Is Judaism a Task or a Calling? Rashi’s Relationship Message at Sinai | Parshas Yisro

Okay friends, welcome paras yroy. This is a I was going to say it's a fundamental para but it as I'm saying that I'm like biting my tongue because who am I to like decide what's fundamental? What isn't? It's if it's all the word of God, right? But this para is the climax of Jewish life of Jewish existence because it's the para in which we read about the receiving of the Torah at Mount Si that satic event. The whole purpose of leaving Egypt was to be able to serve God on the mountain to be able to receive the Torah. And what God had given us at the Torah when he had given us the Torah at Mount Si was not just laws or rules or it wasn't just language in general. Language is always emblematic of something deeper. [snorts] Um I mean words are incredibly powerful. Words could be superficial. But if we're attuned to to what people are saying, we have the capacity to be offended, to be uplifted, to be embraced, to feel rejected. Words are incredible. So the words that God is sharing with us is really much more than just language. But that language are like the dress or clothing of something much deeper. Ultimately what God is sharing with us at Mount Si when he is delivering the Torah to us through the language of the ten commandments ultimately what he's really delivering is himself a connection of himself which is why King Salman and many of the Tamuric sages I mean literature throughout the Talmud and other sources describe the event at Sinai as as a wedding as a relationship a relationship a deep intimate relationship with God where he's sharing himself. So it kind of behooves us to understand the very first thing God had told us. And by the way, the last thing that God had told us, I mean like publicly, not through a prophet. This is the only time in history until the coming of Mashiach that God had shared himself on this public forum and what he had said the very first thing he says I'll say it in Hebrew and translate it I am the Lord your God I am your God who had taken you out from the land of Egypt. That is the first of the ten commandments. Now the truth is there's a debate whether this is considered to be a commandment or not. Um the truth is it doesn't say ten commandments anywhere. It's a saras 10 statements. But whether this is one of the 613 mitzvah or not is debatable. Everybody believes and agrees all the scholars agree that it's referring to faith. It's referring to accepting the sovereignty of God. Now whether that's technically a mitzvah or not is a different discussion for a different time. But we are being told to accept the sovereignty of God who had taken us out of the land of Egypt. This is the opening of our relationship. in commentaries ask why why attribute um our uh sovereign accepting God as as ours accepting the sovereignty of God why attribute that to because he had taken you out of Egypt why not attribute that to something much greater than that how about creation it I'm okay it's like a parent saying I drove you to Carpel every single day. Well, how about I created you? I brought you into this world. You exist because of me. Isn't that much greater? Isn't that a bigger reason to accept the sovereignty of God? To accept God as our Lord, to embrace his Torah, to embrace a relationship with him, to embrace the task of bringing this world closer in line with his vision of humanity through the Torah. Isn't I created you much greater than that than I had transported you from one place to another? Okay, granted the exodus from Egypt is huge. It wasn't just transportation. Obviously, it's much greater than that, but creation, come on. So, this is a question many of the commentaries, many of the biblical commentaries ask. And what I'd like to do is just share some several of many basic answers, then tell you Rashi's basic interpretation and a very powerful message that Rashi is covertly insinuating. One answer as to why God says, "I am God. Accept me. Accept my sovereignty. Believe in me because I taken it of each breather than creation." A basic way to look at it is the people standing there at Sinai didn't witness creation, but they did witness the Exodus. So God is just trying to speak their language. He's trying to create less space for cynicism, less space for skepticism, which is pretty cool. Like God is almost meeting them where they're at. It's more true and and bigger to highlight the fact that he had created them, but what he had done for them is actually more meaningful to them. And in some way, God is saying, I'm not trying to be great or big. I'm trying to be real. I'm trying to be meaningful. I'm trying to be personal. I'm trying to let you know that you matter to me and I should matter to you. And the incredible, wondrous, inexplainable things such as creation. Yeah, that's real and that's true, but that's not as relevant to you as the fact that I had taken you out of Egypt. And that's what I want you to focus on. That's the core of our relationship. Something that's meaningful, something that's personal. Let another way to another angle to kind of look at this is that God had taken us out of Egypt. Creation is globally relevant, but the Exodus from Egypt is personally relevant. And God isn't trying to assert in this passage. He's not trying to assert his p his sovereignty on the entire world. He's trying to assert or or maybe even invite that's again a separate discussion for a separate time his his sovereignty to specifically to the Jewish people. The Torah is a gift specifically to the Jewish people. It was offered to the other nations. This is a famous uh teaching in the Talmud where God went to all the other nations and they said, "What's in it? It says don't kill." No thanks. Says don't. It goes to the next nation. Would you like the Torah? What's in it? It says don't steal. No thanks. Um then he came to the Jews and he said, "Do you guys want the Torah?" They said, "How much does it cost?" And they said, "Okay, we'll take two." No, I'm kidding. But he went to the Jews and they they said, "We'll do whatever it says. We want this." So God is dedicating himself to us. Creation is big picture, relevant to everybody. But the receiving of the Torah that happened on Shabuas 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt is us. It's personal. It's personally meaningful to us. There is another Jewish holiday by the way that celebrates that that is of more global international relevance and that's Rashashana. Rashashana is the creation of man who is the father of all of mankind of Adam, the creation of the world. So rashashana in some way actually has relevance to everybody in some way even though it's a Jewish holiday but shiv the holiday in which we receive the the Torah is relevance to us and God is trying to speak our language. That's one way to look at it. I'll share with you another uh perspective based on the biblical commentaries. Again the question God says I am the Lord your God who had taken you out of Egypt. And if God is trying to invite us to accept him as our king, why not highlight something greater such as creation rather than I transported you, I created you? Another way to look at it is [sighs] what God is really sharing with us [snorts] is that in order to be free, it has to be through God. It couldn't have been any other way. We theoretically could have left Egypt on our own. I'm not saying logistically. But what would have happened if theoretically we would have left Egypt on our own? We would have ran out, would just escaped in the middle of the night. We would still have that slave mindset. We wouldn't be fully free. We wouldn't be completely free. We would be free because we had set ourselves free, but we wouldn't be inherently free. You can't be inherently free unless God sets us free. The Maharal of Prague says that one of the beauties or one of the things we learned from the Exodus from Egypt is that we are inherently free. We become free people. So even though we had been oppressed again and again time and time throughout history, there's a part of us that still remains free and that's through the nama. But that's through us becoming a nation and that's through God freeing us. So God is reminding us in order for me to be your God, in order for you to be my people, in order for this relationship to work, we have to understand the terms of your freedom. Your freedom is divine. Your freedom is godly. Your freedom is inherent. Your freedom is there's an incredible depth to that freedom. You have a similar idea going back several parases ago. Um the night before the exodus. [snorts] The night before the exodus was the plague of the firstborn. All the firstborn of Egypt, Egyptians, all firstborn Egyptians, the firstborns of Egypt will be slain, will be killed because after nine plagues, they just did not get the message and they were just too stubborn. God commands the Jewish people to stay home, to quarantine, put blood on their doorposts. The angel of death is going to come by. He's going to skip all the Jewish houses. He's going to pass over which is where the Passover holiday comes from. And the Jews will remain alive. The Egyptians will die. Then we could go free. The So commentaries ask what is the purpose of staying home? Like this quarantine, this like stay home order. What is the purpose of this? When COVID had first hit several years back, [snorts] it was like weeks before this um para. It was weeks before Pes. Sorry, it was right after this para, but it was weeks before Pes and everybody was talking about this, the quarantine, the biblical quarantine, the timeliness of it. But what's the purpose of the quarantine? So, one way to look at it is the angel of death doesn't know who to kill or not to kill. Just stay home. Stay out of the way. Stay out of the way of danger. But there's another commentary who explains that here's why you need a quarantine because all the Egyptians, their firstborns are dropping dead. What's Pharaoh going to do? He's going to find you on the street. He's going to say, "Get out of here quick." So God says, "Stay home. Don't let Pharaoh see you. Don't let him free you." Because that's not what's going to make you free. What's going to make you free is me, God. And this idea is reflected as well in the very first passage. God spoke publicly to the entire of Jewish people that everybody had witnessed. Millions of people witnessed, "I am the Lord God who had taken you out of Egypt. The only reason why you're free is because I took you out." [clears throat] Other commentaries explain on a little more basic level, a little less homalytic. [snorts] I am the Lord your God who had taken you out of Egypt, from the house of slavery, from the house of bondage. You went from being slaves to Egypt to slaves to God or servants to God. In Hebrew, it's the same word. So, it doesn't uh servant [snorts] sounds a little better than slave. Like, it's we don't want to we it it's kind of like we're expected to serve God. I don't know if we're expected to slave to God, whatever. In English, it doesn't sound as good. >> [snorts] >> But we went from serving Egypt to serving God, which itself is a powerful message because we're always serving something. There's always something that we are centering our life around. And is it going to be Egypt? Is it going to be people? Is it going to be belief systems that are foreign? Is it going to be things that are harmful to us and that end up just trapping us in and abusing us or is it going to be something real and something true, something eternal, something purposeful centered around God? [snorts] In fact, when Moshe first approached Pyro, Pharaoh, he didn't say, "Let my people go." He said, "Let my people go." so they could go serve God. It wasn't just freedom from it was freedom to wasn't freedom from Egyptian oppression exclusively. But it's also the freedom to serve God. So God is reminding us, I am the Lord your God who had taken you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. essentially reminding us that you're still going to serve. It's just in a very different capacity. And this happens to be consistent with Rashi's interpretation, which again, there's many different interpretations on the Torah, but Rashi is considered to be [snorts] the literal interpretation. So, if you want to know just what the Torah means on a plane, you know, without reading into it cabalistically, without reading into it um as if you're trying to deliver a sermon or something like that, you know, trying to create I don't want to say fabricate, but but to create messages, extract messages. You just want the raw deal. That's going to be through the lenses of Rashi. Now, where does Rashi get his stuff from? Like many of the other commentaries through various midrashim through various sections of the Talmud, Rashi can sift through thousands and thousands of midrashim and pages and passages of the Talmud and ideas that has just been formed from his own understanding based on prior knowledge. The difference is other commentaries are not necessarily trying to explain what it means on a very plain level. Rashi is and Rashi's interpretation is before you were servants to Egypt, now you are servants to me. I'm going to read Rashi's language so I could just just uh have a little bit of academic integrity here and I'll translate it. uh it was worth taking you out that you should be servants to me. Now, in what and this is, by the way, not only Rashi who mentions this. Many commentaries mention this, but the difference is the language Rashi uses. And here's really what I want to hone in on because there's a powerful lesson here. And I'm going to do my best to make sense of it in English because in in Hebrew there there's something Rashi did here linguistically. Rashi didn't say God took us out to be servants to God. He took us out to be mishubadim to God to be h this doesn't work in English. So in in in Hebrew I could serve you or I could be indentured to you. That that that's really what in in Hebrew it's the same root word but just different pronunciations and and and conjugations. And there is a fundamental difference. But God doesn't say, "I'm taking you out to be my slave or to be my servant." God says, "I'm taking you out to be indentured to me, to be fully given over, to be in Hebrew, it's mishubad, which comes from the same word as eid as served." And when you're just glancing through Rashi and reading it quickly, at least for I speak for myself, I I can't say I was fully paying attention to the difference. But the difference is fundamental. You know what the difference is? It's the difference between looking at Judaism as [snorts] a task versus a calling. If you're just a servant serving, you're just there to serve God, then our focus is on tasks. Our focus is on the checklist. Our focus is on getting things done. There's a lot to get done. There's putting on fill in. There's lighting shabas candles. There's keeping kosher. There's studying Torah every day. There's keeping shabas. There's there's there's thank God a lot to do. There's having a there's loving your fellow Jew. There's loving God, right? There's a lot of checklist items to do to serve God. But the focus is on the things I need to get done on the tasks. But that's not what Rashi said. Rashi didn't say we were taken out of Egypt to serve God. He said we were taken out of Egypt to be mishubad to God, to be indentured to God. Which in Hebrew it's a similar variation of the same word. Which means the focus is not on the task but on who the task is benefiting. It's not just about putting on fill in. It's why am I putting on fill in? Who am I doing this for? It's not just about kosher. It's about why I'm keeping kosher. Who am I doing this for? It's not just about love your fellow just be nice. It's what is the overall motivation. What is in this person deep down inside that soul that makes them worthy of me being them nice to an inherent beautiful soul of go connected to God. It's not just about the thing the task the service itself but it's about who I'm serving. It's not just about a taskoriented relationship. It's a callingoriented relationship. Like Manis Friedman likes to say all the time, don't Rabbi Manis Freedman, don't let don't let religion get in the way of your relationship of God with God [laughter] because a relationship with God isn't just about the things he tells us to do. Although that is fun, they're they're fundamental things. They're sacred things, but they exist in a context. There's the content of the relationship. The thing there's the context of the relationship. And what Rashi is saying is that we're not just servants to God. We're mishad to God. We're indentured to God because there's a context to the relationship. It's not just the content. the content thing things he tells us to do the mitzvah the context the wider relationship and here's the main difference if Judaism is just about content about things about being a servant so get the job done as quick as possible get it done and then you get you get your life back so I go to shul I'm done I got my life back I got filling out of the way. Bam. Got my life back. I uh figured out how to give the most minimum allowed amount of charity. Got my life back. Now I can do what I want. And what happens is we end up living a double life if we become servants of God. We have our life and then we have to squeeze ourselves a little bit to do what God wants because there's this oppressive scary God who's going to throw lightning bolts at me or because I'm going to feel Jewish guilt. But if we're not servants of God, we're endangered to God. Which means it's not about the task. It's about whom the task is benefiting or in the way in the phraseology puts it, it's not about the raton, the the desire of God. It's about the balon, the one who has that desire. The mitzvah are what God desires. But then there's the God who has that desire. And when that's the focus, well, that's there all the time. Whether I'm amidst putting on filling or not, the connection is still there. Whether it's Shabas or Tuesday, I'm in sh at home. Doesn't matter who I am or where I am or when I am. The relationship is there all the time because it runs deeper than the tasks that I need to fill. It's an identity and therefore a calling. Rashi literally alludes to this by switching one word from being aim servants to me to mishubadimly to being indentured to me. same root word even. He just conjugates one word differently and reframes what Judaism really is all about, not just a series of tasks where we have a double life or things we need to do for God, a dual curriculum, and then the things we need to do for oursel or whatever. Back to life now, right? Back to the real world. It's much more immersive and deep. and fundamental. [sighs] And by the way, when we see this in relationships, like interpersonal relationships, when we like apply this this idea, the connections are much deeper. When relationships revolve around things, no matter the thing, you get overwhelmed, you get tired, you get exhausted, it's like now what do I do? But when it revolves around identity, not [snorts] just what do you want me to do for you, who are you and how are you relevant to me? And in other words, the context of the content. And now it becomes more integrated into every part of our life. I'd like to share with you one more important point in Rashi that that really drives uh that really drives this home. It it's a long rashi and at the end of the rashi he asks the question why does God open up the statement I am the lord your god who had taken you out of Egypt. He says it in singular language not in plural. So in Hebrew, in English, you'd say, "I am the Lord your God." And you would say your when you're talking to one person. You'd say your when you're talking to more than one person. In Hebrew, there's a version of your for the individual. Then there's a version of your for the plural. And the Torah uses the individual. God spoke in the individual language, talking to an individual. How many people are at Mount Si? There's more than one. close to three million Jewish people. Okay, God is talking to every individual. That's one way to look at it. He's talking to every single one of us. But that's not what Rashi says. Rashi says, you know what God was really doing. These Jews are indentured to God. So much so in other words, the their connection revolves not around the task but around the relationship. So it's an identity and a calling. So much so that I love them in the conditionally and and I I never want them to get hurt. I want to protect them. If there's ever a situation where they may feel where they may have slipped up and this works going again, tshoua is never I'm going to sin so because I'm going to do tshoua later, right? Tshua is always after the fact. But if there's ever a situation, which there will be 40 days later from now, the sin of the golden calf, if there's ever a situation where they slip, I want to see the best in them. And I want them to be able to say, "You were talking to me. I thought you were talking to Moses." It says it in the singular language. Now, that's not to say that we have reason to exclude ourselves from the Torah Shalom. God forbid. But there's an element of us where God is willing to overlook our responsibility toward the task because he's looking at who we are deep down inside. He's looking at a deeper part of us, which is why he was able to forgive us after the sin of the golden calf that which takes place in several paras from now. It's a crazy sin. >> [sighs] >> I mean, he literally said, "I am the Lord your God. Do not have other gods." And literally 40 days later, we start bowing down to other gods. Like, we're cheating on him in front of him. Like, what the heck? What are we doing? And he forgives us. What kind of God does that? What kind of love is that? You know why he forgave us? because the relationship wasn't centered around the task. The task is crucial. The task is important. The mitzvah are crucial. The mitzvah are important. They're fundamental. But that's not Jewish identity in totality. It's a crucial fundamental sacred part of Jewish identity in context of what Jewish identity really is, a relationship with God. And when the task is not fulfilled or broken or even violated, the relationship is still there. And when that relationship is strengthened, the tasks become even more meaningful. Tshoua makes right toua tshoua makes the relationship even stronger. I'll share with you just want to conclude with a story that I just heard um right before this class a couple minutes ago. Um we had just finished the entire Rambam three chapter day and one chapter day study cycle. So there was a large sum big celebratory event at the at the yeshiva here and one of the rabbis shared a story of the Rambam himself. The Rambam before the Rambam had a PhD. He was a physician. He had four letters after his name which was ADHD apparently. Apparently the Rambam had a very difficult time focusing which is a crazy thing because what the Rambam had authored with his Mishna Torah synthesizing the totality of Jewish law. I mean you have to have a vast knowledge of of Talmud and understand it and understand its application and to be able to reduce it. He basically created a Jewish encyclopedia. It took him 10 years to author and that's only a part of what the Rambam had authored which is crazy. He had authored the safer mitzvah book explaining all the mitzvah. He'd authored books on Jewish philosophy and explain books explaining the mission. incredible scholar apparently but apparently when he was younger he had a hard time focusing and his father was his teacher and his father at some point lost patience and said I think you're from your mom's side of the family not mine apparently his mom was the daughter was the butcher's daughter mom's father married the butcher's daughter so he said I think you're from the butcher side of the family, maybe not the rabbitical side of the family, like maybe we should change the expectations type of thing. And the Ram was was hurt by that. He was sad. He goes to Schul and at Schul is his father's rabbi who's known as the Maharash. and he's at Schul and he's pulls out apparently a tahillim and a sitter and he begins to pray to God. God, I want this. I want to study your Torah. I want to know your law. I want to know how to connect to you. And the Rambam's father's rabbi who ended up becoming the Rambam's rabbi heard this. The Rambam was 12 years old at this point heard this. He came to the Rambam and he kissed him on the hand. And the Rambam had said it was that kiss that made him who he was. What did this rabbi see in the Rambam? If I had to guess based on the context of the story, it wasn't just intellectual capacity. The Ram could have given excuses and just I'm not capable and whatever. But he had a drive. He had an interest. He had a desire. It and what he was able to harness was not just the content of Judaism, which was the information in his context, but the context of Judaism, which is the greater drive and connection, which made him who he was. And every Jew has this. Every Jew can be driven. Everybody has their own intellectual capacity. Everybody has their own behavioral capacity and circumstances in which halaka applies in which the task applies and how the task applies and what they're obligated to. But we all have the relationship with God, which is the source and wider context of that. Okay, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.