In early 1992, I climbed “Mount Sinai.” As a journalist, I am compelled to explain that, though the Bedouins consider that mountain the actual spot where Moses received the Ten Commandments, many biblical scholars disagree. For my purposes, that dispute is irrelevant.
I packed my bag and traveled by bus from the southern tip of Israel across the Sinai desert to the St. Catherine’s Eastern Orthodox Christian monastery. Within its high walls is a bush that some consider a true descendent of the burning bush that Moses saw.
I must admit that I have forgotten my experience of seeing the bush, a memory lapse that now seems shockingly prescient.
My traveling companion and I slept in a youth hostel in the monastery. Like all the other adventurous trekkers, we planned to begin our ascent before dawn and to reach the peak by sunrise.
Hiking in the dark felt like a good spiritual warm-up for the grand finale, reaching the place where Moses received the Torah from God.
By the time we got to the top, I was tired, really needed a bathroom, and felt more like a bothered tourist than a spiritual seeker. My friend and I stood at the summit, held momentarily by an obligation to soak in the holiness, and then we turned and marched down the way we came.
I didn’t feel God on Mount Sinai. But, I must admit, I have felt holiness, or dare I say hashgacha pratit (Divine intervention in my personal life), countless times since, often in unromantic settings like the gym or dirty city sidewalks or noisy hotel rooms. I have felt spiritually connected on long runs, when my breath is even and my mind finally quiets. But the mountain didn’t cut it for me.
Some might say that because the mountain was not the actual site of Moses’ ascent, my reaction was understandable, perhaps even wise. But I believed my lesson was that connecting with holiness has more to do with my personal readiness and awareness, and less with geography, legends or travel itineraries.
If I had been more awake to my role as a Jew in the long course of history rather than my individual cosmic hunger, I could have learned other, more nuanced and instructive lessons.
For Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, Moses’ experience at Mount Sinai was important not just because it marked the beginning of God’s covenant with the Jews. It also sparked the birth of a new Jewish consciousness.
In his 2006 book, “Judaism and Justice,” Schwarz traces Jewish identity to two formative Jewish experiences: the Exodus — celebrated at Passover — and the revelation of the Torah at Sinai — celebrated last week at Shavuot.
“If the Exodus gave the collection of slaves that left Egypt a sense of a common past and a shared destiny, the experience at Sinai made it abundantly clear that the people Israel were expected to live out a higher calling,” Schwarz writes.
The Exodus, the journey from slavery to freedom, bound Jews to each other with a shared experience of redemption and solidified the collective Jewish identity as “outsider.” It represents, Schwarz writes, “the beginning of Jewish national conscience.”
Sinai, however, did not focus on peoplehood or even redemption. Rather, it cemented the Jewish relationship with God.
“Even if we cannot verify God’s revelation to the Jewish people at Sinai and his ‘choosing’ of the people Israel,” Schwarz writes, “the fact that they lived with a belief that they were the chosen people led them to conduct themselves in such a way that they more than earned the label.
“In other words, the Jewish people lived at a higher moral level to fulfill the expectation of the covenant.”
His analysis provides a fascinating way to understand the conflicting impulses in our community, among our denominations and within us as individuals.
I grew up teasing my parents for their “Exodus consciousness,” which seemed focused on Jewish apartness and a healthy dose of fear of anti-Semitism. As an adult who has seen the shimmering blade of anti-Jewish sentiment, though sometimes sheathed, I’m not so cavalier.
But I still resist a Jewish identity that depends on the fear of extinction. I feel repelled by a Jewish consciousness that answers “Why be Jewish?” by saying that Jew-haters would celebrate our demise.
I want to celebrate my Jewish identity, to feel illuminated by the call to be a “light unto the nations” (Isaiah 49:6). That’s a common theme among younger Jews, many of whom are inspired by the Jewish charge to heal the world. They have started environmental and social justice programs around the country that are rooted in Judaism.
That “Sinai consciousness,” as Schwarz calls it, fueled the Jewish involvement in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. “Exodus consciousness,” on the other hand, led to the founding of the State of Israel and the movement to liberate Soviet Jewry.
Though sometimes conflicting, the two impulses are meant to complement and correct each other. And they can be useful for us, as individuals and the community, as we seek meaning and chart our future.
The continuum of Exodus and Sinai reflect our diverse community. As Jews, we are bound by our common past and our shared sacred texts, but we are divided by our interpretations of history, Torah and our sacred role. Honestly, too many of us don’t feel charged with a sacred role at all.
Take Shavuot, for example. How many Jews counted the Omer, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot? Our community includes people who celebrate Shavuot through all-night learning and prayer sessions; others who gather for shorter, evening programs; and others who don’t observe it at all.
This Shavuot, as the economic crisis presses upon so many Americans and we enter the violent summer season in our city, it is time for all of us — from the deeply committed to those who don’t feel the relevance of Judaism to their lives — to heed the call of Sinai.
As I trekked down from “Mount Sinai” 17 years ago, I felt relieved as the sun began to heat the damp, cool desert air. But I missed something crucial. I overlooked the collective Jewish call to heal and repair the world that was born on that (or perhaps another) mountain.
The tangle of people with their backpacks and loud voices, the solitude that wasn’t, all were a picture of real life — messy, loud, inconvenient and sometimes falling short of expectations.
Obscured by the mundane, as great truths sometimes are, was the great fire in the mountain, the transcendent historical narrative that calls on Jews, from Moses to today, to seek justice and heal our broken world.
