The Truth, So Help Us God?

Posted on May 29th, 2012 | Filed under Featured, Learning, News, Philosophy, Social Issues, Theology
Tagged with Immigration, Judaism, Scripture, Shavuot, Torah, truth

In a world that bombards us with information from every side, it can be surprisingly difficult to find truth.  This past weekend many Jews celebrated Shavuot, the holiday commemorating God giving the Israelites the Torah at Mt. Sinai.  While I don’t believe this happened in the way it’s vividly described in chapters 19 and 20 of the book of Exodus, I do believe the story contains deep wisdom.  So what does the revelation at Sinai teach us about finding truth today?

• We should not assume truth will come from the recognized, established, accredited sources in the expected places. The Torah was not given in Egypt, the advanced but oppressive civilization where the Israelites had lived for hundreds of years before the exodus.  Nor was the Torah given in the Land of Israel, which is remarkable given the Land’s centrality in the Jewish tradition.  Instead, Torah was given somewhere in the wilderness between these two places.
• Hearing the truth may take practice. The Israelites did not receive the Torah immediately crossing the Red Sea and escaping Egypt.  Instead, the journey to Sinai lasted seven weeks, a period marked now with the practice of Counting the Omer.  On the way, the Israelites purified themselves from the idolatry they had practiced in Egypt.
• Truth emerges in relationships. Before God begins with the Ten Commandments, the first divine laws revealed at Sinai, God summarizes the history of the relationship between the Israelites and God (Exodus 19:3-6).  After God reveals the Torah, Moses returns to God frequently to clarify issues the initial revelation left unresolved.  In Jewish tradition, the classic form of learning is with a study partner, hevruta.
• Truth is given by humble teachers to humble people. According to the midrash (stories layered onto the stories in the Torah), Sinai was not a very big mountain and God chose it for the revelation of the Torah to demonstrate the importance of humility.  While the Israelites only heard part of the Torah given at Sinai, Moses heard it all, which many commentators attribute to his being more humble "than any human being on the face of the earth." (Numbers 12:3)

These conditions for finding truth rule require us to look beyond NPR and Wikipedia and most of where we get our information.  I think the Passover seder attempts to prepare us for revelation when it instructs us to proclaim, “Let all who are hungry to come and eat,” and later when we open the door to let in the Prophet Elijah, who according to tradition often wears the disguise of a destitute person.  If I really made sure that I shared the seder with a person who does not usually have enough to eat I would almost certainly be forced to begin to see the world through different eyes and disturbing truths would undoubtedly emerge.

My most recent revelatory experience came under circumstances like the revelation at Sinai.  The synagogue where my family belongs, Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia, PA, belongs to the New Sanctuary Movement and we’re accompanying an immigrant family facing deportation.  When Pedro, the father of the family, has a hearing in immigration court, a group of synagogue members shows up to demonstrate our support and hold the court accountable.  No less important, we also welcome Pedro's family into our community, which serves to relieve at least somewhat the profound sense of isolation and vulnerability they feel.

On a Sunday morning in March, Pedro and his family visited our congregation for the first time.  They spent part of their visit participating in a religious school assembly, which mostly consisted of Pedro sitting in the middle of the room, bravely struggling to explain his legal situation to the members of our community, who like most Americans, myself included, are barely aware of the details of our broken immigration system.

Then Lety, Pedro’s sister, asked to speak.  Speaking in Spanish from the edge of the room, her back literally against the wall, perfectly fit her marginal position in American society as an undocumented female immigrant.  In a soft, shaking voice, she explained the terrible situation of being in a place where you don’t want to be and where others don’t want you and yet not being able to leave.  “You come to the US thinking you’ll just be here for a short time.  But you wind up staying longer and longer because the success you’d been led to expect doesn’t materialize.  And then you have to explain to your children why you’re here when people are so cruel to you.”

It takes great courage just for Lety, Pedro and others to admit being undocumented in our country today, with the number of deportations steadily escalating.  (Surprisingly, President Obama has deported more people than his predecessor.)  Lety demonstrated even more courage by revealing a profoundly painful experience to strangers who belong to a society that tends to blame immigrants for their own suffering (and almost everything else).  But the humility Lety demonstrated in admitting the pain her choice to come here causes her children, thus exposing herself to criticism as a negligent parent on top of being an “illegal immigrant,” is what really left me in awe and made me realize I’d been standing at Sinai.

While the truth we learn from NPR or Wikipedia is often fascinating, it comes with no strings attached.  The truths we learn at Sinai, on the other hand, require us to take action.  So may we all venture beyond our comfort zones and hear the truths constantly being spoken there and take the action these truths demands.

(Source of image unknown.  Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)