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By Root 423 0

exile from the Garden might be seen as a flight from God's “Where are you?” or at least as a loss as to how to respond. It might not be clear just what our ability to discover God within the natural world calls upon us to do. Too much have we humans approached this world with a sense of ownership and privilege rather than with obligation. But Judaism is all about responsibility. “If Israel are not prophets, they are the children of prophets.”42 The prophetic call to action still rings in our ears. We know instinctively that no religion is serious unless it makes demands on our lives, until it asks the question: “How are we supposed to live in response to this truth?” All the imperatives of Sinai are our ways of responding to the divine “Where are you?”

We humans are pilgrims on the road of life. We want to respond to that call and challenge. But how do we undertake the journey? How do we set out on our way? What do we need to take along with us? What is the vessel in which we are to travel? What will protect us from hardships and temptations along the way? Human societies have created religions in response to those questions. As the word indicates, a religion is a regimen or a set of rules. These rules tell us how to live, how to act, how to conduct our lives in such a way that they become fit vehicles for our great journey back to our Source. The Hebrew term closest to “religion” in this sense is halakhah, “the path” as set forth by the ancient rabbis’ understanding of the biblical commandments.

Religion is thus a language, a set of symbols, that seeks to address itself to the soul. Its truest purpose is to direct both individuals and human communities to turn inward, to focus attention toward that deeper level of mind where the journey takes place. Traditions claim, of course, that their particular sets of rules are revealed by God, concretized expressions of the divine will. It is this claim that lends authority to Jewish halakhah, Islamic shariyyah, Catholic canon law, or any other laid-out form of religious behavior. But it is also true that such systems are created and evolve in response to historic need and circumstance and are most effective when they retain a proper balance between discipline and flexibility.

Knowing and admitting this, we still struggle to think of halakhah (or its parallels) as “the will of God.” I have tried to point a way toward doing this, understanding halakhah as our response, our “filling in the spaces” of the wordless divine call. This does make the sacred act a fulfillment of God's will, but only in the very broadest and most abstract sense. In order to examine this crucial question further, we need to return to our discussion of Torah, and to the first two of the ten “commandments,” those that are supposed to contain all the rest. “I am Y-H-W-H your God” and “Have no gods besides Me.” Let me try to translate these into the theological language I am speaking here. The underlying One of the universe seeks to be known, manifest through the mechanism of our evolving awareness. Its “Where are you?” spoken within us calls us to that knowledge. That call to constant awareness both liberates and obligates us. This is the secret of the first two “commandments” of Sinai.

“I am Y-H-W-H your God who brought you forth from the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” “Freedom is carved into the tablets,” say the sages.43 At Sinai the slave chains have been broken, by the great breakthrough in human awareness that we call “revelation.” That revelation began in Eden, at the moment when the challenging “voice” first called to us. But we fled Eden (Was that exile not self-imposed?) and spent countless generations in flight from that voice, running away from that which calls us. Now, having been through the trauma of bondage and liberation, we have come to a moment of maturity, of facing truth, of recognizing that a claim is made upon us by the One who set us free. The voice goes forth from Sinai every day, say the sages.44 It is only on this day, the day of the great revelation, that we are ready