What would it mean to hear the voice of God? I mean actually hear the divine voice?
Our parshah raises this very question. Moses is shuttling back and forth from the top of Mount Sinai to the bottom, then to the top, then halfway down, then finally to the top again. Both he and we are being prepared to hear the essence of Revelation, the quintessence of the Torah, the so-called Aseret Hadibrot (“the ten speakings,” also known as the Ten Commandments). Naturally, we are expecting to hear meaningful, comprehensible words. Meaningful, comprehensible words.
Instead, an awful lot of noise emanates from the mountaintop. Thunder, shofar blasts, God-knows what else. “Vay’hi kol hashofar holekh v’chazek m’od.” “The voice of the shofar got stronger and stronger.” (Exodus 19:19) Our rabbis imagine that with such a racket going on, neither Moses nor the people could have heard a darn thing. Nonetheless, “Moshe y’daber v’ha’elohim ya’aneinu b’kol.” “Moses would speak, and God would respond to him in a voice.”
Note, not “in God’s voice,” but “in a voice.” B’kol.
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Our rabbis know that the Torah is being coy. They — and we — want to know what God sounds like. Or to put it more philosophically, they want to know if God has a sound at all, and if so, whether it can be deciphered to receive specific messages, to “know God’s will,” as it were. But the Torah won’t tell us. B’kol is all we get.
A famous midrash in the Talmud asks: “What is the meaning of ‘in a voice’?” Answer: “In the voice of Moses.” (Berachot 45a) This answer avoids the issue. Or does it? If the issue is “What does God sound like?” this quip answers indirectly, “It sounds like Moses.” Well then, we might ask, does the Torah intend for us to think of Moses as one and the same as God? And do the rabbis think the Torah wants the ancient Israelites to think that Moses is God?
I think the rabbis are saying something else entirely. First of all, “no” to both of the above questions. No one thinks Moses or any other human leader is God, and no one wants to leave any of us with that impression. I think the rabbis, by being as coy as the Torah, are telling us that we’re asking the wrong question. Do we really think God has a voice? Do we really need to hear it in order to understand the essence of the Torah? Do we really want Moses to entertain us with pyrotechnics and special audio effects in addition to telling us, in his own familiar voice and his own reasonable words, what he believes God expects us to know and do?
The rabbis are telling us that there are plenty of authentic versions of “God’s voice” out there if we would only pay attention to them. One is “Moses’ voice.” Or rather, the voice of anyone and everyone in our midst calling out to us for basic righteousness, decency, and social justice.
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One is the voice of all those around us who are in agony, neglected, worried, anxious, and lonely. Those who call out b’kol directly to our hearts, bypassing our ears altogether. This is the voice of those incarcerated unjustly, imprisoned unfairly and inhumanely, or denied the basic rights the Torah insists on bequeathing to each and every person, even when that bequeathal comes to us between the literal lines of the text itself. This is the voice of the enslaved who are suddenly free to receive the Torah, but who are still reeling from the pain of slavery’s scars.
One is the voice of those who feel great joy, and who want to share it with us, even if we do not have the capacity to feel our own joy at this moment. This is the voice of those whose privilege compels them to feel commanded to speak out for everyone who has no voice, whether because of democracy denied, rights abused, or impoverishment imposed.
This is the voice of human beings trying against all odds to find joy in making their lives work, in giving themselves a future, in investing in life-long relationships, in translating the silent kol of revelation into the specifics of redemption.
All of those voices are contained in whatever it is that we hear when we read those tablets, in whatever voices we employ to convey the message, from wherever we hail along the rainbow of human civilizations. That, say the rabbis, is the voice we can hear perfectly well — that we must hear — despite the noise and lies and self-interest that keep us from honestly acknowledging that essential voice of truth.
It is the voice that has been speaking from inside ourselves since time and space began, long before Sinai, long before Torah, long before the first aleph of Creation. Now, more than ever, we need to hearken to it.
Rabbi Les Bronstein is a past co-chair and longtime board member of T’ruah. He is also a past president of the New York Board of Rabbis. He recently retired as rabbi of Bet Am Shalom Synagogue in White Plains, New York.