The God of Halfway Up the Mountain

A Cross-Post from Leo Baeck College. Here is a piece I wrote for their D'vrei Torah - make sure you sign up to receive a thought each week from various student rabbis, rabbis and cantors.

Photo by Daniel Bartolo on Unsplash

‘When people or groups become too enamoured with mountaintops, we should ask ourselves whether their euphoria comes from love or from the experience of supremacy.’

(Cole Arthur Riley, ‘This Here Flesh’, p.32.)

Let’s look for an example of a person or a group who become too enamoured with mountaintops.  We need not look far.  Here is Moses, once a fighter for the underdog, a man who understood both the Egyptian courts and the desert wanderings of the Israelites.  A man brought up by a diverse set of women who, himself married across tribal lines, seeing the beauty and wonder of all those around him.  Moses was an insider-outsider, a boundary crosser who paid attention to the world around him.  When wandering and tending to his flock he came to Horeb, the mountain of God (Exodus 3:1).  ‘He saw, and behold, a burning bush, but the bush was not consumed’ (Exodus 3:2).  He was paying attention and saw a truly wondrous sight.

Yet later on we find Moses at the base of another mountain, Mount Sinai.  And here the story is quite different.  Alone Moses scales the mountain (note, there is no mention of Moses going up Mount Horeb at chapter 3), converses with God and comes back down the mountain a changed man.  He warns the people to stay pure and wash their clothes (Exodus 19:14).  He then continues to say, ‘do not go near a woman’ (Exodus 19:15).  It becomes clear that he had been addressing the men of the tribe all along and his commands are one of disconnection, separation and, crucially, supremacy, setting the scene to build a tribe that will fight their way ahead.

Cole Arthur Riley, in her astounding book, ‘This Here Flesh’, talks of white supremacy and how ‘being born of an appetite not for flourishing but for domination, it loves the ascent, the conquering’ (p.32). She adds that there is nothing wrong with climbing the mountain to reach the summit but, ‘bravado tends to drown out the sound of wonder’ (p.32).  Did Moses lose his sense of wonder?  Was he changed by having reached the summit, alone and separated from his people?

In a couple of recent conversations with Rabbi Judith Rosen-Berry we have been talking of mountaintops and the danger of only seeking the summit.  Judith pointed me in the way of the book, ‘The Living Mountain’, by Nan Shepherd.  Nan Shepherd talks of her time in the Cairngorns and begins by telling the reader that she was ‘mad to recover the tang of height’, always searching out the summit (p.9).  Over time she sought ‘merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend, with no intention but to be with him’ (p.15).  In fact, Nan Shepherd completely re-imagines the mountain range and says, ‘the plateau is the true summit of these mountains…’ with ‘the individual tops…no more than eddies on the plateau surface’ (p.2).  Nan Shepherd becomes interested in the inside of the mountain, not its summit but the crevices and fissures and the life that teems on the plateau.

At Mount Horeb we find Moses with the mountain, being there with his flock, not seeking the summit, but paying attention to the landscape around him – he finds the burning bush.  At Mount Sinai, Moses seeks the summit and comes back with commands of separation and later, anger and jealousy upon learning about the building of the golden calf – many are killed as a result of this visit to the mountaintop.

What if, Judith asked, Moses had met the God Of Halfway Up The Mountain, rather than the God Of The Summit?  How different would the story be that followed?  I imagine the God Of Halfway Up The Mountain dipping their feet in a stream and inviting Moses to join them.

‘May I?’ Moses asks, ‘is it right that I see you and sit with you’. 

 ‘Of course’, the god of the mountainside replies, ‘how else can we get to know each other?…How cool is the water on your feet?  How restful.’

 ‘Yes, I have needed to rest for so long, thank you.  I am so tired…I can hear my people are celebrating and I think they may be, I’m afraid to say, building an idol’.

 ‘I’m not surprised, they are scared and grieving.’

 ‘What should I do?’ Moses asks.

 ‘Remember you are never alone. I will be with you as I am with them.  And seek out Miriam and Aaron, they can help, particularly Miriam.  Listen to the people, be curious.  Ask what they are afraid of, give them space to mourn and then help them find belonging and a sense of dwelling….But before all of that work, let’s rest a little longer. Perhaps, Moses, you need to grieve a little too…

How different the story would have been if Moses had met the God Of Halfway Up The Mountain?  How many lives may have been saved?

Deep within these chapters of Exodus, at the beginning of this week’s parashah, hidden in the recess of the crevice of all the words, we find three verses about Shabbat – ‘on the seventh day you shall have a Shabbat of complete rest’ (Exodus 35:2).  Here, again, we meet the God Of Halfway Up The Mountain. Our perspective shifts and we can find wonder over supremacy again.  We realise that the focus should not be on domination or survival at any cost, but the plateau of rest, of deep listening and of paying attention.  Life is teeming all around us.  There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ but everything is connected and as one.  Meaning is not to be found only in work and doing, but in being and paying attention. The practice of Shabbat helps anchor us on the mountainside and we are stopped from seeking the summit at all costs.

For, ‘to be able to marvel at the face of our neighbour with the same awe we have for the mountaintop, the sunlight refracting – this manner of vision is what will keep us from destroying each other.’ (Cole Arthur Riley, p.36).

Bibliography

Arthur Riley, C. 2024. This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation and the Stories That Make Us. Hodder & Stoughton.

Shepherd, N. 2011. The Living Mountain. The Canons.