A week or so ago, Lawrence Kushner spoke in the Detroit area. What an entertaining speaker! Several of us were determined not to miss the talk because we remember the last one, a few years ago.

What an experience that was, as the astonishing revelations probed deeper and deeper. Many of us remember the experience, but someone asked me what he actually said, because she couldn’t remember. In fact, she went to ask him after his talk this month, but he professed not to remember, either.

But I remember, or I think I do, and here’s the gist of it.

He talked about the challenge to the authenticity of the Torah. Was it all the word of God, or was it Moses’ report of God’s words, filtered through a human medium? If you say that’s the case for most of the Torah, what about the Ten Commandments, introduced by “God spoke all these words …”

So at least God spoke the Ten Commandments. Or wait, maybe God had to stop because the people interrupted and told Moses that hearing from God was too awesome to endure, and they’d rather hear it from Moses (Ex. 20:16). So in that case, how much of the Ten Commandments did God vocalize?

Maybe it was just Ex. 20:2, “I am God, your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt, from the community of slaves.” This is how God is identified; the rest is rules that Moses could have given.

Or wait, does God have to say anything other than “Anochi / אָנֹכִי / I” as identification. Maybe that’s all that God needed to say.

And then Rabbi Kushner (as I remember) invoked the Kotzker Rebbe. Ah, the great chassidic mystic who (it is said) spent the last 17 years of his life in study and contemplation in his room, said–and I can’t give a reference because I wouldn’t know where Rabbi Kushner found this or if he even said it for sure–the Kotzker Rebbe said something like this:

“Maybe God didn’t even have to say ‘Anochi.’ Maybe all God said was the letter aleph that begins Anochi, for the aleph is the sound you make before you make a sound, and implicit in that silent letter is all we need to know about speaking and living together. For what is that aleph made of? It is a long stroke of the pen, and two short strokes. Take those three marks and rearrange them a little. Make the long one vertical. Place the short ones horizontally, one on each side of the long one. What do you see? It is a human face.”

The revelation of the Ten Commandments is the revelation of our common humanity. The rabble that left Egypt received a manual for making a model society, and the first and only rule in that manual is to acknowledge the humanity of others. This is the lesson of the Torah: if only we realize what we do with our minds and our bodies before we articulate a sound, we’ll know that silent aleph is the voice of God, teaching us all we need to know.

That’s what I remember; correct it if I’m wrong; find whatever truth lies inside it.