Mishpatim: Diversity and Unity

Exodus 24:9-11

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel ascended; and they saw the God of Israel – under whose feet was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity. Yet God did not raise a hand against the leaders of the Israelites; they beheld God, and they ate and drank.

What does it mean to see God? We are told numerous times throughout the Torah that we cannot see God, lest we die. But here the elders see God and do not die. Twice we are told that they saw God: "They saw the God of Israel" and “They beheld God, and they ate and drank” (a line that reminds me of the joke “We survived, let’s eat!”).

But what does it mean to "see" God? Another translation of "and they saw" (וַיִּרְא֕וּ) is "and they feared" or "they were in awe." Maybe "seeing" is not visual, but an emotional reaction to God's presence. The verse goes on to describe not God, but the space under God, and even that is only described as a "likeness" not in definite terms.

In his book Man is Not Alone, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel attempts to discuss the nature of God. He says, “While the ineffable is a term of negation indicating a limitation of expression, its content is intensely affirmative, denoting an allusiveness to something meaningful, for which we possess no means of expression.” Basically, God cannot be understood or expressed fully in language, only through allusion and metaphor. Our ability to share our understanding of God with others will inevitably hit a language wall and require metaphor. This is why our text sometimes anthropomorphizes God - we do not really believe God has a body with hands and feet and outstretched arms, but that is the language we have to work with, so we work in metaphor. In Exodus 24:9-11 above, the elders lived out what Heschel is describing. They saw something meaningful that they did not have the words to describe.

In her book, 70 faces Torah Poems, Rabbi Rachel Berenblat reimagines the elders seeing God:

LIKE A FEAST / Mishpatim

Understand, when I say

        we saw a sapphire floor

                beneath the Holy One’s feet

I don’t actually mean

        we ate at a banquet table

                and clinked glasses with God.

What we stood on was like

        a floor but not a floor

                like the sky but not the sky

the likeness of a feast

        as we are made in

                the image and the likeness.

And during our ascent

        no two people witnessed

                the same vision: one saw

a bearded man on a throne

        one a woman robed in splendor

                one a shimmer of sound.

And then Moshe was called

        to ascend to a place

                none of us could even see.

He went into the fire

        and we came back, certain only

                that nothing will be the same.

This poem begs the question, how do we understand God? Rabbi Berenblat sets the scene beautifully, inviting us to reread the words of the Torah as a metaphor. If the elders each "saw" God (metaphorically) in their own ways, it invites us to use metaphor to help us understand and build a relationship with God today. Viewed in this way, the experience of God is open to or based on our own personal image of God, while still able to be part of a larger community of belief. Marrying this with Heschel's point, we can never truly know what someone else's experience of God is, since we lack the language to fully express our understanding of God. But that doesn't make our experience of God any less meaningful or our shared community any less important.

Earlier in the parsha, Moses received many laws and came down to repeat them to the people.

Exodus 24:3

Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of Adonai and all the rules; and all the people answered with one voice, saying, “All the things that Adonai has commanded we will do!”

What does it mean to answer with one voice? The laws in this week's parsha are laws that are open to interpretation and with which we still struggle today, including laws about slavery, miscarriage, an eye for an eye, and boiling a calf in its mother's milk. Do we really believe that all the people answered unanimously? That none dissented or had a question about one of these laws? This seems to stand in direct contrast with both Rabbi Berenblat's vision of diverse understandings of God, and the popular axiom, "two Jews, three opinions." Is the unanimous agreement of all the people yet another miracle? Can a group of people answer “with one voice” while having a different understanding of their shared experience?

Perhaps this scene is what Heschel had in mind when he wrote, "Divine is a message that discloses unity where we see diversity, that discloses peace when we are involved in discord. God is He who holds our fitful lives together." The Torah, in sharing these glimpses of diversity and unanimity in the people's relationship(s) with God demonstrates why Judaism is so powerful. Individuals can each "see" God in different ways; a personal understanding of and relationship with God is a given. Even so, the people can remain in community, agreeing "in one voice" on a shared set of laws to live by. Our diverse experiences do not preclude a unity of belief. Arguably, our diverse experiences and understandings of God strengthen our community. As Heschel puts it, unity and diversity are not opposites, but equal parts of the divine. Both can and do exist in Jewish belief and that is what holds us together.