Children of a Mythic Moment (Yitro)

Parashat Yitro contains the peak moment of the book of Exodus. So much happens in such rapid succession leading up this moment. We witness the birth of Moses and his fragile survival on the Nile. We endure the plagues, taste liberation from Egypt, and walk through the parted sea. The Israelites survive the attack of Amalek. And now, this Parashah, we arrive at revelation itself: God descending upon Mount Sinai to give the Torah to the Israelites, our ancestors.

Rather than beginning with the text itself, a pause. When you hear “Mount Sinai,” what do you see? You may have hiked in the Sinai desert, but we do not know with certainty where the mountain was. There are always stories, stones discovered and cracked open to reveal patterns resembling a burning bush, attempts to locate the mythic precisely within history. That search can be meaningful. Still, I invite you to use your imagination. What does Sinai look like to you? What does it feel like? When you hear “Sinai,” what stirs within you?

As a child, I learned this story countless times. I saw it in movies and comic books, in illustrated Haggadot and classroom posters that tried to capture the drama of revelation. And what I remember most clearly is sweetness, an unexpected sweetness. That memory is striking, because the Torah’s own depiction of Sinai is anything but gentle. The mountain trembles like a furnace. Fire and cloud swirl together. The blast of the shofar grows louder and louder. Thunder roars. The people tremble in fear.

And yet, alongside that terrifying image, I remember the stories we were told. The midrash that the mountains competed with one another for the honor of hosting revelation. One said, “I am the tallest.” Another boasted, “I am the most beautiful, filled with flowers.” Sinai, according to the legend, remained silent. It did not compete. It was humble. And because of that humility, God chose Sinai as the place of revelation. Fire and trembling, humility and sweetness, all held together in a single moment.

Years later, when I reached college, I was blessed to study at Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I took a class with Rabbi Neil Gillman z”l, who slowly became one of the most important teachers I would ever meet. Learning with him was difficult at first, because he insisted that I ask a question I had never truly confronted. Do you believe it happened exactly this way? Why do you feel commanded to do what you feel commanded to do? I had assumed, as many do, that the literal truth of the text was simply how history unfolded. Rabbi Gillman lovingly and relentlessly pushed me to think more deeply.

So what is Sinai? Is it thunder and lightning? Is it wilderness? Is it humbling? Sinai is a place, but it is also something that travels with us. It must be more than geography, because it accompanied us when we had no access to the physical site at all. Even after the Six-Day War, when Israel briefly controlled the Sinai Peninsula, the land where our people were born as a people, Sinai still meant more than territory. Sinai is Revelation. It signifies the Torah we hold, Moses’ descent with broken stones and whole stones. Those whole and broken tablets traveled with us as we, through our ancestors, journeyed to and became Israel.

What does it mean to be a child of a mythic moment?

I do not offer answers today, because revelation is best served by open-ended questions. Were we truly free at Sinai? Did we yet possess the free will necessary to choose obligation, or were we still acting under the pressure of recent liberation? Did revelation warm our hearts, or did it chill us? Was Sinai the place of our first national mistake, the Golden Calf, and also the place of our first collective repentance? Was it too much, or not enough? Do we want to stand at the foot of the mountain and experience that overwhelm again?

Before anything else, before I say anything more, I invite you, if you are comfortable, to let your mind wander. Revelation offers what is necessary. Whatever the moment, whatever the need, individually or collectively, there is an invitation here. Close your eyes and journey, in whatever way your imagination and your soul may lead you, toward a place of encounter. A Sinai. A place where something new comes into being. Something good. Something compelling. Something worthy, offered from beyond into the here and now.

We are children of that mythic moment. Perhaps it is essential that we do not hold a single, fixed definition of what revelation was or is. Tradition teaches that everyone heard revelation in their own way, in languages each could understand. Even the plants and the trees heard. Even babies at the breast understood. It is primal, older than language itself.

There is a possibility here: to know, deep in your heart, that you are a child of that mythic moment, and that it flows through each of us differently and beautifully, sometimes forcefully, sometimes gently. What a gift it is to return to Sinai again and again, and to carry that mythic possibility of “more” with us wherever we go. We remember that our ancestors made mistakes, and we tell that story. We remember that they repented and journeyed forward, and we tell that story too. We have made it this far. We carry our teachers with us. We channel their possibilities.

It is good to touch this primal, cosmic energy, the power of Sinai. Sinai reveals that what is is not all that could be.