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Parashat Yitro
February 11, 2012
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg
This week the Israelites accept God’s offer to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” in exchange for following God’s laws.
According to the Etz Hayyim commentary, Parashat Yitro can be seen as, “ ‘the hinge of the Torah,’ containing the pivotal event in the history of the Israelite people and indeed of all humanity. Through the revelation at Sinai, Israel is transformed from a band of freed slaves to a nation covenanted to God. A Rabbinic tradition (from the Midrash Sifrei Deuteronomy) has it that God created the world so that Israel would emerge as a model nation and all humanity would learn from their example. . . . Had Israel not accepted the Torah, the universe would have ceased to exist.”
According to this commentary, all of Torah – all of history, even - was leading us to this moment, the revelation at Sinai, and the rest of Torah and history flows from this moment. If so, how do we see our lives in light of the revelation at Sinai and the covenantal promise between God and our People? Do we feel connected to that moment? Do we believe that we were there? Do we get glimpses of revelation in our own lives today?
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