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Of Earth and Down to Earth: Commentary on Parashat Yitro 5785
By Rabbi Jonah Rank, Rosh Yeshivah of Hebrew Seminary
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
—Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
No singular historic event inspired Dylan to pen these words in 1964. About a year earlier, this folk singer had become “the voice of his generation” with the success of “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” warning of nuclear war and “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” serving as civil rights anthems. But by the end of 1964, Dylan’s lyrics became increasingly abstract. When Dylan recorded “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” in 1965, Dylan was not just protesting the American government because of an unpopular war; Dylan was pointing his finger at all of American society for having allowed greed to go so far. Dylan, with some poetic exaggeration, criticized the transformation of everything holy or innocent into something immoral and commercialized:
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred
Unintentionally, Bob Dylan’s claim that anyone can easily contaminate religion echoes the same longstanding Jewish anxiety that we can trace to this week’s Torah reading, Yitro. A pivotal Torah portion, where God reveals God’s self to the Israelites at Mount Sinai and utters what we now call the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19:1–20:15), Yitro ends with a set of laws that fear that the Israelites’ relationship to God could turn very vulgar very fast.
In speaking with Moses, God specifies that any sacrificial altar our ancestors would use should be made from adamah (אֲדָמָה֮ , “Earth”) itself (Exodus 20:21). In fact, God expresses some concern that the building of this altar cannot depend on a violent tool:
וְאִם־מִזְבַּ֤ח אֲבָנִים֙ תַּֽעֲשֶׂה־לִּ֔י לֹֽא־תִבְנֶ֥ה אֶתְהֶ֖ן גָּזִ֑ית כִּ֧י חַרְבְּךָ֛ הֵנַ֥פְתָּ עָלֶ֖יהָ וַתְּחַֽלְלֶֽהָ:
If you make for Me an altar of stones, do not build it from stonecutting. Once you have waved your sword over it, you have desecrated it. (Exodus 20:22.)
Our Torah forbade the very semblance of a weapon to pave the path for our ancestors to connect to God—even if knives are simple tools any artisan might use. Instead, in Deuteronomy 20:7, Moses shares that God wants an altar built out of avanim shelemot (אֲבָנִ֤ים שְׁלֵמוֹת֙, “whole stones”), allowing Earth in its natural state to be seamlessly and peacefully integrated into this religious structure (Deuteronomy 20:7).
Though nature was an essential building block of the altar itself, Yitro concludes with God clarifying that the worshippers themselves should not appear au naturel:
וְלֹֽא־תַעֲלֶ֥ה בְמַעֲלֹ֖ת עַֽל־מִזְבְּחִ֑י אֲשֶׁ֛ר לֹֽא־תִגָּלֶ֥ה עֶרְוָתְךָ֖ עָלָֽיו׃
Do not ascend steps at My altar so that you do not reveal your nakedness there. (Exodus 20:23.)
Evidently, our ancestors of all genders were accustomed to wearing outfits that had openings at the bottom, proving risqué if viewed from certain heights or angles. It is for this reason that God would command Israelite priests to wear linen breeches to cover their hips and thighs (Exodus 28:42). This particular Divine intervention felt prudent to our forebears, whose neighbors in the ancient Near East regularly worshiped in the nude.
Pants for all Jews must have been a tall order at some point. The early medieval Aramaic translations of the Bible, Targum Yerushalmi and Targum Yonatan, modified the verse demanding trousers as applying to only Jews who qualify as priests—even though many sacrifices were designed for every adult (male) Israelite to offer. Over the centuries, many Jewish readers recognized that our verse about climbing up the stairs in fact applied to the whole Jewish people. Somewhere around the 2nd century C.E., an anonymous rabbi suggested that the problem God wanted to address was not the uniform being worn but the manner in which the Jew literally rose to the occasion. In Mekhilta DeRabbi Shim’on Bar Yochai on Exodus 20:23, this sage taught:
שכשעולה למזבח לא יהא פוסיע פסיעה גסה אלא מהלך עקב בצד גודל.
When one ascends towards the altar, one’s footsteps should not be haughty. Rather their gait should be heel-heavy, inclining towards the big toe.
This walking pattern might resemble some policy from Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks. In fact though, this awkward movement appears designed to address two worries. First, by keeping both feet close to each other, the worshipper ensured their tunic would not expose too much, and, second, by restricting their own movement, the worshipper would not present any unseemly arrogance in their posture.
Approaching anything holy requires of us to acknowledge the totality of who we are: we are made in God’s image (as Genesis 1:26 teaches), but we are not gods. We should take pride in how nature and the Divine have shaped us, but we should be humble in how we present ourselves to our fellow creatures and God. We might have aspirations for a flashy religion (with “hundred-dollar plates” or sacred items that “glow in the dark” as Dylan sneered), but God in Parashat Yitro hopes that we will stay true to our roots—keeping our places of worship grounded and down to earth. Avoiding hypocrisy—a grave concern shared by Dylan and so many of us—means that a Torah of peace cannot issue forth from the sword, the likeness of a knife, or any other destructive utensils or urges.
A Torah of lovingkindness (as praised in Provers 31:26) is a Torah that does not discriminate but applies to all of us: to those of us descended from kohanim (כֺּהֲנִים, “priests”) and to all the rest of us. Both the means and the outcomes of our actions must be holy. Whether we are presidents or not, we don’t—as Dylan joked—“stand naked” in society, sold out or stripped of our moral scruples; we accept that the holiest life is one guided by laws that expect us to behave our best, for our sake and for God’s sake.
Dylan, I believe, erred in declaring “that not much is really sacred.” If we honestly look inward, and we look carefully enough, and we remove temptations of arrogance—it is easy for us to find within ourselves the power to make ourselves, and much else, sacred.
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