When we think of God giving the 10 commandments at Sinai, we tend to focus on gratitude, celebration, and maybe the image of Mel Brooks as Moses, dropping a 3rdtablet so that instead of 15 we have just 10 commandments.
But it’s neither smooth nor an easy moment either for Moses or the people.
The people get nervous, with Aaron’s help they create the golden calf.
But the defining moment here is a quieter one that’s usually overshadowed.
Joshua, hearing the people at the golden calf, says, “There’s a sound of war in the camp!” Joshua, the warrior, hears war. Moses responds, it’s not the sound of triumph or defeat it’s the sound of song.”
Neither Joshua nor Moses know about the Golden Calf yet. They only hear a sound. As with the moment God reveals the Torah to the entire nation, Joshua and Moses don’t see anything, they only hear the commotion, or the boisterousness as it’s sometimes translated.
As the leaders of the newly freed nation, Moses recognizes that they must change their mindset, not just their geography. In other words, we can take the Israelites out of Egypt, but it’s going to take much longer to take Egypt out of the Israelites.
To become a holy people, our ancestors not only have to free themselves from slavery, they have to start with a fresh perspective, challenge their assumptions, and practice lessons they never had the chance to learn during slavery – like real listening and finding the courage to advocate for each other. Joshua responds to the sounds he hears like the warrior he is. He hears through a warrior’s lens. To achieve empathy, he must recalibrate and open himself up to alternatives. Similarly, a slave is stuck in the perspective of oppression and requires leadership to find his or her way out of this condition, again, not only out of the place where he or she is enslaved but out of the mindset as well – as our ancestors teach us in the Talmud, ayn chavush matir et atzmo bi’bayt ha’asurim, the slave cannot on his own liberate himself from the house of slavery. And Moses also teaches Joshua about empathy, something the Egyptians clearly were not concerned about with regard to the Israelites. While it’s not in the Torah, the scene from the 10 Commandments in which Moses stops a large stone block from trampling a helpless slave suggests the type of empathy that God wishes for us to achieve. And, we find also in the wisdom of the Ramban – Moses also doesn’t want Joshua to develop a negative view of the people Joshua will one day lead. Wants to keep an open mind, to keep hope alive, also a challenge for a former slave!
May Moses’ wisdom remind us always we build community by seeing and hearing each other as fully as possible, since, as our ancestors teach us, kol yisrael arevin ze ba zeh, each of us is responsible for each other. The new Tablets the people will carry with them for 40 years in the wilderness will remind the entire people to strive to reshape themselves into a free, strong people, able to listen and show empathy to one another, and the short spoken wisdom of Moses to Joshua will also stand forever of the need to constantly strive to see the world through a fresh set of eyes, as Jethro sings in the animated version of the Exodus story, may we “See the world through heaven’s eyes, " and may we hear the world through Heaven's ears.
Shabbat Shalom.
