Yitro -- 5775

 After receiving the Ten Commandments, the people react with understandable shock and awe:

“All the people saw (re’im) the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance” (Exodus 20:15).

Understandable, but also surprising:  lightning and smoke can be seen, but not thunder or a horn’s blare.  Some scholars understand that “the Hebrew … here encompasses sound” (Eitz Hayim, translating “re’im/saw” as “witnessed,” or Fox, using “perceived”).  Perhaps the people were so overwhelmed that their senses got mixed up.  That’s called synesthesia, where one sense perceives something that’s normally reserved for another sense – like tasting color or touching sound. 

It’s also interesting that the Hebrew for thunder is kolOT – literally “voiceS.”

Perhaps the message is that Truth is so powerful that it comes at us in many forms and in many ways.  At times Truth is obvious and glaring, bold as neon through darkness.  At other times it is subtle, wrapped as if in a cloak and hiding in a story.  Truth may be known by the mind, or it may be a fleeting flash in the heart.  Truth is far greater than mere fact.

God appears to the people “in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when (God) speaks with you and so trust you ever after” (Exodus 19:9), as if to demonstrate that Truth may be both clear and veiled at the same time.

To perceive Truth, we must be open to all the voices.  We must use all our senses deeply.  Since our eyes may deceive us, we must be wary of the obvious.  We must sit with it and wrestle with it.  Truth is powerful and grand, but it is neither singular nor simple.