Rabbi's Message
At the end of this week’s parsha, after the giving of the laws throughout the entirety of the parsha, Moshe, Aharon, and the elders of Israel have an encounter with God. They ascend partway up Mt. Sinai, and behold a vision: God, enthroned, “וְתַחַת רַגְלָיו כְּמַעֲשֵׂה לִבְנַת הַסַּפִּיר וּכְעֶצֶם הַשָּׁמַיִם לָטֹהַר, and underneath his feet was like a pavement of sappir, like the very sky of purity.” But, we are told, God did not strike them down for beholding this vision. So what did the Israelites do? וַיֶּחֱזוּ אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִים וַיֹּאכְלוּ וַיִּשְׁתּוּ. “They saw God, and they ate and they drank.”
Imagine! An encounter with the Divine, a vision of God with a floor so majestic, that we cannot even translate the word anymore. Sappir may mean sapphire, or lapis lazuli, or a red stone like a ruby, or a white stone like a diamond. This is an awe-inspiring moment. And Moshe the Israelites respond by eating and drinking! Where are the prayers? Where is the appreciation for the majesty of the moment?
Well, if they were eating and drinking, that does not mean that there were no prayers. Perhaps it is a little ahistorical, but there is a long Jewish tradition of making a beracha before and after we eat. And perhaps Moshe and the elders made those berakhot upon eating and drinking, and blessed God when they were finished. And by doing that, through eating and drinking, they were appreciating the moment, they were basking in the divine.
There is something very special, and very uniquely Jewish, in responding to seeing a vision of God by eating and drinking. It is not just that we Jews love food—we can’t claim to be the only minority group with a special appreciation for the culinary arts. But by blessing our food before and after we eat, by giving thanks to God through eating, we take the most mundane of human activities—consumption of food so that we can continue eating—and make it holy. We elevate an everyday activity into a sublime moment.
That is our task as Jews: to take the everyday, the everyday, and make it holy. To find ways to constantly see the world not just how it is, but how it could be. Moshe’s eating and drinking before God showcases how even the most basic of human acts can be made into something special. May we all find the way to turn the little, everyday parts of our lives into acts of holiness.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Gelman
