So Jethro heard of goings on in the desert and somehow took a cue to follow the cloud that shielded the exiled Hebrews from Egypt. And he didn’t come empty handed, bringing with him Moses’s wife and two sons. Receiving the Torah at Sinai was probably the last time Jewish people agreed on something in a unanimous manner. One hundred per cent consensus after which the fabric began unravelling as if they began reading Harold Bloom and his enigmatic, “human oh so human” Yahweh kicking a flower, prodding a camel and bitching at the heat by the roadside.
Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett: take no prisoners…
So, on the sixth day of the third month, a scant seven weeks after the Exodus, the complete nation of Israel assembles at the base of Mount Sinai. God descends on the mountain and with a big blast of the horn summons Moses to ascend. To drop everything and begin climbing. The updraft of all this billowing smoke and thunder on the mountain was the proclamation of the ten commandments commanding monotheism, no idols, and the rest of the nine we have come to have had the most ambiguous and sometimes antagonistic relationship to. Accordingly, the assembled masses cried out to Moses that this revelation was simplt too intense for them to bear and they admonished him to receive the Torah and convey it to them. Little did they know what the implications and responsibilities would be. ( to be continued)…
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