Boulder Aish Kodesh

It is essential that the portion containing the giving (and hopefully the receiving) of the Torah begin with the narrative of Yitro’s journey to Judaism.  We find in Yitro someone who has sought fulfillment in every sort of religious and pseudo-religious practice, as Rashi comments.   Rashi even tells us that Yitro has accomplished mastery in each of these practices.  And yet, upon hearing of Israel’s miraculous exodus form Egypt, he is intrigued and inspired enough to become a student again – to his own son-in-law, no less.  And we find a deep humility in him as he approaches the camp and tells Moshe “I, your father-in-law, Yitro, am coming to see you; and your wife, and her two sons” – and Rashi adds, “If you don’t come out to see me, then come to see your wife; and if you don’t come out to see your wife, then come out to see your sons.”  He, who has achieved greatness in every other path, rightfully understands himself as less than a beginner in Judaism.  But he courageously and humbly comes just the same.

Moshe, on the other hand, knows that he is and has been the lynchpin in the process of redemption.  He has achieved unprecedented levels of prophecy.  He, alone, is capable of helping all those who seek G-d, as it says “They come to me to seek G-d.”  And yet, when Yitro, the stranger, comes and tells him that he needs to revamp the system whereby Israel will learn G-d’s laws, Moshe humbles himself and listens.  Yitro and Moshe are both noted for the act of listening.  This capacity to listen is an essential preparation for the receiving of the Torah.  Without a capacity to listen, the words of Torah do not penetrate.  Thus it is essential to read the section of Yitro before the giving of the Torah.

What exactly did Yitro hear, that made him want to join Israel in the wilderness? The answer seems simple – “And Yitro, the priest of Midyan, the father-in-law of Moshe, heard of all that G-d had done for Moshe, and for Israel Moshe’s people, that G-d had brought them out of Egypt” – but the Gemarra Zevachim 116a asks, “What did Yitro hear that made him want to come and convert?”  The question itself seems to imply that, yes, everyone heard about the Jews leaving Egypt, but what did Yitro hear inside of that?  What did it mean to him?  “He heard of the defeat of Amalek” – knowing that Amalek, as R’ Tzaddok writes, “is the root of all impurity, for he cools people’s hearts from passionate desire to serve G-d, as it says ‘…who cooled you down.’”  Perhaps Yitro, having heard like everyone else that the Jews had defeated Amalek, contemplated the magnitude of this feat, and saw an opportunity to fight those forces that cooled him down.  “He heard the giving of the Torah, and he came” – hearing not that the Torah was given, but that G-d had revealed G-d’s self to 600,000 men, plus women and children in order to reveal it.  He might have pondered that such a ‘religion’ must certainly be different than others, if it was revealed to so many people at once.  “He heard of the splitting of the sea, and he came” – whereas in Egypt magic was the currency of the day, to hear of a Force so powerful that it actively and tangibly changed the order of nature for a certain people.  Each of these, or all of them, could have been ‘what Yitro heard’ – but each of them required internalization and contemplation in order to reach motivation.  The capacity to hear is not merely a function of the ear – the ear, as R’ Tzaddok point s out from a verse in Proverbs, is merely a funnel by which words from outside reach inside.  Once they reach inside, the work begins– to understand, to personalize, to motivate.

The capacity to hear requires the ability to make space for another – a person or idea, for example.  We have discussed this in context of Rebbe Nachman’s understanding of the Ari Z”L’s explanation of creation: Hashem, upon ‘desiring’ to create the world ‘had to’ make space within The Infinite Light that was G-d in order to create an other.  So too, says Rebbe Nachman, we open ourselves up and constrict our own infinite light in order to make space for relationship with an other.

But this ability to make space is not the beginning of the process that results in ability to listen – it functions as an expression of something far deeper.  Whereas the ability to make space is associated with the trait of yir’ah, the need for relationship is associated with anavah – humility. Whereas yir’ah is what makes space, anavah may be described as the desire or capacity to make space.  Humility precedes any capacity to receive from another through yir’ah, as it says in Proverbs (22:4) “At the heel of humility is yir’ah.”  Humility proceeds from a genuine recognition of lack in one’s self.  It comes in the wake of realizing the inherent impossibility of reaching perfection alone.  And this realization, as Maharal writes (Netivot Olam Anavah 4), brings yir’ah automatically in its wake.

The capacity to receive the Torah is dependent on humility.  In several places in the Talmud a quote is brought from           “And from the wilderness, to Matan.”  The word ‘to Matan’ in Hebrew is matanah, which also means ‘gift’.  The Talmud reads that one who makes himself like the wilderness, where everyone treads, is able to receive and retain the Torah.  Rebbe Nachman invokes this reading in a powerful way:

“A person cannot merit to Torah without humility, as the sages wrote, ‘And from the wilderness [lowness] comes the gift [Torah].’  He must break four aspects of pride with four aspects of humility: a person must lessen himself before those who are greater than him, and before one who is of his stature, and before those who are lesser than he, and sometimes, even if he himself is the smallest of the small, he needs to lower himself in reference to his own level, and see himself as lower than he actually is.”

Why does Rebbe Nachman connect the capacity to receive Torah to the capacity to lower one’s self before another person?  Humility before G-d is clear.  But even that is not so simple.  The very message of the Torah, according to R’ Tzaddok (Tzidkat Hatzaddik 232) is exemplified in the first commandment and the first commandment commands is humility.  In G-d saying, “I am Hashem your G-d…” the converse is clear: You, therefore, are not your god.  Unlike Pharaoh, who claimed ‘I have made myself’, we are forced to recognize ourselves as being results of a Cause (in the words of the Maharal, Netivot Olam Anavah 1), and not having ‘caused’ ourselves to exist.  This becomes the grounds by which we are commanded and must acquiesce – G-d is our G-d, and therefore G-d may command.

There is, obviously, a strong temptation toward the opposite: as Rebbe Natan writes (Likutei Halachot Shiluach Haken 5), “[The sin of eating from the tree of knowledge] was a result of the arrogance that the serpent put into them, as he said, ‘and you shall be like gods.’”  We find, however, that the giving of the Torah is concurrent with the absence of the ‘venom of the snake’.  As is written in Gemarra Shabbat 146a, “When the snake came to Chava, he put his venom in her; when Israel stood at Sinai, that venom ceased.”  Thus the experience and message of the Torah being given at Sinai was one of humility, antidote to the arrogance brought by the serpent.

In asking why Rebbe Nachman connects the receiving of the Torah to lowering one’s self before other people, this makes when referring to Moshe, who “brought out the nation toward G-d.”  But why should Rebbe Nachman relate the capacity to receive the Torah to being humble before thoseof the same stature?  Maharal, in describing the opposite of humility (Netivot Olam 2 Humility 4), describes arrogance as a total separation from other people.  By the giving of the Torah, we find the exact opposite – an astounding display of Israel’s needing one another.  In Gemarra Sotah, 37b, we find each member of Israel becoming guarantors for every other on every mitzvah – 3 times.  The humility that allows people to bring each other into their relationship to G-d is the humility that allows them to receive Torah.

And this humility is not just toward people of equal stature.  In Rebbe Nachman’s teachings (Lesson 34) we find the giving of the Torah being understood as responsibility for transmitting the Torah being handed over, so to speak, to each individual according to their special and unique aspect.  What results is that, if I want to receive the entire Torah, I need to receive from every individual to whom that responsibility was entrusted: “And the facet that one has more than his friend, he provides, and illuminates, and awakens the heart of his friend, and his friend must receive this specific awakening, and this specific facet, from him, as it says ‘and they receive one from another’.”  When we recognize that receiving the Torah depends on our capacity to receive from one another, then we see how essential it is to humble ourselves even before people ‘lower’ than us.

Finally, why does Rebbe Nachman tell us that receiving the Torah requires that we be humble before ourselves?  I believe the answer lies in another lesson in Likutei Moharan.  In lesson 115, Rebbe Nachman explains the verse, “And the nation stood from afar, and Moshe approached the mist, where G-d was.”  He writes there that someone who has lived a life of physicality all his life, who later becomes passionate about living a G-dly life, is blocked by an obstacle because of the way he has lived his life until now.  But

G-d, who seeks to act kindly, hides Himself, so to speak, in that obstacle.  An intelligent person will look into the barrier and see G-d.  Someone who is not intelligent will move away from the obstacle.  Moshe, unlike Israel, was able to see G-d in the obstacle.

It is shocking that, just a few verses after the giving of the Torah, Israel would be experiencing obstacles.   They who stood at Sinai were probably asking themselves the same question: how, after such a deep revelation that penetrated my very heart, could I be experiencing an obstacle between me and G-d?  But such a moment challenges us to see that we thought we were on a higher level than we actually were.  As Rebbe Natan writes in Likutei Halachot Pesach 9, “Because of a person’s arrogance, he imagines that he has already worked hard to serve G-d, whereas he is still very far from G-d.  Through this, he becomes depressed.”  The proper way, says Rebbe Natan, is to “know his lowliness, and the greatness of G-d, until all of his hard work in serving g-d is worth one spark of

G-dliness, and he rejoices in every bit of the holiness of Israel that he finds in himself.  And when he sees how far he is, he comes to deeper levels of humility and lowness, which allows him to rejoice even more…” The barrier is given in order for us to realize that we have accomplished nothing.  By truly realizing this, we become increasingly humble.

Thus we see that, in order to truly receive the Torah, we must be humble before those greater than us – like we were before Moshe, who enabled us to receive the Torah; before those equal to and of lower stature than we are, for everyone is guarantor for everyone else in receiving the Torah, and everyone is the repository for one aspect of Torah which cannot be found anywhere else; and before ourselves, as we have not yet even begun in our relationship to G-d.  This humility gives us a true capacity to listen – to the Torah, to each other, and to ourselves,