Sitting in my e-mail in-box at the moment is an announcement from the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, telling me that "February is Inclusion Awareness Month." Included in the e-mail is a link to textual and other resources that rabbis can use to teach about this topic, including this passage from Maimonides, in his codification of the Laws of Torah Study: "Every man in Israel is obligated in the study of Torah, whether he is rich or poor, whether he is whole-bodied or afflicted, whether he is a young man or a very elderly man whose strength has failed..." Leaving aside the limitation, in Maimonides' time and until very recently, of this obligation to men and not women, there is an important inclusive ideal to be drawn out of this source: if all are obligated, then all must be welcome; the places where Torah learning takes place must be accessible, for how else will all fulfill their obligations to learn?
The importance of Torah learning in Jewish culture is grounded, in no small measure, in the understanding that to learn Torah is to reproduce, again and again, some small measure of the experience of Revelation that took place at Sinai, a moment described in this week's Torah portion, Yitro. How puzzling it is, then, to find a rabbinic tradition that describes a very different attitude towards the presence of bodies and minds that were not fully whole and healthy at this utterly crucial moment in our national history.
Variants of this tradition appear in a number of places, but let me begin with the earliest iteration, in the early rabbinic midrashic work, the Mekhilta (which collects traditions from approximately the same period as the Mishnah was being composed/compiled). The midrash comments on Exodus 20:15, which follows immediately after the Aseret ha'Dibrot, the Ten Utterances (or Commandments):
All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking, and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance.
Among several interpretations of the verse, the midrash (BaHodesh, chapter 9) includes the following (in some manuscripts anonymously, in some in the name of Rabbi Eliezer):
This is to make known the praise of the Israelites, that when they all stood before Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, it tells that there were no blind among them, as it is said, "All the people witnessed"; it tells that there were no mutes among them, as it is said "All the people answered together" (Ex. 19:8); and it teaches that there were no deaf among them, as it is said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will listen to" (Ex. 24:7); and it teaches that there were no lame among them, as it is said, "and they stood at the bottom of the mountain" (Ex. 19:17); and it teaches that there were no mentally impaired among them, as it is said "You have been shown to understand" (Deut. 4:35).
All among the people are able to see, speak, hear, stand, understand - and this is said to be praise of Israel. Would it then have been less than praiseworthy to have someone with one of these or another disability present at Sinai? And what does that say about the presence of such people in our communities today?
Two much later compilations, Tanhuma (Yitro, siman 8) and Numbers Rabbah (7:1), have similar variants that might be understood - at least through our modern eyes - in part as an attempt to mitigate some small piece of the challenge presented by the early midrash. Both observe, for example, that the whole-bodied-ness of the Israelites at Sinai was not a given. In fact, many Israelites came out of the slavery of Egypt grievously maimed and injured because of the labor they had been subjected to: the bricks that they were forced to make and build with might fall on someone and break or sever a limb, mortar might get into someone's eye and blind it. Their physical well-being at the moment of Revelation, then, was the result of an act of Divine healing, a healing that was especially needed and welcome after the horrors of their oppression not long before. In fact, providing healing, treating disease and injury when possible, is an obligation in Jewish tradition; we are not to simply accept suffering as the way of the world, as God's will for us. The Tanhuma version goes so far as to present this tradition as an exemplum of the rabbinic ruling that providing medical care should and must take place on the Sabbath, even if it means violating the laws of the Sabbath and performing otherwise forbidden labor, for life and health take precedence over almost all else.
But the sources only take us so far, I'm afraid. In the Tanhuma version, imagining God's thoughts at this moment, the author suggests that "it is not just that I should give My Torah to those with physical impairments." But whether this justice is directed at the people (it is not just that they should have been injured as they were by slavery) or the Torah (it deserves only to be given to those whole in body and mind). Moreover, in the Numbers Rabbah version, God's imagined concern is not for justice, but for honor, the honor of the Torah: "Is this the honor of the Torah, that I should give it to the physically impaired?"
These are painful texts to read, and to include in a body of literature that we look to for guidance towards what is sacred and just and moral in the world. Perhaps a way to understand these midrashic texts is to recognize that Sinai - a once-in-history moment of direct and communal connection with God - stands outside of the world as we know it from day to day. Perhaps we can reread a bit, and suggest that it is not so much that people needed to be physically and mentally whole beforehand in order to receive Torah that day (or by extension on any day), but that the receiving of Torah itself was in that extraordinary moment an experience of healing, both physical and spiritual, from slavery.
But I also wonder if they don't point to a dilemma we all grapple with. In most cases, when presented with disabilities of all sorts - in the members of our communities, in our loved ones, in ourselves - our first impulse where possible is to treat the disability, to cure it or mitigate its effects, to the best of our human abilities. Most of us would agree that in an ideal, perfected world, no one would have to face these challenges. But we don't live in a perfected world. And in our imperfect world, all of us have imperfect bodies and minds to one degree or another. Faced with this reality, how will we respond? Will we - and how will we - make a place for all of us to learn and receive Torah? In our time, Revelation is not so direct, but it is on-going. May it be that part of what is being revealed to us is precisely that Torah belongs to all of us, and that it is therefore everyone's responsibility to make it accessible to all who seek it.
Shabbat Shalom.