17. YITRO

Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

Seven weeks of walking from the Narrows into the open space that is the Land of No One – and then we enter the heart of the heart of the wilderness -- Sinai itself, and the Torah.

"Wilderness" is "midbar." It could be understood as "midaber," -- "wording, speaking," -- or "m'devar/ m'dibbur," "away from word, without a word, beyond words."

Or both:

A speaking beyond words.

Several years ago, Phyllis (Rabbi Phyllis Berman, my life-partner) and I spent a few days in "Midbar sinai," and with hundreds of pilgrims from many religions and from all around the world spent all night climbing the mountain that either is or isn't the mountain where we all assembled to get the Teaching that was beyond words.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow & Rabbi Phyllis Berman

If We Stood at Sinai Together / Yitro

By Arthur Waskow & Phyllis Berman*

Each year, in the regular rhythm of Torah reading and again on S