Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [60]
Interestingly, the Torah does not claim that Moses is commanded to perform this rite. It seems to be his innovation, a humanly conceived ritual with which to impress the people, perhaps even a bold human act that attempts to bind God. I take this obvious “lack” in the text as a hint, telling us that covenant is indeed a human idea. No, I do not know a God who makes a covenant with Israel, One who from the heavens, or even from those “heavens” deep within the heart, chooses this people from among all nations to be His own. Even in the internalized version, I would find such a formulation both too personifying and unduly particularistic. I believe that the One is revealed in all hearts, to all people, in much the same way. The variation comes from our end, from the cultural settings and responses we offer to that universal call. Israel is unique among the nations in the way we have heard and responded, not in the fact that we are called. The covenant is our act of choosing, our response to Sinai, creating the religious civilization that begins at the base of the mountain and evolves through history.51 I thus do accept the covenant, but understand it as quite human in origin and affirm it as such. In response to the unfolding event at Sinai — a Sinai of mind and heart, to be sure — we Israelites said “Yes!” in a firm and committed way. We agreed to respond to the inner call by means of Torah and mitzvot, by accepting a sacred text, the basis and font of eternal reinterpretation, and by committing ourselves to the commandments that were revealed to us at Sinai, those engraved on the tablets and within our hearts. To stand in covenant with God is accept a challenge to regard one's entire life as a channel for bringing divine presence and blessing into the world. We as a Jewish people, the people of Sinai, made such a commitment, one to which we remain bound forever. To understand us Jews is to realize that we are eternally devoted to that vision. No matter how secular we may declare ourselves to be, something within us remains priest at that altar.
Does my claim that covenant is a human initiative serve to exclude God from it? Am I saying that it is merely human? Hardly! As God is present within the human heart, God is there within us as we say “Yes” to Sinai. (Indeed, God is also present in that part of us that says “No.”) Semolo tahat le-roshi vi-yemino tehabbeqeni: “His left hand is beneath my head as his right embraces me” (Song of Songs 2:6). God is present to us from more angles than we can see.
But is the covenant mutual? Are we promised anything? Is God “bound” by the covenant as well? Does God give to us, open to us, in response to our loyalty to that covenant? As long as we keep our expectations on the spiritual plane, I can answer with a wholehearted “Yes!” Here is the great lesson of love: the more you give, the more you receive. To open yourself to serve others as a channel of divine grace, to bring light and blessing into their lives, is endlessly rewarding. The more light you shine forth, the more comes pouring through. The inner Wellspring is one whose “waters do not betray” and never run dry. This is all I have by way of faith in reward. And it is plenty.
From that pre-Sinai moment of na'aseh ve-nishma’ (“we will do and we will listen”), when commitment is made and we become fully engaged to it, all of our accounts of what actually took place at Sinai, both in the Torah text and in millennia of ensuing Midrash, become wholly subjective. They are statements of the committed heart, hardly to be taken as objective truth. We would not have got that close to God's mountain had we been concerned with maintaining critical distance. There is thus no