Retaining the Sapphire Brick

Moses then went up, along with Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of Israel's elders. They saw a vision of the God of Israel, and under His feet was something like a sapphire brick, like the essence of a clear (blue) sky.                                                    Exodus 24:9-10 

Rashi, quoting our Sages, explains that the “sapphire brick” had been at God’s feet during the Egyptian enslavement of the Israelites, as symbol of their suffering, since they were forced to make bricks.

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe noted that at the greatest divine revelation in history, God chose to reveal but a single attribute of His: that He, as it were, “bore the yoke of one’s fellow” [Mishna Avot 6:6, one of the forty-eight attributes through which Torah is acquired]. Even more, the implication of our verse is that even after redeeming His people from Egypt, God did not remove the sapphire brick.

Clearly, the revelation to Moses and the elders, coming as part of the preparation for the revelation at Sinai [Rashi 24:1], has an internal connection with giving the Torah. The attribute of bearing the yoke with one’s fellow is the essence of all mitzvot bein adam l’ḥavero (between man and fellow man). Yet this attribute is, as well, the basis of God’s relationship with His people.

The divine name with which God sent Moses on his mission to bring the Israelites out of Egypt was “eheyeh asher eheyeh” (“I am that I am”). [Exodus 3:14] Our Sages understand the name to mean “I will be with them in this suffering and I will be with them in the subjugation they will suffer at the hands of other nations.”

Rabbi Wolbe notes the difficulty in reaching the level of truly bearing our fellow’s yoke, both in sorrow and in joy, and relates two stories. The Ḥafetz Ḥayyim, in his later years, refused to sit on a comfortable chair, saying “the Jewish People are suffering, how can I be comfortable?”

The second story is of Rabbi Avraham Grodzhinsky, who was visiting his relatives in Warsaw, when, in mid conversation, he looked at his watch and suddenly began to sing and then got up to dance. After a long period of singing and dancing, Rabbi Grodzhinsky returned to his conversation and explained his behavior to his puzzled family: “One of my students is getting married now in Slabodka, since I am at such a great distance, I cannot provide joy to the groom, but I can participate in his joy here, since his joy is mine also.”