This sermon was delivered during the 2025 Ripple Interfaith Conference as part of the Teaching Shabbat Service by Rabbi Maor Greene, associate chaplain for Jewish Life.
This week’s Torah portion, Parshat Mishpatim, contains the second half of God’s revelation at Sinai after the Exodus. God lays out various divine laws for Moses to communicate to the people and the Israelites accept the covenant.
Many of us have heard the story of the Exodus, but it deserves a closer look. The children of Israel are enslaved in Egypt. Hearing their cries, God rescues them. Freed from Pharaoh, the Israelites are now free to serve God. God graciously offers them laws (i.e., the Torah) that will make their lives and society awesome – yay! This is a great story. However, this may not be the whole story.
How free are the Israelites, really? After all, they’ve gone from being Pharaoh’s slaves to refugees wandering around in the wilderness. They are dependent on God for food, water, protection and direction. In fact, slavery and service are the same word in Hebrew, avodah. This raises an uncomfortable moral question – are Israelites freed from Pharaoh only to become enslaved to God?
Approximately 1600 years ago, three ancient rabbis wrestled with a similar question (Shabbat 88a). The first rabbi (Rabbi Avdimi bar Ḥama bar Ḥasa) expands on the biblical text and describes how when Israel was standing at Sinai, God “flipped the mountain up over their heads like a tub” and said to them “If you accept the Torah, great! But if not, there will be your burial.” Here the image of the mountain held over the heads of the Israelites shows how desperate their situation was – they would likely die if they did not accept God’s offer.
The second rabbi (Rav Aḥa bar Ya’akov) responds and asks if Israel has been coerced into accepting the covenant. If so, wouldn’t the entire Torah be void? After all, legal agreements entered into under force or duress are invalid. This teaching questions the entire moral foundation of Jewish law.
The third rabbi (Rava) claims that while the original covenant at Sinai may have been invalid, the Jewish people fully accepted the Torah during the time of Esther (Esther 9:27). During those days their acceptance wasn’t motivated by coercion, but gratitude. The reading of this verse may be a stretch for us – in Esther the verse refers Jews joyfully accepting the obligation to observe Purim, not the entire Torah. This rabbi is basically saying, “well yes, the circumstances of the original covenant may have been a tad suspect, but don’t worry, everything is fine now.”
Ever since I learned this teaching, it has sat with me. As a mostly observant Jew deeply committed to Jewish pluralism, I also think it teaches three lessons for our current times:
First, the ancient rabbis were not afraid to ask hard questions or state uncomfortable truths. These rabbis were responsible for constructing rabbinic Judaism from the ashes of the destruction of the Second Temple. Despite having committed their lives to God and Jewish Law, they brazenly question both.
Second, the rabbis are not interested in a Judaism that is characterized by coercion. While it is true that they believed all Jews are bound by Jewish law, there is a difference between voluntarily taking on an obligation and being coerced into agreeing to do something you don’t want to do. The ancient rabbis believed that Torah was both an obligation and a gift from God. Torah was and is meant to bless the Jewish people and, by extension, the world.
Third and relatedly, I believe the ancient rabbis would want us, Jews and non-Jews alike, to engage with Torah from places of curiosity, gratitude, connection, joy and wonder. Those new to Judaism may not know this, but in today’s pluralistic Jewish world, we are all Jews by choice. We make choices about which Jewish rituals and traditions we choose to practice. We choose how we understand the concept of obligation or even if this language speaks to us at all. Although our conceptions of Judaism are radically different from those of the ancient rabbis, I cannot imagine that they would want us to engage in Jewish rituals and practices simply because we feel like we would be bad Jews if we did not. We Jews should do Judaism because we love it.
My hope for everyone attending this conference is that we can explore various religious and spiritual traditions in the spirit of the ancient rabbis. I encourage you to ask hard questions with generosity of spirit – doing so is a sign of respect. I invite you to engage or not engage in activities as makes sense for where you are in your life right now. While I encourage you to attend as many conference events as possible, you don’t need to do so from a place of guilt. Instead, I invite you to engage from a place of curiosity, gratitude, and joy. Finally, I encourage you to make conscious choices about how you participate and show up as yourselves in this conference. I hope that our time and presence together will be a gigantic blessing for us all. Shabbat shalom.