelites, stand from morning until night counseling the people. If you think that’s a lot for one person to hold, Yitro agrees with you. He says, “What you’re doing isn’t right, you will wear yourself out, and these people as well. The task is too heavy for you, and you cannot do it alone.” Yitro suggests that Moshe convene a council of righteous people to share in his work. In Moshe’s exhaustion and Yitro’s suggestion, it’s easy to see our rabbis, our mental health professionals, and those who still don’t have access to mental healthcare a year into the pandemic. This parsha lifts up burnout as a reality, and delegation, boundary setting, and resource sharing as sacred and necessary tasks. The Torah is an emotional archive as much as a historical, mythological, and cultural one.
Three months to the day after the Israelites left Mitzrayim, Moshe ascended Mount Sinai. Engulfed in a thick and thundering cloud of smoke, The Ineffable One manifested in front of Moshe and instructed him to “set bounds around the mountain and sanctify it,” so that no one would come near. Imagine for a moment that you’re standing back from Mount Sinai, thunder and lightning crashing all around you, the sky darkened in the middle of the day, and if you get even the slightest bit too close, you die. We’re taught to see the splitting of the sea and the reception of the Torah as joyful moments, but to a tired and vulnerable people, these are traumatic, reality-shattering events. These people were plucked out of the only way of life they had ever known, watching acts that blurred the line between supernatural wonder and natural disaster mere months apart. Wouldn’t you be confused, disoriented, and afraid? I know I would. I’m even slightly confused as to how we moved from the story of Pesach to the story of Shavuot in the space of a few hours while Tu BiShvat was earlier this week.
In the midst of all of this, we hear Aseret HaDvarim, better known as The Ten Commandments, for the first time. To have no other gods before HaShem nor make images of G-d, not to swear falsely in by HaShem, to keep Shabbat, to honor our ancestors, not to murder, commit adultery, lie, or steal. Woven into the cultural fabrics of both Jewish tradition and Christian hegemony, we know these words all too well. While they may not belong in secular courthouses, they are ours to wrestle with, whether we like it or not. Atheist, agnostic, and humanistic Jews might honor the first two commandments by embracing their doubt and understanding themselves as a part of a vast and expanding universe. The third commandment might not be as much about whether or not you say, “Gee darn it,” as whether you use G-d’s name to justify slavery, genocide, and apartheid. We know the fourth one doesn’t mean you have to be completely shomer shabbos. For people like me, with no relationship to their family of origin, the fifth commandment can point us to ancestors, by birth or choice, whom we can honor without compromising our safety. Six through ten are fairly straightforward. We know that murder, breaking the terms of any relationship, monogamous or not, theft, lying, and greed are all bad things. Parshat Yitro is here to talk to us about boundaries. Whether they’re limits, guidelines, walls, or lifelines, Torah tells us that enforcing and respecting them can be as beautiful and as challenging as singing while crossing the sea.