We Witness a Mountain on Fire — A Blessing for the Month of Sivan

With this new moon of Sivan, as we prepare for the holiday of receiving Torah against the backdrop of unresolved human wrestling, the Israelites’ response to the mountain’s fire feels pointedly aimed at redemption.

Dear friend,

At Mount Sinai, we witness a mountain on fire. The brimstone revelation of God’s instructions is so overpowering, we’re told, the people ask Moses to make the noise stop. They demand it, in fact: “You speak to us,” they tell Moses, “and we will listen — but don’t let God speak to us, or we will die” (Exod. 20:16).

Today, this need to step back from the heat resonates (at least for me). When the pursuit of peace and justice means prolonged staring into the fires of history, sometimes in order to keep choosing life, our hearts, minds, and nervous systems need the freedom to take a step back and regroup. This blessing is offered in the spirit of witnessing the flames, zooming out to reflect, and, I hope, feeling inspired to engage anew.

For nearly 20 months now, the world has watched in grief and horror as Jews and Palestinians have been tested, at a scale unique in our lifetimes, by the fires of human suffering in the Holy Land. Our hearts have broken, often in different ways, even at the same time. Many hearts are heavier now, too, from the psychic weight of turning from loved ones, because the fire between points of view is just too much to bear.

Stepping gently back from acrimony, and from a given morning’s new horrible headline, we grant ourselves a wider perspective. This perspective might lead us to contemplate the sheer scale of these ash-heaped mountains:  How long these battles have been raging. How many lives lost. (While this bird’s-eye view can make things seem heavier still, this will end on a hopeful, dare I say sweet note, I promise!)

The winding, relentlessly forward-moving line of history also reveals how long the Jewish people, so many other peoples, and humanity as a whole have endured through it all.

That might not make the fires' persistence less daunting. Still, there can be a measure of relief, for those with the privilege of relative distance, in reflecting on how we humans have been wrestling with power, violence, and the pursuit of dignity and peace for a very, very long time now. Long before the achievement of Yom Ha’Atzmaut (the creation of the state of Israel as an expression of Jewish self-determination, in a global state-based paradigm, in our indigenous homeland) and the tragedy of the Nakba (the forced expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians, also indigenous to the land, in creating the state) — eons before 1948 — there were violent rebellions by Jews against our Roman governors. Before then, we had tribal governance and a monarchy. Before then, Egypt. National formations shift, and if we the living haven’t yet cracked the code of peaceful coexistence in our time, it’s not exactly been proven an easy puzzle. It’s not as if our recent predecessors, passing into our hands the machinery of nuclear bombs and global plastics (along with many genuinely amazing things, like electricity and ice cream), also gave us a clear picture of what a sustainable pattern of human life would look like on earth.

With this new moon of Sivan, as we prepare for the holiday of receiving Torah against the backdrop of unresolved human wrestling, the Israelites’ response to the mountain’s fire feels pointedly aimed at redemption — in the form of sustainable engagement. When the people command Moses to halt God’s direct speech to them, their leader does not reject the demand. Instead, he offers words meant to soothe. Then the people stand back as he climbs up into a mountainous cloud.

Where does this leave us? Going forward, the people are indeed spared from the kind of direct, short-circuiting intensity of Sinai’s singular covenantal event. God continues to speak directly to Moses — and to other people from a number of nations — but as far as the Israelites as a whole are concerned, it seems like Moses (and God) got the memo, and the terms of dialogue between parties truly evolved. When Moses re-ascends to the top of the mountain, to the place of consuming fire, the people now see that place’s essence as water, divine presence legible as a cloud.

Rooted in the trust built through safe and honest speaking and listening between the nation and its leadership, we choose to keep returning to Sinai. Every year, we choose to face the fire, stepping back when the light, heat, and noise overwhelm, until we see water again. Zooming back in to our day, it’s impossible if we’re paying attention to avoid the human suffering in Ukraine, or among migrants, or in Gaza. For many Jewish people, witnessing Palestinian suffering is uniquely difficult, given how closely it touches our own national pain, and insisting that Israel’s government abide by international laws, such as not using starvation as a tool of war, can feel like a betrayal, or an exposure, of the Jewish state. But we know the Torah calls us to hold ourselves and our own accountable and to incline our ear to the suffering of all people, even when that requires creating space in our hearts, at the same time, for the millions of Palestinian civilians who have lost family members, jobs, and homes, and who are now at risk of losing their lives — as well as for the hostages, their loved ones (who, not incidentally, are among the most clear-eyed and relentlessly vocal about ceasefire remaining the sole viable route to bring the hostages home), and, after last week's episode of antisemitic violence, the spirits of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.

The question of how we as humans engage with these scenes — in particular, for Jews, given our people’s military involvement, how we grapple with the images and sounds coming out of Gaza and the West Bank daily, to growing international condemnation — is necessary for us to sit with, and, for those of us with the freedom to do so, to put down when we need to, when our systems are simply fried. As long as we know our role in the story is to find a view of redemptive presence — of water, of cloud — that makes us want to return to the mountain. The vision of being that soothes our minds and hearts and helps us discern our next steps.

With this new moon, may we be blessed with the courage to gaze honestly at the faces, each one made in God’s image, calling out to us from the fire — especially the faces of children. May we be granted, as well, the self-awareness to admit when the noise hurts too much to bear. May we receive the wisdom that can heal our afflicted hearts, and may this healing bring the clarity, willingness, and strength to step forward again.

May the timeless time of Sivan, of revelation at the mountain of truth, ennoble and straighten our spines, summon our hearts' honest speech, give us the grace of breathing room, and empower us to keep choosing life.

Hodesh tov — may it be, at mountain’s base, a good month,

Yaakov

RUACH Executive Director

Let's build together — yaakovgs@ruachhealth.org