A Harbinger to Greatness; a Drash for Shabbat Yitro, 18 January 2014

Cataclysmic events are often preceded by precursors, which serve as harbingers to what will eventually happen.  As hints to the coming upheaval.

          This is certainly true in the natural world, where earth-shattering events can often be predicted.  Cyclones, for example, don’t form in a minute’s time; they happen when fronts clash in a process that is drawn out over several days.  Tornadoes occur with less warning.  But still, everybody who lives in Texas or Oklahoma has learned to closely watch the western sky for hints as to coming storms.  Likewise earthquakes, volcano eruptions, and the like seldom come out of nowhere.

          Harbinger to cataclysm is also typically observable in human history.  Major wars and revolutions seldom break out spontaneously, overnight.  They are caused by chains of events and reactions to events that can be predicted to precede the initiation of hostilities.  Much as my countrymen still resent Japan’s ‘surprise’ attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, in retrospect we can trace the attacks origins to a chain of political moves that should have, and indeed, did give hint that hostilities were about to happen.  Too, the Egyptians’ crossing of the Suez Canal on Yom Kippur in 1973 is now understood not to have been as much of a surprise as was originally asserted.  The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Iranian Revolution…all were preceded by ample hints and should not have caught the world with its collective pants down.

          So many events can be seen as harbingers, as hints to coming disaster.  And often, it is far easier to see these harbingers in the past tense, when we are looking back at the period before an earth-shattering event.  As it is said, hindsight is 20/20.  That is to say, looking back it is easier to see hints to the coming cataclysm that one missed before.  There’s some truth to this principle, but not as much as some people like to claim.  It is all too easy, after the fact, to make the events before the cataclysm fit some pattern that supposedly was there.  There’s an entire ‘cottage industry’ out there of individuals who would like us to see past events as being predictable from a logic which, in turn supports their particular cause.  Just recently, someone I know casually handed me a DVD produced by a man who bills himself as a rabbi, although he’s actually some kind of Evangelical pastor,  He claims that the attacks on America on 9-11-2001 could have been predicted by reading the ninth chapter of Isaiah.  The whole notion would be laughable, except that so many are convinced.

          So yes, great, reality-changing events can often be predicted to some extent.  But the bush is full of charlatans who want you to apply some logic after the fact for their particular agenda.  Thank God, from hindsight we have the leisure to consider each such claim without having the imperative to make a rash decision.  We can ‘check it out’ thoroughly.

          I’ve been talking up to here about disastrous events, but the idea of the harbinger can also be applied to positive events.

In the experience of the Jewish people, the Sinaitic Event was a cataclysm of the positive kind.  It established the lines of authority for the leadership of the people as they managed the transition from servitude to wandering bands to a sovereign people.  The harbinger of Sinai was, of course the safe passage through the sea.  In that sense, last week’s Torah reading predicts this week’s.  The transit of the Red Sea predicts Sinai.  The salvation of the people predicts their unique role in the unfolding drama of human history.

Because that’s what Sinai represents for us.  It represents the placing of the people Israel into a unique and central role in the sweep of history.  It represents the elevation of a people who never have, and never will represent a major proportion of the human race.  It gives the Jews an importance that completely out-shadows their meagre numbers.

In that sense, Sinai is foreshadowed by the Red Sea.  But Sinai itself is also a harbinger.  It is the harbinger of the significance of the Jewish people.

One can see this significance as a blessing or as a curse.  I prefer to see it as the former.  Because the people Israel chose God, God chose the people Israel for a unique role to bring light to the nations.  Let’s let role, into which the Torah casts us, be only a blessing.  And let us, thus, bless the world.  Shabbat shalom.