The experience Bnai Yisrael (the Jewish people) had at Mt. Sinai was strange and confusing, and we had LOTS of fun imagining what that experience might have been like.
This is the text we studied this week:
Exodus 20:15-18
All the people saw the thunder and the lightening, the shofar, and the mountain smoking. When the people saw it, they stepped back. They said to Moshe, “Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it. But don’t make us speak directly to God, or we’ll die.” Moshe answered the people, “Don’t be afraid—when you pass the test from God and the understanding of your relationship with God will be on your face, and you won’t make a mistake about the mitzvot (commandments) God just gave you. The people stayed back, and Moshe went up to the cloud where God was.
These are some of the questions we discussed this week—some of them generated by Gaby and me while we studied the text in preparation to teach and may be generated by our students as we study together. If you’re walking through the city with your child(ren) this week and want to continue the conversation, this will give you some ideas about where to start.
- Do you really think Bnai Yisrael will follow all the new directions?
- Where is God in this moment? How did God get there? Can God fly?
- What is Bnai Yisrael so afraid of?
- When is a time that you understood something and it showed on your face? What does that face look like?
- Are these rules for God? For Bnai Yisrael? Both?
- Why was the Torah given outdoors on a mountain? Why not somewhere else?
(Quick note: That last question ties to a Midrash that tries to answer the question, “Why was the Torah given outdoors?” The Midrash answers that the Torah was given outdoors to show that it belonged to EVERYONE and not just to Moshe or the elders who were more active in receiving the tablets of law.)