Two Minute Torah Podcast

Yitro 5773 by Rabbi Steven Wernick

Shalom my name is Rabbi Steven Wernick, the Chief Executive Officer of the new United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.  Welcome to KOACH's 2 Minute Torah, a project of the college department of United Synagogue.

Parshat Yitro.

Today I want to share with you some thoughts coming from chapter 19 in which b'nai yisrael prepares for the giving of Torah, matan torah, at Mt Sinai.

Verse 3

Moses went up to God and God called to him from the mountain saying

Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob and declare to the Children of Israel. 

What is interesting about this verse is that for many commentators, especially the midrash, there seems to be an inference, an implication, that what was about to happen, matan torah, the giving of Torah, required for all of Israel to come together.  Literally l'beit Yaakov means the house of Jacob and b'nai yisrael of course mean the Children of Israel, but the Midrash points to the word bayit, and using a common understanding of Rabbinic Hebrew, beginning perhaps at the time of the Mishna, understands bayit to mean "the wives." Read this way, God calls to Moses and he says "ko t'amar" Moses you should speak "l'bayit" to the wives, to Yaakov, to the men, v'tageed l'b'nai Yisrael and also speak to the Children of Israel.  Read this way, the preparation for matan torah is given to everyone.  It becomes a communal responsibility regardless of one's gender.  It shows, at least in the midrashic mind, a certain sensitivity to egalitarianism, which today, in the conservative Jewish world and the progressive Jewish world, take for granted.  But this reading is actually very interesting and very informative.  That Torah is a gift to all people, all the Jewish people.  To men, to women, and to children. This of course forms much of our thinking today of the accessibility of Torah to all Jews in North America and in Israel and we pray that when it comes to Israel, that the work currently going on of Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, will continue. And that we together collectively will be able to find some sort of compromise that takes the holiest place in the Jewish world, the holiest place physically, meaning the kotel itself, the foundation wall of the temple, and find a solution by which all Jews, men women, and children, can pray without fear of being discriminated against and fully express and realize their Jewish identity.  L'bait Yaakov v'tageed l'bnai yisrael Torah is for all.