We are told that the words of the Torah are the words of God dictated to and recorded by Moshe. That God descended on Mount Sinai in full view of a multitude of people who heard the first part of the Ten Commandments spoken to them by God Himself. That the people could not bear to hear the voice of God Himself and asked Moshe to intercede for they were afraid that they would die.
Although none of us living today were physically present to witness this historic phenomenon, we are asked to accept this occurrence as a historic fact or to believe that it occurred. What exactly happened at Sinai and how God was able to “speak” to mankind is something we will never quite understand.
If the events at Mount Sinai were all we had to hold on to, it might not be enough to motivate us to be loyal to His Torah. And if the events at Mount Sinai were the most significant occurrence in our Jewish lives, how come the Torah itself does not mention Shavuot as the day that we celebrate the giving of the law on Mount Sinai? And if the revelation on Mount Sinai was such conclusive evidence of God’s existence and the divine origin of His Law, how was it that the people of Israel succumbed to worshiping the golden calf a few weeks later?
In fact, in this world, there can be no face-to-face meeting between man and God. There can be no experience so unequivocal and obvious as to conclusively prove the existence of God or the divine origin of His Torah beyond doubt.
Even Moshe, the transmitter of God’s word, was not able to see God’s face. God would appear to Moshe wrapped in a cloud, defying the human being’s desire to verify His existence beyond doubt. If it were all that clear, there would be no challenge and no purpose to our spiritual lives. We would all be angels constitutionally unable to do anything other than God’s will. But we are higher than angels because we always have the choice to do what suits us even if it angers God.
God and the divine origin of His Torah are facts even though we do not fully comprehend them.
One cannot analyze the soul through a microscope, scan God through a telescope or view God speaking to man by using the spade of the archaeologist.
To deduce from this that God and the soul do not exist would be like the fisherman who claims that water does not exist because his net did not bring it up. Ultimately, though, we still have the choice to justify our actions by taking advantage of God’s invisibility and by denying His existence.
If this is so, what do we celebrate on Shavuot?
We celebrate the “giving” of the Torah, not that the Torah was given. The Torah is given to us and is there for the taking every day. While we may not be able to absorb the whole Torah directly from the mouth of God in one ceremony, we can receive it piecemeal, word by word. Just as each drop of a hospital infusion can revive the body, so too can our souls be revived by each word of the Torah we absorb. Call it “Trickle Down Revelation.”
Each of our limbs has its own choreography in the service of God through the practice of the mitzvot. As my teacher Harav Hagaon Dovid Feinstein, zt”l, notes in his commentary to Bamidbar, if revelation at Sinai and God’s omnipresence in the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day would have created a sufficient impression on the people, there would have been no need for them to build the Sanctuary, the Mishkan, in the desert.
But merely seeing God is not enough. The only way to internalize His existence is through doing His mitzvot and learning His Torah. And so, even though the people could see God in the desert, in order to internalize Him they needed to busy themselves with the construction of the Sanctuary and the bringing of offerings.
The words na’aseh v’nishma, we will first perform the Torah and then understand why, are the passwords not only of our ancestors at Sinai but also for our spiritual lives. For it is a catch-22 situation to insist on proving the existence of God and the divine origin of His Torah as a precondition to savoring His words and performing His mitzvot.
The meeting between man and God is not a meeting of the minds. It is a meeting of the souls. We barely understand the workings of our own minds, let alone our souls.
In the Torah we are given an instruction manual of how to communicate with God and how to experience our own personal revelation. According to my father, Dayan Grunfeld, zt”l, the only way to perceive God is through the observance of the mitzvot, which he called power stations that generate holiness. And according to Harav Hagaon Dovid Feinstein, zt”l, the antidote for ki lo yirani ha’adam vachai, for the ever-present cloud that obstructs our direct view of God, is the study of the Torah. Through it, God shines His face on us, ya’er Hashem Panav eilecha. The Torah is light that penetrates the darkness of that cloud, ki ner mitzvah v’Torah ohr.
And for those skeptics among us who need to feel the steps of logic beneath our feet as we ascend Jacob’s ladder, consider this. Let’s just admit the possibility that God exists and that the Torah is His Book. Then, the events around us will drive the possibility to a high probability.
It is entirely reasonable to assume that the Being that created the world deemed it necessary to inform its inhabitants how to live in it. The laws of the Torah stand out in their ethical definition from the laws of other religions of the time. “Between Judaism and the coarsely polytheistic religions of Babylon and the old Egyptian faith, there lies an impassable gulf. I can only find one explanation, unfashionable and antiquated though it be,” writes the religious historian A. Henry Sayce. “It marks the dividing line between revelation and unrevealed religion.”
The Torah is replete with laws that are so counterintuitive to the Jewish, and indeed the human, psyche that no human being would have had any interest in inventing them. Take for example the laws of Shabbat, shemitah and yovel. Who in their right minds would volunteer to risk their livelihood by refusing to work on Shabbat, by waiving all debts at shemitah and by returning all real estate at yovel? In today’s cut-throat world, one has to be either mad or divinely ordered not to pick up the telephone on Shabbat for an important business call.
Many predictions of the Bible have been fulfilled. The destruction of Judea by the Romans and the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora are foretold in horrifying detail in Deuteronomy. Archaeological discoveries are continuing to establish the astonishing accuracy of many details of the Bible.
Raphael Grunfeld, a partner at the Wall Street law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, received semichah in Yoreh Yoreh from Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem of America and in Yadin Yadin from Rav Dovid Feinstein, zt’’l. This article is an extract from Raphael’s book “Ner Eyal: A Guide to Seder Nashim, Nezikin, Kodashim, Taharot and Zerayim” available for purchase at www.amazon.com/dp/057816731X and “Ner Eyal: A Guide to the Laws of Shabbat and Festivals in Seder Moed” available for purchase at https://www.amazon.com/Eyal-Guide-Shabbat-Festivals-Seder/dp/0615118992. Questions for the author can be sent to [email protected].
