Fire & Blood: The Covenant at Sinai
This week’s parsha, Mishpatim, has a lot of imagery. But the imagery that was most striking to me was that of House Targaryen, Fire & Blood. (To be perfectly frank, the reason I thought of it immediately is because I love Ramin Djawadi’s music and listen to it on repeat.)
Here’s what we witness:
וַיִּקַּח֙ סֵ֣פֶר הַבְּרִ֔ית וַיִּקְרָ֖א בְּאׇזְנֵ֣י הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֣אמְר֔וּ כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה נַעֲשֶׂ֥ה וְנִשְׁמָֽע׃ Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken aLit. “we will do and obey.”we will faithfully do!”-a
וַיִּקַּ֤ח מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶת־הַדָּ֔ם וַיִּזְרֹ֖ק עַל־הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֗אמֶר הִנֵּ֤ה דַֽם־הַבְּרִית֙ אֲשֶׁ֨ר כָּרַ֤ת יְהֹוָה֙ עִמָּכֶ֔ם עַ֥ל כׇּל־הַדְּבָרִ֖ים הָאֵֽלֶּה׃ Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD now makes with you concerning all these commands.”
[…]
וּמַרְאֵה֙ כְּב֣וֹד יְהֹוָ֔ה כְּאֵ֥שׁ אֹכֶ֖לֶת בְּרֹ֣אשׁ הָהָ֑ר לְעֵינֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ Now the Presence of the LORD appeared in the sight of the Israelites as a consuming fire on the top of the mountain.
This scene gives me chills.
I can picture it in my mind- the nation gathered, ecstatic, awed. There is Moses, placing blood in basins, pausing to dash some of it against the altar. And then he sprinkles it on the upturned faces of the people, the ones who have gathered together and declared their allegiance to God.
Can you feel it? I can- the drops hitting my face, streaking it with red. And in that moment I am anointed, as are you, as is every Jew- a member of the covenant. We are bound in blood.
(It made me think of this powerful scene from ‘V for Vendetta’- God is in the rain- also a form of anointing.)
But what does it mean? What is this covenant into which we enter?
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rav, wrote an explanation in his treatise, Kol Dodi Dofek, also known as ‘Fate and Destiny: From Holocaust to the State of Israel.’ This volume examines the origins of two covenants- the Covenant of Egypt and the Covenant of Sinai. The Rav’s meditations are very timely.
The Covenant of Egypt, the Rav explains,
was made against the Israelites’ will. God took them unto Himself for a people without ever consulting them beforehand, as the verse states: “And I will take you to Me for a people” (Exodus 6:7). The covenant at Sinai, in contrast, was first presented to the Israelites before it was made. God sent Moses to the Israelites to bring them His word, and Moses returned to God with their response. The halakhah views the covenant of Sinai as a contract that can be drawn up only with the knowledge and consent of the party assuming obligations for the future, in this instance, the community of Israel. The proclamation “We will do and obey” (Exodus 24:7) constitutes the foundation of the acceptance of the Torah.
-page 55
The Covenant of Egypt is a covenant of fate. The Rav beautifully illustrates this when he writes
…the consciousness of a shared fate manifests itself as a consciousness of shared circumstances. We all find ourselves in the realm of a common fate which binds together all the people’s different strata, its various units and groups, a fate which does not discriminate between one group and another group or between one person and his fellow. Our fate does not distinguish between aristocrats and common folk, between rich and poor, between a prince garbed in the royal purple and a pauper begging from door to door, between a pietist and an assimilationist. Even though we speak a plethora of languages, even though we are inhabitants of different lands, even though we look different- one may be short and dark, the other tall and blond-, even though we live in varying and unequal social and economic conditions - one may dwell in a magnificent palace, the other in a miserable hovel- we still share the same fate. If the Jew in the hovel is beaten, then the security of the Jew in the palace is endangered.
-page 51
This shared fate is something we all experienced when Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and his fellow congregants were taken hostage in their synagogue not two weeks ago. When we turned on our phones after Shabbat, we prayed, we begged, we pleaded with God to make sure that all ended well. And then, collectively we gave a sigh of relief. This is something the Rav understood very well- that all Jews are bound together in fate and we should thus not make hateful false distinctions (see this awful article) given the covenant that binds us in this way. (Note the article is also inaccurate- Rabbi Cytron-Walker did thank God the very next day, when he performed a healing service for his congregation. I cried listening to him. He said, “I am so grateful, so unbelievably grateful that tonight, unlike nearly every other service like this I have done, tonight we will not be saying our traditional prayer for mourning. That no one will be saying [he tears up] Kaddish Yatom for me. Or for any of us. The Mourner’s Kaddish this evening. Thank God. Thank God. It could have been so much worse and I am overflowing, truly overflowing with gratitude. [His voice breaks.] And I am so grateful, so grateful, for your presence here tonight.”)
We are bound in the Covenant of Egypt, the one that explains our communal alienation and pervasive antisemitism.
But we are also bound in the Covenant of Sinai. This is the Covenant of Destiny.
What is the content of the covenant at Sinai? It consists in a special way of life which directs man’s existence toward attaining a single goal, a goal beyond the reach of the man of fate, namely, man’s imitation of his Creator through an act of self-transcendence. The creative activity which suffuses the covenant of destiny flows from a source unknown to the man of fate. It derives from man’s rebellion against a life of sheer facticity, from the desire pulsating within him for more exalted, more supernal modes of being. The deeds of lovingkindness and brotherhood which are interwoven into the covenant at Sinai have as their motivating force not the Jew’s strange sense of isolation, but rather his experience of the unity of a people forever betrothed the one true God.
-page 55
The Covenant of Destiny ennobles us, allowing us to pursue a higher state of being, a world we actively seek to create. Here, we are not Jews forced together because we are isolated, alone and running from something. Here, we are Jews bound together because of what we are collectively striving for -for a sanctified, glorified existence.
These powerful ideas are essential in transmitting Judaism today. Too many Jews think that their existence is predicated on the Covenant of Fate alone- on the Holocaust, on antisemitism, on what marks us as different against our will. But that is not the sum of Judaism. It is not even its essence. Because the Judaism that I embrace, that I think most of us want to embrace, is one filled with agency- with power- with purpose. One where we act within the world as Jews, not only run from threats as Jews.
We are Jewish, and that means keeping the Book of the Covenant, and drawing God’s light into the world.
As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l beautifully said, “Every mitzvah is a window in the wall separating us from God. Each mitzvah lets God’s light flow into the world.”
So may we perform many of them.