Judeo Talk

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is Parsha Yitro, Exodus 18:1-20:23.

This parsha is short, but there are two good reasons for this. First, the episode in next week’s parsha must stand on its own (we’ll see why next week) and second, there are two very important things that happen in Yitro.

The more obvious of the two is the giving of the Ten Mitzvot. Remember, we won’t be referring to them as “Commandments” here, as we discussed in a previous post. But before we get to the Mitzvot, there is an interesting and arguably more important scene between Moses and his father-in-law Jethro, for whom the parsha is named.

As the Israelites travel farther from Egypt they end up in Midian, which is where Moses lived after being banished from Egypt for killing a task master. In Midian, Jethro still lives and takes care of Moses’s wife Zapporah and their two sons. Moses and Jethro have a happy reunion and basically catch up with one another. I’m a big fan of scenes like this. The Torah frequently features family reunions. The fact that the holy texts take time out to reinforce the importance of loved ones in our lives is wonderful and reassuring. Even as Moses is the prophet of God and the leader of an entire nation, he is still only human. He misses his family and shows them deference despite his social station. He even takes advice from his father-in-law, who is really the only parental figure Moses has left in the world. That in itself is an interesting commentary about family responsibility.

When Jethro sees that Moses spends all day, every day acting as the judge for every little problem the Israelites have, Jethro tells Moses that he needs to make some changes lest he burn himself out and fail as a leader. Jethro suggests that instead of just interpreting the law for them, Moses ought to teach the law to all of the people so they can be judges for themselves. He also tells Moses to delegate responsibility to the righteous for smaller groups. Specifically, that there ought to be community leaders for groups of thousands, then for groups of hundreds within those thousands, then groups of tens within those hundreds. Essentially, Jethro is suggesting a Federal, State, and Local governmental system, freeing Moses to address only those issues deemed too difficult for the many different delegated judges. Essentially, Moses is now the Supreme Court. This sets a precedent for keeping the big-wigs out of local affairs while still maintaining a single rule of law throughout the nation.

This is why I say that the delegation segment is more important than the Ten Mitzvot. These are really just a few more common sense laws to add to an already established list of Israelite codes of conduct. This parsha begins a process that never really stops throughout the Torah and beyond. Most of the Torah from this point forward is concerned with the creation of laws by which the people agree to live. The laws get more nuanced and complex as the nation gets closer to solidification, but for now they are just day-to-day modes of order. The only thing that sets the Mitzvot apart from other laws is that they are handed down directly from God to the people, so their authority is absolute. These are laws that cannot be debated. If Moses is the Supreme Court, God is the Constitution.

If there is one word that sums up the core of Jewish philosophy, it is Mitzvah. This is one of those very complex Hebrew words that just doesn’t have an easy, direct translation into English, or any other language for that matter. In fact, the word Mitzvah is at the center of one of the most hotly contested mistranslations in all of monotheism: Commandment.

The first use of the word Mitzvah comes in the biblical book of Exodus. After the Israelites leave Egypt, God leads them to Mt. Sinai (or Mt. Horeb, depending on who you talk to) and gives them the Ten…

Commandments? Not exactly. The word in the Torah is Mitzvot, the plural of Mitzvah. That word doesn’t even share a common root with the two different words in Hebrew that can mean “Command”. One of those words is the verb L’shalot which basically just means, “To tell someone to do something” and the other is a verb from a different “family” of verbs, Pikodah. Neither of these could possibly be construed to relate to Mitzvah.

So, why translate Mitzvah as “Commandment”? Well, that’s an issue of philosophy. The list of Mitzvot handed down at Sinai have commonly been interpreted as laws that come directly from God. Philosophically, it sets more nicely for a lot of believers and theologians to think of them as hard rules given by the ultimate authority. It’s certainly easier to explain them that way.

The truth is that the Ten Mitzvot aren’t commandments in any form, not even grammatically. Take for instance the Mitzvah commonly translated as, “Thou shalt not kill”. In the original Hebrew, the phrase is Loh Tirtzakh. This literally means “No murder.” Were this a command, it would be phrased Tzakh Loh. Is this just nit-picking? Absolutely not. There is a very different connotation here.

Philosophically and linguistically speaking, that big list of ten things just doesn’t make sense as an authoritative command. The Torah explicitly states that human beings have free will. It seems a lot more likely, given context, that the big list actually means to say, “In a society of righteous people, the following things are true.” The Ten Mitzvot are not followed by The Ten Consequences for Breaking The Ten Mitzvot. These aren’t rules or commands, they’re statements of righteousness.

So, what exactly does Mitzvah mean? These days, Jews use the term to mean any act of goodness or kindness. While that’s closer to the spirit of the word, it’s still not exactly right. It’s true that all good and kind acts are Mitzvot, but not all Mitzvot are good or kind. More accurately, Mitzvah is a lifestyle. It means remaining mindful of what would be best in any situation. To live a life of Mitzvah is to strive to make the world better through actions and to appreciate what good there is in the world already. There are as many Mitzvot as there are experiences in life. Every experience is an opportunity for Mitzvah, even times of difficulty and sadness. It is sad to lose a loved one, but it is a Mitzvah to fondly remember the dead. It is frustrating to meet with cruelty and ignorance, but it is a Mitzvah to refrain from anger and choose to educate the ignorant.

This lesson is just the beginning of understanding Mitzvah. It is a very rich, complex philosophy and it is the central preoccupation of Jewish theology. In a sense, it is a word that has no translation because its meaning changes with each year and each life that lives it.

Last night, the festival of Chanukah came to a close. In its way, Chanukah is unique among Jewish holidays. While many of the faith’s observances last for several nights, none but Chanukah have an active ritual repeated on each of the nights. For those who diligently keep the customs of Chanukah this means lighting the Menorah eight times, a powerful sensory ritual. The sight of the flames, the smell of the smoke, even the motion of guiding the Shamas to each branch can evoke memories of childhood and of other Chanukahs past. We do these rituals not just because they are customs but because physical acts require enough concentration to focus us on the prayers and the feelings associated with the holiday.

So, when we repeat the same prayers for eight successive nights, lent focus by the act of lighting the Menorah, it is natural for us to question what those prayers actually mean. We are a people who often pray in an ancient language that most of us can’t speak. We frequently don’t even know the literal translations, let alone the layers of meaning underneath.

On Chanukah we say two prayers every time we light the Menorah and a third prayer on the first night only. On the first night, in addition to the two others, we say the Shehechianu, a prayer said at all occasions of firsts or of new things. The other two prayers are:

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, King of the Universe

Who makes us holy with the Mitzvah we do

When we light the lights of Chanukah (amen)

And

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, King of the Universe

Who did miracles for our fathers on this day at this time (amen)

So, why are our prayers structured like this? Why do almost all Jewish prayers begin with the same line? Is there a purpose to the repetition of placing all the honor on God?

There are several layers of answers to these questions. First, the structure of Hebrew prayers is essentially standardized. It is a result of the Rabbinic Age in which we live. When Jerusalem was sacked by the Roman Empire the Temple was destroyed and the Jews were forced to scatter across the world. In order for the Jewish faith to survive and Jews to stay connected to one another regardless of where they lived, the prayers of our ancient heritage were standardized.

As for why the majority of Hebrew prayers open with the same line, it is part of one of the faith’s central tenets. In the Torah and in all liturgy afterward, Judaism has attempted to avoid placing too much honor or power on individual people. The responsibility and the glory almost always goes either to God or to the entire community as a whole. When we light the Chanukah candles, we do not honor Judah Maccabee or any other individual because the holiday isn’t supposed to be a time of ancestor worship. By placing the honor on God we allow hope and power to exist in the present day and out of the hands of anyone who could possibly be corrupted by such power.

We also place so much focus on community not just to keep others from becoming arrogant, but also to keep us focused on what really matters. These holidays are nothing if we don’t share them with others because these holidays don’t exist in a vacuum, cut off from the rest of our lives. However ornate or archaic the wording, these two prayers above say simple things. They can be easily translated into more concise language. “It is a good and happy thing to light Chanukah candles” and “A wonderful thing happened a long time ago. We’re so happy we can celebrate it together today.”

In order to make an ancient religion relevant to our modern lives, we must come to a colloquial understanding of what our prayers mean. By keeping the text of those prayers the same across the ages, we allow each generation to come to its own understanding of their meaning. It is a Mitzvah, a good and holy thing, to contemplate prayers and what they mean. If it sounds old, stuffy or irrelevant, chances are you just aren’t modernizing your interpretation.