Being Commanded for Reform Jews
Parshat Yitro Sermon 5786, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
This Sunday is an American religious holiday. It’s called Super Bowl Sunday, and besides being the day on which 10% of the avocados eaten all year in the United States are consumed in guacamole—that’s true, by the way—it’s certainly the biggest day for football, commercials and betting pools. It’s quite impossible to schedule anything else for that time, as even non-football fans—you know you who are—end up watching some or all of the televised event. According to AI, which is always true and accurate, about three quarters of Americans watch the Super Bowl, or at least part of it. These days you can’t get 75% of Americans to agree on anything, but that many of us agree to watch the same football game in February. Even the half-time show—the half-time show! When most of us who actually are football fans always plan to take an essential break—the half-time show is considered so important that it becomes a national news story for weeks beforehand, or at least it did this year.
In any case, Super Bowl Sunday is clearly the only Sunday of the year which has its own name for all Americans. It’s very likely the single most observed US holiday of the year, or at least tied with Thanksgiving. I’m pretty sure more Americans observe Super Bowl Sunday than the 4th of July, New Year’s Eve, or Valentine’s Day.
Well, if you were to rank Torah portions, this week’s Parshah of Yitro would certainly be in the discussion for the Super Bowl Sunday of all Torah portions. In fact, since we are about to enter Oscar season too, Yitro would undoubtedly also be nominated for the Oscar for Best Torah Portion of the Entire Year, whether there were 5 nominees, as in the old days, or ten nominees, like we have now. Because this week’s parshah includes the Ten Commandments, the Aseret HaDibrot, greatest direct communication that ever took place between God and human beings. It is a portion of drama and power and, most of all, commandment.
For Orthodox Jews the notion of commandment is very clear. God commands, and we obey—God is the m’tzaveh, the Great Commander, and we are the m’tzuveh, the commanded. It all starts with this portion of Yitro, at Mt. Sinai: God literally commands us aloud to observe these 10 Statements, and then gives Moses the rest of the Torah and the Bible and the Talmud, which we then are equally obligated to follow faithfully. Many more commandments, more mitzvot to observe, all directly commanded buy God. And since all of Judaism was what today we would call Orthodox Judaism until about the year 1800, what was good enough for Moses was also good enough for Moses Maimonides, and Moses Mendelsohn, and your great-great-grandfather Moses in the shtetl, too. In fact, for Orthodox Jews, there were and are not 10 Commandments, but 613 commandments, the Taryag Mitzvot, the totality of the commandments given to us according to the rabbis. Our personal goal should be to successfully observe as many of them as possible, or at least all the ones we can do in the nearly 2000 years since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.
One Commander, God, commanding us what to do and what not to do.
But the concept of commandedness, for Reform Jews, presents a real problem.
What exactly does it mean to be commanded when you aren’t so sure that the revelation at Mt. Sinai really happened as they say it did in the Torah, or if all those mitzvot weren’t necessarily all given directly by God—or if any of them perhaps weren’t given in the midst of a cloud of smoke and fire, with earthquakes and shofars blasting?
You can view this whole issue of mitzvah, of just what constitutes a commandment and just who is commanding us, as the central question that Reform Judaism, and Reform Jews need to address.
Orthodoxy has always followed words from our very own Torah portion, the phrase the Israelites say to Moses and God before the Ten Commandments are even given: na 'aseh v'nishma, we will do the commandments and then we will hear them. Reform Judaism broke with that concept 200 years ago, by saying, "nishma-- we will hear and understand those commandments; and then we’ll see which ones we will do." It insisted that Reform Jews study Judaism deeply and personally decide what kind of Jews they were going to be.
Now, some Reform Jews do indeed engage in our tradition actively, with knowledge, insight, and commitment, and make choices for themselves and their families based on their personal ethics and identity. But, if we are honest, many of us Reform Jews think we are being good Jews when we choose lo nishma v'lo na'aseh, we will neither learn nor act Jewishly. Because if all those commandments don’t come directly from God, why should we even learn them or think about doing them? Aren’t we just as smart and important as the people who thought up all these “commandments”?
My friends, you will hear it often said that being a good Jew means being a good person. This confuses a 3500-year-old tradition with the Boy Scouts of America. Judaism is a particular, magnificently moral religious tradition. Our own ability to engage it, to work at our Jewish identity, is what defines whether we will be Jews who make a difference, who carry on our faith for our children, who preserve and evolve this amazing ethical and communal culture and civilization, or semi-Jews who allow it all to slip away.
My grandfather, Rabbi Samuel S. Cohon, was one of the great ideologues of classical Reform Judaism. Seventy years ago, he said: "a religion that does not seek to lead and to correct, that asks for nothing, that is soft and yielding, that is all things to all people, is in reality nothing to anybody in particular and of doubtful value to mankind." To paraphrase Hillel, if we have no standards, what are we?
The authority for the Ten Commandments is in this simple statement: God exists, acts, and commands. It is why they are not called the Ten Suggestions. Or the Ten Recommendations. Or the Ten Nice Ideas if You Can Manage Them.
It is only when we accept the existence of God, when we diminish our own elaborate sense of self, that we are able to partner with God to create a moral world. Only when we engage with the Commander, however defined, do we find the Commandments.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the former head of the Union for Reform Judaism, made this point repeatedly over the years of his presidency. Reform Judaism obligates us to study and then choose to observe both moral and ritual practices. We are not commanded to follow everything in our tradition: but neither are we free to choose nothing and claim that we do so “because we are Reform.” Quite the contrary.
At the very least we must seek, in these Ten Commandments and in our lives, to find a moral center for our lives, a way towards commandment that confirms the ethical nature of our very existence.
Perhaps the greatest of all the Jewish questions was asked in the Torah portion of Ekev in the Book of Deuteronomy. It reads:
V’atah, Yisrael, mah Adonai sho’eil mei’imach?
Which means, “And now, Israel, what does God ask of you?”
The passage then answers, “That you have awe of the Lord your God, and walk in all of God’s ways and love God, and serve the Lord your God will all your heart and all your soul.”
It’s a clear and powerful list: fear God; walk in God’s ways; love God; serve God; follow the commandments.
Five hundred years later Isaiah distilled even these terse commands into a more concise version: Cease to do evil, learn to do good, he begins. And then he lists: seek justice; relieve the oppressed; uphold the orphan’s rights; take up the widow’s cause.
A century later the prophet Micah refined the formula again: he asked, “What does the Lord your God seek of you? Only to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Finally, Hillel, four hundred years later, over 2000 years ago, said it most concisely. “Do not do to others what is hateful to yourself. All the rest is commentary. Now, go and learn.”
I recommend that you personally adopt one of these magnificent formulas, and make it your own set of commandments. Whichever one you choose, it will be a high standard for how to live life—but it’s one you, or I, or anyone can achieve, if we choose to do so.
After all, it’s what God wants… and so should we.
That is what it means to be “commanded” for a Reform Jew.
On this Shabbat, may we seek, and find, our own ethical center, and our own moral code. And may those commandments bring you to honesty, holiness, and blessing.