My sweet friend Gavriel and his wife Ketriella held a bris (circumcision ceremony) for their son Adin Tovim M'Orot this week. When he spoke at the meal, Gavriel cited Rebbe Nachman as saying that when a baby cries at his bris, he receives his "tzelem elokoim" (likeness to God). When he shows that he is sensitive, he reflects that part of his creator that lies at the root of humanity's relationship with God. The Ishbitzer Rebbe also takes up this idea in the parsha. Standing at Mount Sinai, God reminds us of all he did to bring us to this day. All of the pain the Egyptians suffered was because of God's intense, burning love for us. Unbelievable. The connection between us runs so deep that when our enemies would attack us, God felt it "k'noga bbavat ayin," like a stab in the pupil. That's a sensitive spot.
When Moshe's father in law, Yitro, came to our camp to share in the simcha of the Exodus, he found Moshe caught in one of the pitfalls of leadership… trying to do everything himself. All day and all night, the people would stand lined up awaiting a chance to talk to Moshe, awaiting a halachic (legal) ruling. "Not gonna do it," says Yitro. "You won't last like this, and neither will they. You need to give them part of the leadership. You need a system of courts whereby the simpler cases can be decided by others. You need the people to be involved, and THEY, too, need the involvement. There has to be a way for the people to be a part of the creation of halacha (law). If they miss out on that step, they may never understand the beauty of the Torah."
The Rav Kook Torah we learned with Rav Daniel this week viewed halacha along the same lines as Yitro. Rav Kook understood that at times, our soul gets plum tuckered out and sad trying to flourish within the Halachic boundaries. Only by embracing our personality can we find OUR soul's connection to Jewish Law. "V'Yishma Yitro," (Ex: 18:1) and Yitro heard. Yitro had the sensitivity to hear what God was saying. We too, says Rav Kook, must have the sensitivity to discern what our heart is telling us. What excites us? What enlivens us? What fulfills us? Go after those things. Wherever we are on our path, on our "derech," we have to feed our soul. Yitro also had vision. For one with broad vision, teaches Rav Kook, details aren't a burden, they're the tools for bringing an idea to fruition. With a vision of deepening love, of expanding chesed (kindness), of a world where truth and justice are REAL, there is a depth to all the details that reflect their spiritual source. But if that vision is narrow, "what can I get out of it," "how can I get ahead?" then all of those details are dead weight.
So why did we have to learn this lesson of sensitivity from Yitro? As an outsider from the land of Midian, Yitro had a perspective that we could not. We had stopped moving, camped at the base of Mount Sinai. As far as we had come from Egypt, we were getting stuck again in a narrowness of vision as the memory of miracles began to fade. Yitro, though, had to travel to reach us, he was on the "derech," on the way. In his simple act of journeying to see us, he was telling us the way to receive: you have to be in motion. To receive Torah, to find my part in that story, I need to be part of the back and forth, up and down movement of travelling the unpaved road. Yitro heard, and he came. More than ever, the Jewish People - Am Yisrael - need us to be sensitive. To be moving closer together. To be listening. To be moving.