Parashat Yitro

Parashat Yitro

Rav Yosef Tzvi Rimon

Founder and Board Chairman, JobKatif

This week’s parsha discusses the miraculous occurrences that happened at Mount Sinai. A pasuke recounts the scene, “The whole nation saw the thunder and lightning, the blare of the Shofar and the mountain smoking; when the people saw it they fell back and stood at a distance”

This is an odd sentence. How did the nation see thunder?

One explanation is that the word “to see” in the torah can also mean to understand. We see this in Parshat Rae’ “See this day I set before you blessing and curse.” “See” in Parshat Rae clearly means to understand since you can’t see things that are being discussed. In that case the pasuke in our parsha would read, “All the people had a huge revelation, they understood the meaning of the thunder…”

Another way to understand this seemingly construed pasuke is to examine the difference between the senses of hearing to the sense of sight. When you see something, you know that exists. You can reach out and touch it. Seeing something gives insight into reality and existence.In contrast, sound is something that is intangible. If you hear a noise, you know that it came from something but you can’t place your finger on exactly what. A person’s natural tendency after hearing a sound is to translate it in his mind to the object he associates the sound with. For example when are person hears the chirping of a bird, even if he can’t see the bird from which the sound is coming from, he automatically imagines it. So to, when a person hears thunder he imagines to himself what the thunder would look like. Even though there are things that are above reality, a person has the ability to assign a real image to it so that he can understand what is going on.

This is not what happened at Mount Sinai, however. The nation of Israel was able to see the metaphysical, something that is impossible naturally. They did not have to imagine the might and supremacy of G-d but rather they were actually able to see it, miraculously sound became something that was tangible. The thunder and the blast of the shofar were not just noises but things the nation of Israel was able to see with there own eyes.

In every generation the voice of G-d thunders telling us to pay attention, see and hear the messages that He assigns us. May we merit, in our own way to fully understand what G-d is always asking of us.

Shabbat Shalom!