What is Revelation?
Friday night, May 22, 2015
Congregation B’nai B’rith, Santa Barbara CA
We were exhausted and thirsty, marching under the intense heat of the desert sun. A nation of runaway slaves, traumatized by oppression but traumatized also by all those miracles…ten plagues, and the Sea parting, and the Egyptian army washed up dead on the shore. We emerged from slavery, but our minds were still full of death and destruction, and we were still absorbing the shock of freedom, our new reality. Moving forward without any plan, other than a vague promise of a land flowing with milk and honey. And guided by a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire by night.
We were in a dream state, walking into the wilderness. We walked for one week, for two weeks, four weeks, seven weeks. Forty-nine days. And then we stood beneath the mountain. Mount Horeb. Also known as Sinai. The mountain of God. And on the fiftieth day, the mountain began to tremble, pouring forth smoke, and fire. The mountain became a volcano, and the wilderness shook with crashing thunder, and the sky was lit up by lightning, and a shofar was blaring louder and louder. Utter chaos and terror. Then the world became silent. And the mountain erupted, but not with fire and not with lava. A voice came forth. The voice of God.
For the only time in our history, the entire Jewish people stood together in a moment of unified and enlightened consciousness, and met our God. Sometimes called maamad har Sinai, “The Standing at Mount Sinai.” Or just “Revelation.” Seven times seven days, after our escape from Egypt, at the mountain, we received Torah. Tonight is the forty-ninth and final night of the week of weeks since Passover, and tomorrow night is Shavuot, when we recall the Revelation, our encounter with God at the mountain. Some of us will stay up all night tomorrow night, studying and singing, and go to the ocean at sunrise, to hear the voice of God speaking again…. the Ten Commandments chanted from the Torah scroll on the beach.
But before that, tomorrow morning, Lily Pieramici will stand before us as a Bat Mitzvah, her parents will pass the Torah scroll to her, and Lily will chant, and Lily will teach, and Lily will reveal Torah….a small but profoundly significant re-enactment of the great revelation of Torah at Sinai. Tonight I want to ask: what is revelation? And what is Torah? What is the human reality represented by our ancient story of the mountain on fire with the Voice of God?
Last Sunday afternoon I met with a young couple who are getting married soon. As with every wedding couple, I asked them to tell me the story of how they met and how they fell in love. Theirs was a good story, but not so unusual. They met at a party; he noticed her but she was too cool to notice him. He “friended” her on Facebook and then months passed, until they were introduced by a mutual friend. They had dinner together, and it was great, and the next day he took her to the amusement park by the ocean, where she had a panic attack on the ferris wheel, and then she went on vacation with her parents. He bombarded her with text messages and emails, and she was amused, flattered, and confused.
Up until this point, it was fun hearing their story, and all the little pieces of chance and good timing, but then suddenly her voice caught fire, and she shared something she remembered feeling in those days as she realized that something immense was happening inside her. She said “I was thinking to myself, God, I am becoming the person I hate! The one I never wanted to be!” I thought that was a strange statement, and I asked her what she meant and she said “I have always been the one who warned all my friends not to fall head over heels, not to give in to infatuation. To proceed with caution…and here I was, completely out of control!”
Listening to her love story, I felt my stomach tighten, and noticed myself getting goose bumps, and I saw both her and her fiancée beginning to cry. And I felt myself almost crying also. Together we were re-living the moment of their falling in love. And I said “this is the best part of my job.”
I would call that a moment of revelation. When those two young people opened up to each other, it was revelation! And when they shared their story with me, in all its strangeness and power, it was revelation again! Our souls can meet, in falling in love, or even just in sharing a story. The story of the volcano, and the thunder and lightning, and the voice of God speaking out of the silence, is all a glorious metaphor for the way that something deep and true can rise up within us and erupt in tears, laughter, and powerful words of truth. This is revelation; this is Torah. It is the best thing about being alive. And it takes courage.
My favorite description of this process of revelation is by a wonderful scholar named Yochanon Muffs, who writes: Any meeting of personalities requires great bravery. One who attempts to communicate with another endangers his own life, for to do this he must reveal what is in his heart. Such an act is potentially dangerous because one does not know ahead of time if he will find a receptive ear. There is always the possibility that the ear of the listener will be impervious. Any real communication then is a dangerous leap. But if one never screws up the courage to jump, he will wither away in silent isolation. There are two choices, to love or to die. The Holy One, blessed be He, took a great chance when at Sinai he spoke to Israel for the first time. This act of communication was also an act of love. But God did not know ahead of time, so to speak, if His intended bride would be response to His voice.
It is so true. It takes great bravery for two young people to open their hearts to each other, risking rejection, risking being taken advantage of, risking looking like a fool. And it takes great courage for a parent to tell their child their deepest hopes and fears, and about what is most important to them, knowing that it is entirely possible that their child will look at them and say “OK, old man or old lady…important to you, but not to me.” To be honest, it takes courage for me to stand up here and attempt to communicate with all of you…knowing that you may well be thinking to yourself: “what is he talking about?” or “this is so weird” or “how much longer?” And how much the more so what Lily will do up here tomorrow. It takes courage for a thirteen year old to stand up in front of her community and reveal to us who she is, her passions and her concerns. Any meeting of personalities requires great bravery. This courageous leap is what we celebrate on Shavuot, and it is also what we celebrate tomorrow when we pass the Torah to Lily.
What is inside that scroll? Thousands of shiny black letters, handwritten on the skin of an animal. Those letters represent sounds, and when read by a person who had learned and who can understand, they stand for words, thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, laws, rituals, all first set down over three thousand years ago. But to the untrained eye, those black marks simply look like black flames, burning on a white field. The Torah that we pass to Lily tomorrow is fire. It is the fire burning inside her mother Ann, and it is the fire burning within her father Dante. And kindled in their hearts by their parents before them.
It takes courage for a parent to share with their child their real hopes and deepest fears, to take the chance that their child’s ear will not hear, or will not listen. But tomorrow as a community we will celebrate that these two parents have chosen to take the risk of communication with their daughter. And tomorrow night the Jewish people will give thanks that the Blessed Holy One for the gift of communication. Shabbat Shalom, and Happy Shavuot.