Parashat Yitro – February 6, 2010 – 22 Shevat 5770

Before the recent Senatorial election, I had the opportunity to ask my favorite (retired) professor of government studies for whom I should vote. Needless to say, I was greeted with a clamor that spoke volumes about the loyalties of those family members who were also in the room and took the liberty to respond as boisterously as my teacher and mentor on the process of governing.

After Massachusetts elected a Republican to fill the seat vacated by the legendary Senator Ted Kennedy — a stalwart of the Democratic machinery for at least five decades — I wanted to know from my friend and adviser her thoughts and her wisdom regarding what happened. Had the state of Massachusetts lost its way as a whole or had it demonstrated once again how forward we must think when it comes to the welfare of those in our society who are most disadvantaged.

While I thought this may have boiled down to a one-issue election, I was reassured that the health care bill, about to be brought to a screeching halt as a result of the election, was not the only issue up to debate in our nation’s capital. My friend concluded her thoughts by proclaiming that a bill that was going to be voted into action by the difference of one vote was not worth ratifying, especially if it did not have bipartisan support on some level.

I mention all this not to prove how much I understand about the politics of the day, of which I know about and comprehend their complexities very little, but rather to offer a thought of my own on the origin of our democratic system and its connection to Yitro, the father-in-law of Moses and the Torah portion that bears his name. Even though the word “democracy” comes from the Greek language, meaning “rule by the people,” we know that this was not the case in Greek society. They depended upon a government in which one person had a majority of the power, while the senate debated various issues of law from an inferior position.

When we look at the foundations of our own political system, what we discover is that part of the principles that have guided our nation come not from Aristotle nor from Plato, but rather from the Hebrew Bible. It was at Mount Sinai that the Israelite people were given a set of laws to guide their behavior. It was the first time in the history of humankind that we are aware of when a group of individuals became what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks describes in his d’var torah for this week as “body politic: a nation of citizens under the sovereignty of God whose written constitution was the Torah and whose mission was to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Covenant and Conversation, Yitro, 2007)

There were several elements to the covenant between God and the Children of Israel that separated them from the other nations of the world. Perhaps the most significant of these changes in the way that people governed themselves is that the covenant was inclusive rather than exclusive in its obligations. When it came time for God to speak to the people, God instructed Moses to gather everyone around the mountain – not just Aaron and the other priests, and not just the elders of the community, but everyone – including the “men, women, and children.” Other societies, including the Greeks and the Romans, limited democracy to just a small segment of the population. Even in our own country, certain people were denied their “inalienable rights” to vote and to be protected by the laws of the country. At Sinai is where the roots to Abraham Lincoln’s vision took place, when he spoke about “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ALL men are created equal” – in his efforts to abolish slavery. We just finished celebrating Martin Luther King Day when we paid tribute to the contributions of this man toward equality between the races in our own generation, joined in Selma, Alabama, by our own civic activist, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, z”l. “The politics of freedom was born at Sinai,” according to Rabbi Sacks.

Another significant moment at Mount Sinai that takes place in the Torah reading for this week is the response of the people to God’s covenant. Never before do we have a record of the general population signifying their communal and individual consent to being governed. The Torah records for us this historic moment when it relates to us the scene at Sinai and the people, in unison, as if they are speaking of one voice, say, “All that God has said, na’aseh, we will do!” (Exodus 19:8)

On this Shabbat, I wonder what it is that we are willing to do to make our lives better, and the lives of those in our community who are suffering from the imbalance in financial equality. The recent election in Massachusetts, so we are told, is not just a sign of the discontent with the opposite candidate. Our communal decision to send to Washington a Republican to fill the seat of a long-standing Democrat speaks volumes about the state of our country and our discontent with some of the directions we have moved in recent times.

We are disenchanted with our leaders as well as the democratic process and how it has affected our lives so negatively. Our expectations of the health bill and the funding we are providing to Social Security and the welfare system has outgrown our ability to fund them adequately. Many of us are unable to fund our own retirements and our future when we are too busy living from paycheck to paycheck, under threat of having our income diminished or even taken away altogether in an economically scared environment. The number of people who are underprivileged and disadvantaged in our community is growing rapidly, and it scares us, because we, too, could be in that position.

If we are to walk away from the Torah reading for this week with one important idea in mind to focus our attention upon during the upcoming week, it is the need for us to come together in the same way that our ancestors did at Mount Sinai and respond in similar manner. “Na’aseh — WE will do what God says to us” in regard to building a society that is more responsive to everyone’s needs, and not just the needs of those who contribute more than others. WE indicates a communal responsibility in which we look beyond our own individual needs and reach out to others who share our world – whether that community is our own nuclear family, our extended family, our synagogue family, klal yisrael, and beyond. The greatest challenge that we face today is finding a way to restore “community” to our political vocabulary and have it mean something that is significant. We can become “a potent factor in the life of a society” when we, too, begin to speak of one voice and work toward building a better life based upon the principles of the Torah and the diversity in society that it preserved, by requiring everyone to be present and accounted for – in true democratic fashion!