Yitro/Jethro
In Parashat Yitro, Moses is visited by his father-in-law, Yitro. Like any good father-in-law, Yitro gives out plenty of advice, and it turns out to be very helpful; realizing that Moses is burned out from dealing with the people's problems, Yitro helps Moses devise a new system for judging their disputes.
The high point of the parasha (and perhaps of the whole Torah) is the arrival of the Children of Israel at Mt. Sinai, where they receive the Ten Commandmants (aseret hadibrot, literally "the ten statements," or "utterances"). Six weeks after leaving Egypt, and after hundreds of years in slavery, the Israelites as a whole people now experience divine revelation and enter into a covenantal relationship with God.
According to Neil Gillman, a preeminent Conservative rabbi, scholar and theologian, "revelation is what creates Judaism as a religion; it is what brings God into a relationship with a community of human beings. Without God's revelation - however we understand it - Judaism would be a matter of peoplehood and culture alone, and God would be irrelevant to the human enterprise."
How do we understand revelation? Was the Torah indeed revealed directly by God?
Are there other ways in which God reveals Godself - or God's will?
One traditional Jewish response is that the Torah is in fact the explicitly revealed word of God. God dictated the words of the Torah to Moses, who recorded God's words in the text we have today. This understanding has been articulated by Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, who writes that the Torah was revealed "in discreet words and letters."
By contrast, Mordecai Kaplan (who taught at JTS before founding the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College) described God as "the power that makes for salvation." He viewed revelation as human discovery; for Kaplan, God works naturally in and through human beings.
For the 20th century philosopher Franz Rosensweig, what was revealed at Sinai was God's presence. The verse in the Torah that says "God came down on Sinai" concludes the revelation; the next passage is already interpretive. Torah, then, is Israel's response to the revelatory encounter, spelling out how Israel undertood its relationship with a commanding God.
Abraham Joshua Heschel likewise wrote, "As a report about revelation, the Torah itself is a midrash (interpretation)." The Torah, he explains, was divinely revealed, but interpreted by people into the text we have today. Heschel accepts the personal, transcendent God of the Bible, but insists God cannot be conceptualized by humans.
Martin Buber had a unique view. He wrote about engaging in a fully present “I-Thou” relationship with God, a relationship that serves as a model for our interactions with all people. In an I-Thou relationship, each person turns toward the other with openness and ethical engagement. It is a relationship characterized by dialogue; each participant is concerned for the other person. The honor of the other—and not just his usefulness—is paramount. According to Buber, it is through such encounters with other human beings that one encounters God.
According to this view, how we engage with others not only affects our human interactions but can actually lead to a divine, revelatory experience...even with our in-laws. Shabbat shalom!
