Yitro
Exodus 18:1 - 20:23
In this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, the Israelites gather together at the base of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. Three months after they are freed from Egyptian slavery, God turns to them and says, “If you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples… You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5-6) After hearing this promise, all the Israelites answer as one, “We will do all that Adonai has spoken!” (19:8) Moses brings back their response to God and then God instructs him, “Go to the people and warn them to stay pure today and tomorrow… for on the third day Adonai will come down, in the sight of all the people, on Mount Sinai.” (19:11) Moses comes down the mountain and warns the people to stay pure, to wash their clothes as God had instructed and then adds; “Be ready for the third day: you shall not go near a women.” (19:15)
Until Moses’ final statement, the language and narrative, lead us to believe that both women and men were present as the Israelite community prepared to receive the Ten Commandments. We were led to believe that God’s instruction was for the entire community. Yet, Moses’ comment was directed only to men. Judith Plaskow, in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, explains how at this central moment in Jewish history and tradition, Moses’ comment “renders women invisible as part of the congregation about to enter into the covenant.” Each time we read this story from the Torah, we are reminded of the continual exclusion of women’s experiences in our Biblical and historical narratives. Plaskow further explains in Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective,
“Half of Jews have been women, but men have been defined as normative Jews, while women’s voices and experiences are largely invisible in the record of Jewish belief and experience that has come down to us. Women have lived Jewish history and carried its burdens, but women’s perceptions and questions have not given form to scripture, shaped the direction of Jewish law, or found expression in liturgy.”
Over the last twenty years, women rabbis, cantors and scholars have worked to include women’s experiences, perspectives and stories into the living memory of our people. This past December, the Women of Reform Judaism published the groundbreaking The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, edited by two of my professors at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Rabbi Andrea Weiss. This commentary incorporates matters that concern women, interprets biblical passages from a feminine perspective and restores a sense of women’s presence at the defining moments of our history. One of the unique components of this commentary is the inclusion of poetry at the end of each parasha. Through individual poems, modern women shed light to the silent experiences of Biblical women.
Were women at Mount Sinai? What were their experiences? Below, I have included a poem by Merle Feld. This pioneering work attempts to give voice to the experiences of Jewish women, both past and present. This is Torah renewed:
We All Stood Together
My brother and I were at Sinai
He kept a journal
of what he saw, of what he heard, of what it all meant to him.
I wish I had such a record
Of what happened to me there
It seems like every time I want to write
I can’t-
I’m always holding a baby,
one of my own or one of a friends,
always holding a baby
so my hands are never free to write things down.
And then as time passes,
The particulars, the hard data,
The who, what, when, where, and why
Slip away from me, and all I am left with is
The feeling.
But feelings are just sounds
The vowel barking of a mute.
My brother is so sure of what he heard-
After all he’s got a record of it-
Constant after constant after constant.
If we remembered it together
We could recreate holy time
Sparks flying.
Questions for further discussion:
- Which parts of Feld’s poem resonate with you?
- Which parts of Feld’s poem challenge you?
- If you were to make an attempt to give voice to Jewish women’s experiences, past and present, what would you say?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alissa Forrest
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