Note: the following drasha is an approximation of an impromptu d'var Torah I gave at Emanuel Congregation in Sydney, Australia, where my husband and I were the grateful recipients of this community's tremendous and warm embrace of the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim (welcoming of guests) several weeks ago.
I am a scholar of rabbinics, and in both my scholarship and teaching tend to focus on the Babylonian Talmud above any other work of rabbinic literature. But rabbinic literature is a vast collection of writings, and so, despite being a "specialist" in this area, the truth is that I have not studied anything like the entire Talmud, and certainly not in depth. For that reason, I am currently engaged in a practice known as "daf yomi," the "daily page." As its name would suggest, what this means is that a person commits him or herself to study, or at least read through, one page of the Talmud each day. It takes a commitment of approximately seven and half years to complete the entire Talmud this way, and I am pleased (and on many days, not a little surprised) to say that I am now more than half way through.
I love rabbinic literature dearly, enough to have devoted my career and life to it, so I hope I will not excessively scandalize any of my readers to say that one thing I have discovered is that some parts of the Talmud are rather less interesting and/or appealing than others. For a significant part of this summer, I was reading through the tractate Shevu'ot, Oaths. Oaths are a topic of great weight in biblical and rabbinic law and thought, because they involve the name of God. If one makes a false oath using the name of God, one has committed a very significant sin; indeed one has violated one of the Ten Commandments. One has taken God's name in vain. Unfortunately, however, the intricacies of how one makes an oath, and the multiple ways in which an oath can be false, and the various forms of punishment meted out for various kinds of false oaths (not to mention the pages-long excursus into laws of purity, the Temple, and sacrifices in the first chapter) does not make for the most scintillating of reading.
But then I got to page 39a. At this point, the discussion turns to the subject of an oath administered by a court in order to help clarify the veracity of one person's claim against another. In certain cases the court can ask one of the parties to the dispute to take an oath to the veracity of his or her claims as to a debt or the like, and through the oath that person can be relieved of, or given the right to, collect on an alleged debt. As part of this discussion, then, the rabbis describe the admonition that the court is to give the person taking the oath, so that person will be fully aware of the gravity of what s/he is about to do and say.
Among the things that the oath taker is told is this: "Know that (you are swearing) not on your own understanding of the oath, rather (you do so) based on the understanding of the Omnipresent and based on the understanding of the court." In other words, it is the court that sets the terms and definitions of what is in the oath; the oath taker cannot later make a claim to a different understanding. To give an example, imagine that a member of Emanuel Congregation sued me for a debt of $50.00 in Australian money. If I were to come before a Jewish court in Sydney, and take an oath that "I do not owe Ploni fifty dollars," when in fact I did owe the money, I cannot exempt myself from the sin (and punishment) of taking a false oath by claiming after the fact that as an American, I was thinking of United States dollars - even though it is true that I do not owe Ploni $50 in U.S. currency (at least, not at the rate of conversion when we were there!). The court meant Australian dollars, and in agreeing to take the oath - and in listening to and acknowledging the court's admonishment - I would have functionally agreed that my oath referred to Australian dollars as well.
From where do the rabbis get and justify this rule? From the opening of this week's parashah, Nitzavim-Vayeilech. Moshe, as he has been doing through much of the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) has been recalling for the People of Israel their history up to this point and telling them things they need to know as they stand on the verge of entering the Land of Israel. Here, at the opening of the parashah, the people are gathered before Moshe to review and renew their covenant with God and the obligations entailed by this relationship. Moshe says to them:
Not with you alone do I make this covenant and this oath (Deut. 29:13)
When reading with their legislative eyes, the rabbis suggest that the words "not with you" imply the rule we have just discussed - the meaning of the covenant, the oath the Israelites have made committing themselves to be God's people, does not reside "with you," in their own, individual interpretations, but rather with the meaning intended by God, and Moshe as God's representative.
But having brought up this biblical passage, the Talmudic text now moves on to the continuation of Moshe's words, in the next verse:
But both for those who are here standing with us today and with those who are not here with us today.
Based on this verse, the rabbis answer an important theological question: how can the covenant entered into by our ancestors be binding on us if we never agreed to it personally? It is as the verse suggests - the covenant is made even with those who were not physically present, that is, "future generations and converts." This Talmudic text, and a few similar examples, are the beginning of a midrashic theme that would first come to full expression (so far as we know) a few hundred years later in a 9th century collection known as the Tanhuma, namely the concept that all Jewish souls ever destined to exist were present at the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai:
"God spoke all these words, saying: I am the Lord... (Ex. 20:1-2) - Rabbi Yitzhak said "Even what the prophets would prophesy in the future, all of it was received at Sinai." From where do we know this? As it is written, "but both those that are standing here with us this day" (Deut. 29:14): this is the one who has already come into existence. "Those who are": this is the one who is (now) in the world. "Those who are not (with us here this day)": this is the one who will come into existence in the future. "(Those who are not) with us here this day" - it does not say "standing with us," but only "with us this day": these are the souls which will come into existence in the future, about whom it cannot be said "standing," (and) even they are included in the general grouping (of those being addressed at Sinai).
All of us were present in soul; all of us accepted and are bound to the covenant.
Here, then, is to my mind one of the interesting challenges of being a Conservative/Masorti Jew, one who is both a rabbi and a scholar. On the one hand I can trace for you the history of this midrashic theme, show you through historical and literary methods how it developed from text to text and came to fruition in its current location, early in what we categorize as the medieval period of history. And yet, I can also assert in the fullness of my faith that this midrash is true. I believe without doubt that my soul was present at Sinai. I believe without doubt that the soul of each and every person who has been, is now, or ever will be part of the Jewish people, was present at Sinai.
How do I know this? I know this in part because so many Jews experience it as true. Anyone who knows Jews by choice has probably heard such a person describe the moment of finding Judaism and Jewish community, the sudden certainty that this was good and right and where that person was meant to be - that that person's soul knew all along that it had been at Sinai and accepted the Jewish covenant with God. One sometimes hears something similar from people who grew up in "crypto-Jewish" communities (as, for example, in the American Southwest), as the probable descendents of Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity in medieval Spain and other places, and who passed down among their families traditions whose origins were hardly remembered, such as lighting candles on Friday evenings. When members of these communities make contact with modern day Jews and Judaism, some of them too express a feeling of "home-coming." They too sometimes experience the buried knowledge of the Sinai experience their souls underwent. When people such as these learn the midrash of the Tanhuma, they immediately recognize it as describing their own, true experience.
And when do I know the truth that my, and all Jewish souls, were at Sinai? There are different times and places. One is when I have the privilege to be present when a young adult of 12 or 13 comes before the community and claims her or his place as a responsible adult, as a bat or bar mitzvah. In that celebration, I see a soul affirming its place in the covenant and the commitments it made at Sinai. And, as I did at Temple Emanuel in Sydney, Australia a few weeks ago, I experience it when I visit, and am welcomed into, a previously unfamiliar Jewish community. The accents and tunes may be a little different and odd sounding to my ears (and mine to theirs) - but in praying and eating and celebrating sacred time with other Jews, I get a glimpse of people whose souls have been where my soul has been, whose souls know what my soul knows. May it ever be thus when we are together.
Shabbat shalom.