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פרשת יתרו

By the time of this week’s reading the B’nei Yisra’el have well and truly left Egypt and are at Mount Sinai, en route for the Promised Land.

The Midrash relates an aspect of the story about which most people are unaware. It says that 30 years earlier the tribe of Ephraim “forced the hour” and started out before the appointed time, and when the rest of the people finally left, they found the bones of the Ephraimites in heaps along the way (Sh’mot Rabba chapter 20).

In Jewish history there were countless occasions when Jews wanted to take the law into their own hands and get away from a nightmare before the destined time of dawn. This certainly applies to the coming of Messiah, which never seemed to arrive even though we could hardly bear the waiting.

The Meshech Chochmah, commenting on a statement by Rashi, actually speaks about an early coming of Mashi’ach. Parashat Shof’tim (Deut. 19:9) has a verse about three extra “cities of refuge” for those who commit homicide without intent; Rashi says this applies to the days of Mashi’ach. The Meshech Chochmah says Rashi denotes the Mashi’ach coming before the set time.

If Israel lead such committed lives that God sends the Mashi’ach early, it will take time to finish eradicating sin, crime and murder. The Mashi’ach will lend his weight to the effort, and once it is complete the days of perfection predicted by the prophets will finally arrive.

After centuries of certainty that the site of Mount Sinai was in the Sinai desert in a no-man’s land between Egypt and Israel, an Israeli archaeologist, Emanuel Anati, thoroughly researched the area and in the late 1980s wrote a book called “The Mountain of God” in which he argued that Sinai was really in the Negev in the wilderness of Paran.

After investigating over twenty theories as to the location of Mount Sinai he was sure that history had got the story wrong and the true Sinai was Mount Karkom in Israel in a place strewn with religious relics.

The validity of his argument is now in the hands of the scholars but if it is true there are a number of major historical implications that need to be addressed. There is a dimension of the problem that speaks to ordinary human beings, Jews and non-Jews alike. It is suggested by a D’var Torah I heard many years ago on the subject of the burial place of Moses.

The Torah insists (Deut. 34) that “no-one knows his burial place unto this day”. The D’var Torah I heard – and remembered – asserted, “Despite the Torah, I can tell you where Moses s buried. He is buried here in our own community where his Torah is neglected and spurned. That’s where Moses is buried – in our own midst”.

In similar fashion I might say that I know where Sinai is. Wherever the Sinai message is known, loved and heeded, that’s where Sinai is located. Where is Sinai? Wherever we take it seriously.

Yitro, the father-in-law of Moses, was a wise man. He recognised both the good and the not so good. He thought it was far from good that Moses was available to the people at all hours of the day: “Why do you sit there by yourself with the people standing before you from morning to night?” he asked (Ex.18:14).

Yitro feared that Moses would wear himself out and had to learn how to ration his time. Working from morning to night was not good for anyone.

Rashi, however, is not nearly as critical as Yitro. He thinks it was good for the leader to be engaged in giving judgment all day long. He took every case seriously and didn’t rush through an issue perfunctorily or impatiently.

It is a lesson that we can all learn when we have a decision to make. Recently a problem I had at home illustrated the Rashi principle. We had a blocked sink; I called the plumber and told him, “It’s an easy one: it will only take you a minute”. In the event it took half an hour because the plumber was not prepared to rush through the job without looking at it properly and taking whatever time it needed to solving the problem.

This careful attitude is what Rashi recognised in Moses. Nothing could be rushed, even if it meant devoting a whole day to working things out from morning to night.

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