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Parshat Yitro: 2 Covenants

By: Rabbi Jonathan Duker

At what point did Bnei Yisrael become enter into a covenant (brit) with God? Based on this week Parsha, the TaImud in Massechet Keritut states that the brit between God and the Jewish people was made at the giving on the Torah at Sinai,then uses it as a model for anyone future individual who would like to join this brit through conversion. As Rambam rules

 Israel entered the covenant with three acts: circumcision, immersion, and offering a sacrifice…Similarly, for [all] future generations, when a gentile desires to enter into the covenant, take shelter under the wings of the Divine presence, and accept the yoke of the Torah, he must undergo circumcision, immersion, and the offering of a sacrifice.

 However, there are references earlier in Sefer Shemot to another point in history where Bnei Yisrael entered the, brit: at the Exodus from Egypt, as the Torah says

 I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will

give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.

 

Rav Soloveitchik in “Kol Dodi Dofek” addresses these two differing perspectives on when the brit was formed with the following dialectical perspective:

 The Torah relates that the Holy One concluded two Covenants with ‎Israel. ‎One Covenant was made in Egypt. “And I shall take you unto Me for a people, and I will be ‎to you a ‎God” (Exodus 6:7). The second Covenant was at Mount Sinai. “And he [Moses] took the ‎book of ‎the covenant … and he said: ‘Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord made with ‎you in ‎agreement with all these words’” (Exodus 24:7-8). What is ‎the ‎essence of these two Covenants? …One can say that the Covenant of Egypt was a ‎Covenant ‎of Fate, and the Covenant of Sinai was one of destiny.

 While the Covenant of Sinai represents our dedication to the Torah and Mitzvot, the Covenant of Egypt represents our connection to the nation of Israel. As the Rav continues in reference to the “Covenant of Fate” made at the Exodus: 

 ..the awareness of shared historical experience leads to the experience of shared suffering. ‎A feeling of empathy is a basic fact in the consciousness of shared Jewish fate. The suffering of one ‎segment of the nation is the lot of the entire community. The scattered and separated people ‎mourns and is consoled together… shared suffering is expressed in a feeling of shared obligation and responsibility…

 In the past century with the near destruction of our people followed by our rebirth in our Homeland, this brit of shard historical experience takes on added importance, May we all be zocheh to fulfill these two covenants in  the strongest way possible,