This past week on Shabbat we encountered that sacred moment in our Torah when the Israelites find themselves at the base of Mt. Sinai, about to enter the eternal covenant with the Source of All Existence.
Every imaginable sensation takes place to set the scene for this moment. “[A]s morning dawned, there was thunder, and lightning, and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the horn; and all the people who were in the camp trembled… Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for HASHEM had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently. The blare of the horn grew louder and louder” (Exodus 19:16-19).
Contrast this prelude with the following moment just before God begins to finally deliver the Aseret Ha’dibrot (the Ten Pronouncements, now commonly translated Commandments), as recounted by the ancient rabbis: “When the Holy One gave the Torah, no bird chirped, no fowl flew, no ox mooed, none of the ophanim (angels) stirred a wing, nor did the seraphim (celestial beings) chant Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh (Holy, Holy, Holy!)’ The sea did not roar, creatures did not speak—the whole world was hushed into a breathless; it was then that the voice went forth [with the First Commandment]: Anochi Adonai Elohecha—I am Adonai your God” (Midrash Exodus Rabbah 29:9).
In response to reading these jarring, awesome depictions of the events at Sinai, we asked the question: what bearing does this moment have for us? How are we to understand the intensity of this moment as having relevance for our own lives?
Subsequent rabbinic teachings emphasize that when we encounter Torah in our own lives, be it at a weekly Shabbat morning study session, or a prayer when sitting shivah (mourning) for a community member, or a sacred teaching through a variety of contexts, we are to bring to it the sensibility “we” had at Sinai (and, as a different rabbinic teaching suggests, we were all at Sinai): a sense of reverence and awe. As one Torah study participant suggested, we shouldn’t take holiness for granted; there are so many sacred moments in our lives—births, deaths, life transitions, and more—that they can begin to feel mundane. The teaching to bring the experience of Sinai to “teaching moments” we experience in our own lives is an important one: it’s a reminder to generate that sense of awe when our usual habitual instincts might be to render the holy as commonplace.
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Just as we’re meant to carry the past into the present, the present and the future holds a bearing on the past. A rabbinic midrash (homily) teaches that when God was getting ready to present the Israelites with the Torah, God exclaimed, “I can’t give you the Torah until you bring me someone who can serve as a guarantor, who can co-sign for your receipt of this Torah.” “What about our ancestors?” the Israelites replied, and God responded by listing the failings of each of the ancestors (Abraham, Isaac, et al.), pointing out that they themselves would need co-signers. So the Israelites suggested the prophets, with respect to whom again God pointed out all of their deal breakers. Finally, the Israelites proffered… us—their descendants. “Now you have it,” God said. “Your descendants are most worthy guarantors.”
What this teaches is that just as we incline our hearts towards the moments in our sacred history that inspire us, so did our ancestors look to us as worthy inheritors of the tradition, empowered to carry on the torch in new ways and with new insights that help shed light on our future.
