When I was 13, I had my own sort of revelation. After several years of coming into myself, I knew that I was gay. It was the summer, and I had told myself that by the time school began, I would tell someone: I would come out. I had come to terms with being queer a few years earlier, and for all that time, I never told a single soul; I hadn’t even spoken the words out loud, “I am gay.”
As the summer came and went, with the new year close at hand, I decided to finally tell my close friend and cousin. And for that entire day, I walked around with a pit in my stomach, filled with every emotion imaginable: Fear, trepidation, anxiety, terror, sadness.
As the sun began to set, I finally sat down with him. And after some time and several failed attempts, I finally choked out those words, “I am gay.”
Now, here I am 15 years out. And I have subsequently come out so many times, as queer, as trans, that I cannot even begin to count. Each and every time that I meet someone new—in class, in public, professionally, I have to come out again. But despite this, I come out again and again, so that through this vulnerability I can be in authentic relationship with others.
I wonder though, what can we learn from when G-d came out to us, when G-d revealed Themself at Sinai? Our tradition has multiple approaches to this question, three of which we will explore today. One approach maintains that G-d spoke directly to b’nei Yisrael, saying the entirety of the Ten Commandments, the Aseret Hadibrot.
וַיְדַבֵּר אֱ-לֹהִים אֵת כָּל־הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה לֵאמֹר:
And God spoke all these words, saying (Exodus 20:1)
An example of this is the 11th century, French rabbi, Rashi, who writes that Hashem spoke directly to the people, albeit in one utterance, an act which is impossible for humans to do. He writes:
מְלַמֵּד שֶׁאָמַר הַקָּבָּ”ה עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת בְּדִבּוּר אֶחָד מַה שֶּׁאִי אֶפְשָׁר לְאָדָם לוֹמַר כֵּן
It teaches that the Holy Blessed One said the Ten Commandments in one utterance, something that is impossible for a person to do.
While it is impossible for a person to speak like this, one can relate to the idea. When I first came out, it felt like the words were stuck in my mouth, and came out all garbled together. It’s truly a miracle that my cousin was able to understand me.
What we learn here though is that G-d spoke to us directly. In revealing Themself, Hashem spoke to us, one to another. We learn that relationship, that dialogue, is a vital piece of truth and understanding. In wanting to be in relationship with us, indeed to form a brit, a covenant, with us, G-d needed to address us face to face.
A second approach to the question of what can we learn when G-d revealed Themself that I want to uplift is one that offers a synthesis between our traditions and texts and the modern world, namely the challenges posed by academic criticism of the Bible. While many rabbis and scholars have offered their own solutions to this, including JTS’ own R’ Joshua Heschel, R’ David Weiss Halivni, and R’ Neil Gillman, zikhronam livrakhah, the synthesis offered by Dr. Benjamin Sommer is noteworthy.
Through an interweaving of our texts as well as academic insights, Dr. Sommer teaches us that “all TorahRefers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, also called the Five Books of Moses, Pentateuch or the Hebrew equivalent, Humash. This is also called the Written Torah. The term may also refer to teachings that expound on Jewish tradition. Read more, ancient, medieval, and modern is a response to the event at Sinai. Each generation receives the responses, the Torah, of earlier generations, but to some degree each generation also formulates its own responses, so the Torah evolves over time.”
For Dr. Sommer, revelation is not limited to the event that occurred at Sinai, but is an ongoing dialogue—with the Torah, with G-d, and our people. Dr. Sommer teaches us that revelation, that Torah, that relationship is in the very dialogue we have.
This teaches us that our relationship with G-d is very much real, and though it in part began at Sinai, it isn’t limited to it. Just as my relationship to queerness finds new meaning each and every day, our relationship with G-d and Torah continues to develop and grow each and every day.
A final approach I want to bring is that by Dr. Miriam Feldman Kaye, who writes on revelation from a postmodernist perspective.
Postmodernism is a reactionary movement to modernism, focusing on skepticism of truth claims and valuing complexity over simplicity, with an appeal to the relative truths of an individual. To say more succinctly, the world is infinitely complicated, and rather than reduce it down, we should embrace it.
Human beings, and G-d all the more so, are infinitely complex—gender, sexuality, neurodiversity, disability, ethnicity are all threads in the fabric of humanity and need to be embraced and cherished for the beauty they add.
Dr. Feldman Kaye addresses the question of Torah miSinai, that Torah was revealed at Sinai, seeking to understand this idea in all its complexity. Through a postmodernist lens, she teaches that when we discuss Torah miSinai, we need to understand it through our own lives and within our own language.
Despite the challenges potentially raised by postmodernism, Dr. Feldman Kaye reads a way for the concept of Torah miSinai to endure as a foundational Jewish belief.
She distinguishes between the literal and the metaphorical aspects of a truth-claim, here being ‘Torah from Sinai.’ For her and other postmodernists, these truth-claims “do not necessarily relate to any objective reality.” In other words, belief need not be true in any empirical sense, belief applies “to a different realm which has very real and significant impact on” our lives.
What we can come to learn from this is that revelation is understood through our individual lenses. Our unique experiences and identities are crucial to how we see and exist in the world, and this perception is necessary to authentically approach Torah.
While these three approaches understand revelation in different ways, they each offer us invaluable insights into relationship.
Rashi teaches us about face to face dialogue. In order to be in relationship with one another, with our traditions, with G-d, we need to listen and hear one another.
Dr. Sommer teaches us that this dialogue is not a one time occurrence, but rather a continual and ongoing relationship. We grow and evolve, our circumstances change, and our relationships must follow suit.
Dr. Feldman Kaye teaches us that our circumstances and identities crucially inform how we experience the world, how we experience Torah.
We have what to struggle with from our ancestors, our texts and traditions, and their understandings and realities. But we also are just the latest link in this tradition, our understandings and realities will become yet another link with which future generations will grapple, a voice with which they will engage.
We may never know what actually happened on that day, what was said, who was there. But the point of the story of Sinai for me is one of relationship. G-d sought to reveal Themself to us, and we sought to be in relationship with Them.
Torah can be a vehicle to foster this relationship, but regrettably it can also be a vehicle to harm. Far too often, Torah is used to other and to demonise. We see this being played out across the world, with religious and political leaders using faith and scripture as a means to scapegoat and subjugate those most at risk.
Coming out is an act of trust, an act that seeks to build relationship. Through this vulnerability and honesty, we seek to be in relationship with others.
Each and every time I have come out, I reveal a more complete truth about myself. By coming out, that relationship is made more authentic, more holy, as Martin Buber said: “our relationships live in the space between us, which is sacred.” Coming out, being in relationship with ourselves and others, is a sacred act.
If we approach Torah, if we approach our relationships through vulnerable, honest dialogue, through the humility that each of us is created b’tzelem E-lohim, in the image of the Living G-d, we can find ways to grow and build, making our relationships all that much stronger and infinitely more meaningful.
