Collaborative Freedom

[Thank you to the community at Temple Beth Am in Monessen, PA for your amazing and valuable feedback on this sermon, given on 18 February, Shabbat Ki Tissa.]


Chaos replaced Law. The people gathered, but their leader could not discern whether their gathering was a rebellion or a celebration, a war or a party. After days and days of his absence, this leader finally descended into the throng. Enraged, he smashed the Tablets of the Law at the foot of the mountain.

Tonight, we stand at the foot of Mount Sinai. We, the people Israel, in despair and confusion, worried that our leader Moses would not return. We yearned for some tangible proof that the God who led us out of Egypt would not abandon us in the desert. We regressed to what we had learned in the land of our slavery. We made a mistake. Our minds still enslaved, we tried to fashion an outward sign of power and authority because we understood neither an invisible God nor a covenant with that Ultimate Being. We did not know how to be free.

Yet God, a God compassionate and gracious, taught us about freedom.

In this week’s paresha, we read about Moses’ ascent to the summit of Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law from the very finger of God. Twice the Torah describes these remarkable tablets, shaped and carved by God from the stone of Sinai: in Exodus, chapter thirty-one, they are called “stone tablets written by the finger of God” (31:18), and in chapter thirty-two we read, “the two tablets of the Pact, written on both their surfaces […]. והלוחות מעשה אלוהים המה והמכתב מכתב אלוהים הוא חרות על הלוחות – The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, inscribed upon the tablets” (32:15-16). The Torah tells us that these Tablets represent nothing less than the Law of God inscribed by the finger of God on Tablets carved by God. Talk about the word from on high… Power and authority descend to us from the summit of Sinai in the hands of our leader Moses.

The Tablets bear the Law, our responsibilities under the covenant between us and God. The Torah tells us these tablets were “inscribed by the finger of God.” “Inscribed”—in Hebrew, חרות (harut). In the Mishnah, the rabbis play with this word, reading not harut but heirut—freedom. The Tablets are freedom, say the rabbis, “for no man is truly free until he occupies himself with study of Torah” (Pirkei Avot 6:2).

Law is freedom, heirut, say the rabbis. We are free when we study the Law, inscribed, harut, by the finger of God upon the Tablets.

We might read the rabbis’ statement as an endorsement of submission to law and authority. The finger of God inscribes the words and, following those words to the letter, we are free.

But, in this week’s Torah portion, God sends us a different message about freedom.

The Tablets of the Law, written by God, inscribed by the very finger of God upon tablets carved by God out of the side of the mountain—these remarkable Tablets lay shattered at the foot of Sinai, broken in Moses’ anger. But the covenant was not shattered with them. After anger and punishment come forgiveness and a new freedom, symbolized by a second set of Tablets. Are these second Tablets exact replicas of the first? Not quite.

God instructs Moses, “Carve two tablets of stone like the first, וכתבתי and I will write upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you shattered” (34:1). We already see a difference here: Moses must participate more actively in the creation of these new tablets which will bear the terms of the covenant between God and Israel. Moses will carve the shape of the tablets from the stone of Sinai, but God will write the words and inscribe them upon the tablets.

And yet, a few verses later, God speaks to Moses again, commanding: “כתב לך Write down these commandments” (34:27). Now it seems that God wants Moses to not only carve the new tablets but to write the words as well. The Torah says, “And [Moses] was with the Eternal forty days and forty nights; […] ויכתוב and he wrote down on the tablets the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments” (34:28).

Wait a minute, ask the rabbis. Who wrote on these Tablets, the very Tablets preserved in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies? Was it Moses, or was it God? Who is the subject of the verb ויכתוב, and he wrote? Our rabbis, thinking of God as “he,” worried over whether God wrote on the second set of Tablets or whether Moses did. Many classical commentators say that of course the Torah means that God wrote the second set (Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Sforno). The rabbis note the apparent contradiction in the text: How do we reconcile verse 1, וכתבתי, God saying, “I will write upon the tablets,” with verse 27, the command to Moses to כתב לך “Write down these commandments”? The rabbis resolve the contradiction by ignoring God’s command to Moses to “write” and focusing on verse 1, the verse that says, Moses, you carve the tablets yourself, since you broke the first ones, but I, God, will write and inscribe upon them the Law. The worried rabbis seem to be saying, of course these sacred Tablets, carefully preserved in the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple’s very Holy of Holies, of course these Tablets were written by the finger of God.

But what if they weren’t? What if the second set of Tablets bore words spoken by God but written by Moses?

The rabbis envisioned freedom, heirut, through God’s Law inscribed, harut, in stone. Follow the Law to the letter and we are free.

But what if we think about freedom as emerging from that second set of Tablets, the ones written by Moses? Then heirut, freedom, emerges from a collaborative process—human beings and God working together. Freedom emerges when God speaks the words and Moses writes them, when Moses writes them and passes them down to the people, and when the people—when we—interpret those words so that we can live them out in freedom.

At the foot of Sinai, the people Israel felt lost without their leader. They did not understand a God they could not see. In their fear and confusion they turned to the ways of slavery, the habits of a people habituated to submission. God punished them for their idolatry and for their refusal to stand by the God of their ancestors, yet God also forgave Israel and re-established the covenant. God re-established the covenant through a second set of Tablets created in collaboration with Moses. God recognized that, in order to teach an enslaved people to live in heirut, in freedom, the harut, the inscribed law, had to emerge from power shared between God and human beings. כתב לך You write. Or, write for yourselves. And then you will be בני חורין, free people.

With their heirut, their new freedom, Israel created a portable reminder of God’s presence. In the next Torah portion, they build the sanctuary in the desert. They build it with their own hands and through their own free will. The place that will remind Israel of God’s presence among them, the site of communal rituals and gatherings—this place was built not by Moses alone or even by its primary artist, Bezalel. The sanctuary was built by כל אשר נדבה רוחו, by every single person whose spirit was generous (Exodus 35:21), by האנשים על הנשים כל נדיב לב, by the men together with the women, all whose hearts were generous (25:22). Indeed, this people who only recently became so frightened at the prospect of freedom and covenant gave so much of themselves that Moses had to tell them to stop. “Their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done,” says the Torah (Exodus 36:7).

God took the risk to say to Moses, כתב לך, write for yourselves. Write these words, although you may make a few mistakes. Write these words and live them in freedom, although you may misinterpret them at times. Write these words and build a community with the contributions of all its members, men and women, young and old—all whose hearts are generous are welcome to build this community, to live out this Law in heirut, not in submission to the Law, but in freedom through a collaborative covenant. כתב לך, write for yourselves. God will share the power and the responsibility. God will trust you to interpret the words and live them.

God understood how to transform an enslaved people into a free nation. God understood collaboration. And if tradition claims that even God was willing to take the risk to share power, then so much the more so ought power among human beings be shared. So much the more so should human political freedom emerge from collaboration.

Tonight, Egypt stands at the foot of its own Sinai of sorts. We have watched anxiously the anger and the violence, the demands and the celebrations in Tahrir Square—Freedom Square. We have heard the cry of a people demanding, as one protestor’s sign read, “Pharaoh Mubarak, Let the People Go!” We have worried about the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood and the implications for Israel—a reasonable response, for freedom is risky. How have we listened to the people’s cry for freedom, open access to information, and self-determination? Can we listen to that cry with our second set of Tablets in mind? Can we listen to that cry as the outpouring of so many—men, women, children, professionals and workers, religious and secular—so many individuals, each נדיב לב, willing of heart to write and interpret their own freedom?

We do not yet know what form Egypt’s freedom will take. And we tremble in fear, for the stakes are immeasurably high. Egypt is deciding how they will participate in the community of democratic nations, how they will live their collective national identity, how they will pursue freedom while allowing citizens to express their religious and political convictions. These struggles are so like the struggles of the Jewish people, trying to live out a covenant in freedom, trying to interpret and reinterpret ancient words while never, ever letting go of those Tablets, trying to elicit the willing hearts and contributions of each member of our community. Ours is a freedom that carries responsibility. Ours is a freedom that requires us to partner with God. I pray that Egypt’s freedom will be such a freedom: humble and responsible and collaborative.


[I am thankful to my homiletics instructor, Rabbi Margaret Wenig, and my classmates Jillian Cameron, Rachel Maimin, Lisa Kingston, Vicky Glickin, Daniel Kirzane, and Ilene Haigh for their comments on a draft version of this sermon. In thinking about the second set of tablets as written by Moses, I was inspired by an article by Bowdoin College Professor Aviva Briefel in which she talks about Moses as “plagiarist” (“Sacred Objects/Illusory Idols: The Fake in Freud’s ‘The Moses of Michelangelo,’” American Imago 60,1, 2003, pp 21-40).]