How We Grow – Parshat Yitro

Dear fellow members of Harvard’s Jewish community,

I hope my message finds you, and those you love, well.

One of the hardest, and most important, things for us to keep in our minds and hearts right now is that the need to defend against delegitimization of Zionism is not the purpose or even the essence of Jewish life, at Harvard or elsewhere. It is a duty that has been forced on us from without, by the malicious attacks of bad actors, and it is one that we bear proudly. In meeting this difficult moment, we must be on guard against being consumed by it – lest we forget that there is a beating heart, “the soul of a soulless condition,” a tradition of song and companionship and study, that are the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of Jewish life – here at Harvard and everywhere, in 2025 and in all times. In my daily work, one of the greatest challenges is to resist the strong magnetic pull of headlines and conflict, and to preserve space for building, studying, singing, and teaching – keeping those at the center of what it means to live in, and to lead, this community.

In that spirit, I want to begin a regular series of communications, which I hope will be weekly pre-Shabbat messages (though I may miss a week here or there) – about the fullness of Jewish life. As Jewish life is diverse and varied, so will these messages be: sometimes reflections on student community, at other times (like this week) a reflection on the week’s Torah reading or the holidays. And when there is important information about anti-Semitism or the place of Judaism at Harvard, you will be among the first to know, from me. But let’s turn, for a moment, away from what is present and contested, to what is eternal and affirming.

A central question of the human condition – and perhaps the central concern of the college years – is how we grow as people: encountering, and taking in, that which is new and other, while remaining steadfastly true to who we’ve been and what we are. When we encounter new ideas, new modes of life, and new types of people – what does it mean to relate to them authentically, recognizing what in them is new and potentially life-shaping, without being swept away by their power or popularity? Too little newness and we remain frozen, statue-like; too much and we lose the thread of integrity that we inherited from our parents, and from theirs. In the Western philosophical tradition, this dilemma is classically framed as a binary contrast between reason and revelation: a “human, all too human” faculty on the one hand, or a Divine voice that breaks into this world from the outside, immune to human questioning, on the other. But Judaism sits, naturally and effortlessly, in the space between these dead-end polarities.

This Shabbat’s Torah reading, Parshat Yitro, gives us an integrated and inspiring integration of these opposites: a picture of how to grow as a human being in relation to others and newness in ways that build on, rather than reject, who and what we have been. If there is any Jewish paradigm of Revelation – of encountering something and some One fundamentally beyond ourselves – it is the Jewish people’s encounter with G!?d at Mt. Sinai in the twentieth chapter of Exodus: a thunderous Divine voice broke into our world from the heavens, overwhelming our ancestors’ mortal ears as they recoiled in terror from its awesome might.

So it is all the more striking that G!?d does not address the Jewish community as blank slates, insignificant creatures receiving commands that ignored or reset their preceding experiences. Instead, G!?d addresses us as fully wrought people, brimming with memories, hopes, and questions. Nearly forty percent of the Ten Commandments’ 177 words are reasons, explanations, and motivations: we are to keep Shabbat because G!?d rested on the seventh day of creation; we are instructed to honor our parents so that we will flourish in land G!?d is giving us; and on and on. It was none other than Professor David Weiss Halivni, one of greatest Jewish thinkers of the 20th- and 21st-centuries, who first drew our attention to the centrality of reasons in the Torah’s revelation.

Whether you accept these reasons – the theological account of the creation of the world on the one hand, or the idea of this-worldly reward for following commandments on the other – is beside the point (Yonatan Brafman, a contemporary Jewish philosopher and a dear friend, first noted this in his doctoral dissertation). The point is that there are reasons: we are expected to encounter anything and everything new – from G!?d’s thunderous voice all the way to a new idea on a syllabus or the rhythms of a friend’s home that differ from how our parents raised us – with our own biographies, priorities, and understandings. Everyone – even G!?d – needs to make the case for any future actions by building on, rather than negating, who we know ourselves to be and the lives we dream of leading.

It is precisely this sensibility – an openness to newness grounded in a strong and principled sense of who we are – that we aim to cultivate in students at Hillel. I remember Yale’s President, Peter Salovey, telling me how moved he was by a Jewish student sharing with him, “Being grounded each week in the traditions and communities of Shabbat – is what allows me to bravely encounter the full range of new people, places, ideas, and challenges that college has to offer me” (they do some things right at Yale ;). The idea that there is not a zero-sum trade-off between authenticity and exploration is the bedrock of our community’s internal pluralism, where Jewish students encounter types of Jews and types of Judaism many of them have never seen first-hand; and it is also the committed-yet-cosmopolitan ethos they carry with them back and forth across the threshold of Rosovsky Hall, as they move seamlessly between Jewish life and the other spheres of Harvard.

And it is this ethos that sets the high bar of the educational challenge before us: can and will we present a Jewish life that addresses students’ honest, searching questions – one that can earn their assent by demonstrating the integrity and promise of a way of life, instead of falling back on conversation-stopping assertions of guilt or brute obligation? Judaism, with the vibrancy of its community, the wells of its wisdom, and the humanity of its rhythms, is sufficient to this task – the only question is whether we will be worthy stewards of this tradition, realizing its potential with and for students amidst Harvard’s myriad options. There is no greater honor than facing this task – conversation after conversation, meal after meal, holiday after holiday, trip after trip.

As we enter Shabbat, as one dispersed community, I hope you know that I am always eager to hear from you – with perspectives, concerns, and of course challenges.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Executive Director
Harvard Hillel