Yitro
Reflection by Naomi Shifrin, Or HaLev Teacher
Can we receive revelation here and now?
“In this week's parasha, parashat Yitro, we receive the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai. It's quite a scene we're presented with:
וַיְהִי קֹלֹת וּבְרָקִים וְעָנָן כָּבֵד עַל הָהָר, וְקֹל שֹׁפָר חָזָק מְאֹד
There was thunder and lightning and a heavy cloud that came over the mountains and the loud cry of the shofar (Exodus 19:16).
And then we received a direct revelation, each and every one of us. How? Through the body.
וַיַּרְא הָעָם וַיָּנֻעוּ
And the people saw, and they trembled. (Exodus 20:15)
We tremble. Our bodies shook. We, as a nation, shook.
Just after this moment, God says to the Israelites, you have seen that I have spoken with you from heaven. He reminds us, just then, that we must not make any idolatrous, graven images of what we have seen.
I found this striking, that the receiving of revelation as a direct encounter in the body is followed by the reminder that we must not make idolatrous, graven images. We're directed not to search for God externally through images in order to connect to her. Rather, the prohibition against creating graven images is an invitation to come into the revelation that we received at Sinai again and again, through the here and now, in our bodies, as direct revelation.
We're invited to meet, as we do in practice, the present moment, just what is here, this direct experience right now. Maybe as I share that, you can taste it.
And perhaps - in this experience of the here and now, of the truth of what this moment is communicating to us in its very being, here and now - we receive divine revelation.
I wish you a Shabbat of presence, of being in the simple here; and in that, knowing the divine. Shabbat Shalom.”