Bringing Light into the Darkness
Parashat Yitro: Exodus 18:1–20:23
Ben Volman, UMJC Vice President
This past week, while rummaging through old family papers, I found a document that revealed some painful details about my mother’s family and their escape from Germany to Palestine in 1934. It is a deposition given by my late grandmother 65 years ago, detailing the family trauma under the Nazis for a German reparations commission. My grandmother described the abrupt end of my grandfather’s livelihood (a skilled tradesman and injured WWI veteran, as a Jew, he couldn’t work); the forced sale of their family home, with his workshop and all the contents sold for a third of their value. They were allowed to leave, but with only a small fraction of their life savings.
So it’s not surprising that when I read about Israel gathered before Mt. Sinai to hear the voice of God, I’m confronting the deep doubts about God that I had growing up as a child of survivors. But even as a child, when I heard teaching or the reciting of Exodus 20, I felt the power of those words to prod my young conscience. Something happened at Sinai that still moves the world—an event by which we still measure our integrity, our moral grounding.
We speak of “The Ten Commandments” as if it’s a Biblical term though it appears nowhere in the Torah, not even in Jewish tradition. The decalogue or aseret ha’dibrot—the “ten words” were honored as essential Jewish teaching in my father’s Hungarian Reform tradition. In contrast, Jewish orthodoxy emphasizes that there are fully 613 commandments, each of significance. In his important book, Morality, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks makes no single reference to the decalogue, although his Shavuot machzor notes that they remain “the simplest, shortest guide to the creation of a good society.”
You would never know this from our familiar Protestant traditions or popular American Christian culture. The authority of the Ten Commandments is one of the rare passages of the Hebrew Bible publicly extolled as an essential spiritual pillar, not only for the believer’s life but society at large.
How can we disagree? Alongside Yeshua’s Golden Rule, is there any other succinct ethical teaching for which there is so much acceptance that its principles are considered foundational for a shared society—even in today’s polarized, over-politicized culture? Polls as recent as 2018 suggest that between 89 and 100 percent of Americans respect the biblical instructions to honor parents, not to murder, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to lie and not to covet the possessions of their neighbor. The least popular? Honoring of the Sabbath Day (one assumes they meant Sunday) got 67% approval.
Our sages have some remarkable reflections about this awe-inspiring, climactic encounter with the living God at Sinai and the revelation to Israel of the Torah. One midrash discusses at length how Hashem revealed himself to every other nation but they would neither listen nor accept his commandments, and only then did he give the Torah to Israel (Sifrei Devarim 343). Another tells us that until the Torah was given, the borders between the earthly world and the heavenly world were shut. And then, “The Lord descended on Mount Sinai” (Exod 19:20) and “To Moshe [Adonai] said, ‘Come up to Adonai...’” (Exod 24:1).
None of this means that we do not break the commandments, forget them, ignore, or resist them. I confess that the same, prodding goads to my youthful conscience are still present every time I read or hear them read. Do I truly live without idols? Is my speech so pure that no one hears me speak a rash word in the name of the Lord? Do I never prevaricate or rationalize when I fall short of real integrity? How about my Sabbath-keeping? And will I ever give up that slight tinge of envy for possessions that I can never afford?
In a profound sense I do not doubt that I was there at Mt. Sinai, joined with every generation of Israel in committing to do all that God commanded. The glory of God’s reality—a blessing that I didn’t always know but that was always waiting to be received—resonates in my heart and life. Nor do I doubt that this singular covenant moment was given to make our people a light—“a shining beacon”—to the nations.
But after seeing my grandmother’s testimony, I couldn’t help reflecting on the countries where my forebears once proudly considered themselves citizens: Is this what happens when the light goes out? Is this what comes of humanity when we turn our back on God, forget even a great spiritual legacy in order to seize an unrestrained “triumph of the will”? Perhaps we can never understand how deeply we need these words, these truths, until they seem lost or forgotten.
If these words and the memory of this transformative moment can unite us and provide us with a light into the uncertain future, isn’t this a greater impetus for us to be “a light to the nations”? Yes, we will fall short. We can’t forget how Israel was left trembling in the presence of God, but consider how Moshe reassured them: “Don’t be afraid, because God has come only to test you and make you fear him, so that you won’t commit sins” (Exod 20:20).
Something happened at Sinai, and it gives us the power to see ourselves—not willfully triumphant over sin, but as those whom God can address for the sake of grace and reconciliation. Five years ago, the town in Germany where my grandfather grew up invited my family back to show their sorrow for what took place and seek forgiveness for the crimes that were done. I came from Canada, but most of the family came from Israel.
Despite every form of resistance, the descendants of those who stood before Mt. Sinai are numbered today among the nations and the slender hope that my grandparents held onto in some of the darkest hours of the 20th century has now flourished. God’s word to Israel is not only still speaking to the world, but Israel itself is a thriving reality. And the struggle to be a light in the darkness, for earth and heaven to find a bridge of harmony whatever challenges we face, goes on.
Scripture references are from Complete Jewish Bible (CJB).