WHO GAVE US THE TORAH?
Who is the Torah from? Who gave it to us? Did someone or some group just make it up? Whether we believe in God or not, or simply don’t know what to believe, as Jews we are taught that in some manner we have all stood at Mt. Sinai and each of us received God’s words of Torah at that obscure little mountain. The giving of Torah by God is a continuous act in perpetuity. Not with you alone do I seal this covenant, (says the Lord) but with whoever is here, standing with us today before Adonai, our God, and with whoever is not here with us today (Deuteronomy, Nitzavim 29:13.) Anyone standing at Mt. Sinai received the words of Torah from God and, so too, did Jews throughout the generations, in perpetuity, to this present moment!
Who is the Torah from? Who gave it to us? Did someone or some group just make it up? Whether we believe in God or not, or simply don’t know what to believe, as Jews we are taught that in some manner we have all stood at Mt. Sinai and each of us received God’s words of Torah at that obscure little mountain. The giving of Torah by God is a continuous act in perpetuity. Not with you alone do I seal this covenant, (says the Lord) but with whoever is here, standing with us today before Adonai, our God, and with whoever is not here with us today (Deuteronomy, Nitzavim 29:13.) Anyone standing at Mt. Sinai received the words of Torah from God and, so too, did Jews throughout the generations, in perpetuity, to this present moment!
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Of course, our Biblical commentators anticipate the question, teaching that each of us receives Torah differently, in accordance with our own capacity. How could it be any other way? All of this makes sense except for one important distinction: In the most well known rabbinic text, Pirke Avot, we are taught that it was Moses who received the words of Torah from God at Mt. Sinai, not everyone standing there, just Moses. Of course, this may be a distinction without a real difference because Moses then conveyed the words to the rest of us.
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But the classic, medieval commentator, Abarbanel, understood that something else was going on. He said that without Moses having spent 40 days and 40 nights alone atop Mt. Sinai, he would have been incapable of receiving the Torah from God. He needed that quiet, contemplative, meditative time in that place in order to prepare himself for his encounter with God.
As the singer says, sometimes the most real things are the things we can’t see. Sometimes reality stares us right in the face but we’re simply unaware, unprepared, too blind to perceive it. Encounters with God don’t usually just happen unless we have wittingly or unwittingly prepared ourselves for them. Sometimes it’s not as much conscious mental thought as it is experiences in our lives which open us to the encounter. Sometimes, oftentimes, it happens when we are most vulnerable, but we believe the opportunity for encounter is always there. God calls out to each of us, but unless we’re open to the call, it may as well not be there.
There’s this classic story of the child who used to go into the forest everyday. Curious and concerned his father asks him, Why do you go alone to the forest? And his son responds, I go to the forest to find God. And the father, intrigued says, Oh, that’s wonderful but don’t you know that God is the same everywhere? Yes, answers his son, I know that God is but I am not.
Shavuot is almost upon us. It is perhaps the least observed but one of the most important Jewish holidays in the Hebrew calendar because it commemorates that seminal moment when the Jewish people became a people unto God. Moses prepared himself for the encounter and, as a result, he was open to apprehending God’s words.
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Some find God in the forest and some atop a lonely small mountain, but wherever your spiritual search takes you, wherever that place is, try to be mindful and aware of what is happening. Try to be open to an encounter whose octaves are so beyond human audibility that you somehow realize that the place,
Ha-Makom, is not a place of physical geography but spiritual geography; it is the Place deep within each of our souls. |
May we continue to perceive the words of Torah always grateful to the One, the Place, who enables us to be the Children of the Covenant.
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Keyn Yehi Ratzon. So may it Be God’s will.
Amen. Chag Sameach! Warmly, Rabbi Debra Nesselson Shavuot, 5775 |
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