Prelude to the lawgiving: is Judaism a regular religion?

As we look ahead and prepare ourselves for the upcoming festival it is striking how much attention is focused on the Ten Commandments – the nature and content of the great revelation at Sinai. There is very little mention, by contrast, of the careful preparation which took place among the nation in the days leading up to the lawgiving: a process of purifications and distancing of the people from the mountain.

The people were first instructed, three full days in advance, to prepare and purify themselves for the forthcoming divine revelation. Then, at the time of the law-giving, they were warned not to approach the mountain. These rules are described and repeated in detail: God instructs Moshe, who instructs the people. Moshe then confirms with God that the people have been separated from the sacred site. Not satisfied, God then issues a further warning that no person – or even animal – may approach the mountain. Presumably this emphasis and repeated warning is intended to relay a highly important message.

Judaism Reclaimed develops an idea of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, who sees in these instructions a principle of profound importance. These laws, he understands, symbolise how Judaism is conceptually distinct from “religion” as it is commonly perceived. The fields of anthropology and sociology view religion, like arts and culture, as a mere projection of the social values of society. This approach treats religion as little more than a means by which we can understand the behaviour and beliefs of the social unit formed by its adherents. Emile Durkheim expressed this when he claimed that religion is a mere “projection of the social values of society".

R' Hirsch argues that, in this sense, Judaism stands apart and cannot be truly defined as a religion, since the Torah’s rigorous and demanding laws do not reflect the religious and moral status of the nation which first received them. God’s instructions to the Jewish people to purify themselves for several days in advance of receiving the Torah represent a principle of fundamental importance: that its recipients were not inherently worthy of hearing God's word.

Additionally, the prohibition against drawing near the mountain during the Ten Commandments reinforces the distinction between the source of the communication and the people to whom it was addressed, thereby emphatically rejecting the notion that the Torah emanated from the people themselves. Each of these rules was intended to emphasise the reality that the Torah was communicated to the Jews from an external superior source, and did not emanate from within them.

This message is powerfully reinforced by the episode of the golden calf which took place shortly after this revelation. With the Ten Commandments still ringing in their ears, the nation collectively disobeyed God’s word, creating and worshipping an idol. God’s immediate response was shocking and uncompromising: the people were considered to be thoroughly unworthy of the recently-received Torah. God even suggests to Moshe that He annihilate the entire nation, replacing it with a new chosen people to be drawn from Moshe's own descendants.

All of this points to the idea that the Torah did not emerge from within the nation as a reflection of their own values – its teachings profoundly challenged them and imposed laws which the nation as a whole would struggle to observe throughout Jewish history.

First posted to Facebook 1 June 2022, here.

When is Shavuot and when was the Torah received?

On what day was the Torah given? On what date do we celebrate the festival of Shavuot? Seemingly simple questions, yet ones for which the Torah’s text provides no clear answer.

In a fascinating passage, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch notes that Shavuot is unique among all biblical festivals in that no calendar date is prescribed for it – rather, it is observed seven weeks from the omer offering which was brought on the second day of Pesach. Combining a selection of Talmudic traditions and calculations, Rav Hirsch demonstrates that the Torah was most likely to have been given on the 51st day after the Exodus. As noted by the Magen Avraham (Orach Chaim 494) the 50th day from the omer is in fact the day BEFORE the Lawgiving – which the Torah identifies as having taken place on the sixth or seventh day of the third month.

On this basis, the day that is elevated to a festival is NOT the day of the Sinai revelation, but rather the final day of counting leading up to that great day. This indicates that the ‘festival of Matan Torah’ does not relate to the actual giving of the Torah; it celebrates our making ourselves worthy of receiving it.

This insight into the nature of the festival of Shavuot provides us with a greater understanding of the commandment of Sefirat HaOmer, through which we count the days each year in between Pesach and Shavuot. Jewish tradition depicts the nation as having undergone a significant transformation during this seven-week period – from the 49th level of impurity to a level on which they could nationally perceive God’s communication to Moshe at Sinai. This process of purification is indicated by the number seven, which is the number of days which the Torah always requires in order to regain purity. (The Torah emphasises that the count consists of 7x7 – seven weeks not just 49 days). As well as achieving this national purity, we are also taught that the Israelites reached a level of perfection in their interpersonal relationships. Rashi comments that they encamped at the mountain “like one person with one heart” – a highly-impressive display of national unity.

This transformative process, which culminated in them camping, pure and united, at the base of Mount Sinai, it what we celebrate as a festival. It is the conclusion of this same seven-week period which both determines the date of the celebration, and accounts for the name “Shavuot” by which the festival is commonly known.

The period of Sefirat HaOmer, meanwhile, instils within our consciousness that such a national achievement is not reached without considerable work. Traditionally, the 49 days of the Omer are associated with the 48 ways in which the Torah is acquired (Avot 6:6) – prompting us to re-enact our ancestors’ religious awakening during these weeks in the desert. And the Omer period is also a reminder for us of the importance of maintaining mutual respect for one another as we seek to learn from the fate of Rabbi Akiva’s students who died during this period.

These ideas should be at the forefront of our consciousness as we count the final night of the Omer and prepare to recall the historic national covenant and revelation at Sinai.

First posted to Facebook 24 May 2023, here.

Sinai: what happened -- and what was the point?

Yesterday’s Torah reading featured Moshe revisiting the Sinai revelation as he continues recounting major desert events on the Plains of Moav. While Sinai is widely associated with Lawgiving, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch points out that many laws and instructions had already been received by the nation before this event, and that laws continued to be revealed afterwards throughout the desert years. What, then, was the particular significance of this national revelation?

Two important functions are mentioned explicitly here by Moshe himself.

The first relates to Israel’s eternal unique status as a chosen nation. Even though Israel was destined to sin and suffer severe exile as a consequence, Moshe maintains that they can be assured that God will never abandon them; the eternal covenant will never be broken: “He will not forget the covenant of your fathers, which He swore to them.” After all “Did ever a people hear God's voice speaking out of the midst of the fire as you have heard, and live?”. As Rabbi Yehuda Halevi emphasises, this mass revelation represents a theological foundation for Christianity and Islam too. While these subsequent religions argue that Israel’s sins led it to be abandoned by God, Moshe – a prophet whose legitimacy they all accept – makes it unambiguously clear that the Jewish nation will never be replaced.

A second fundamental function of the Sinai revelation is also hammered home by Moshe in his introduction to the Ten Commandments: “And you shall guard yourselves very carefully, for you did not see any image on the day that God spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire”. The human imagination has long dreamed up creative speculations as to the image of God and how He can be physically represented. As Moshe describes at length, humans are prone to “lift their eyes up to heaven” and attribute divinity to the celestial bodies, or consider that impressive “beasts of the earth” must be endowed with supernatural powers. The point emphasised by Moshe is that even in the nation’s most direct and intimate encounter with the Divine, no image was seen. God can most accurately be depicted in the negative – what could NOT be seen. The Sinai revelation thereby condemns any subsequent attempt to attribute a form of divinity to any physical image, object or even great sage as a product of human imagination – not the God who revealed Himself to the nation at Sinai.

A third vital function of the Sinai revelation is not mentioned here in Moshe’s recounting, but is stated by God before the initial account of the Ten Commandments in Shemot (19:9): "I am coming to you in the thickness of the cloud, in order that the people hear when I speak to you, and they will also believe in you forever". As analysed in Judaism Reclaimed, the primary purpose of the Sinai revelation was not the Ten Commandments themselves, but rather that – as explained by Rambam – the nation participated in a direct prophetic encounter between God and Moshe. Having witnessed such an extraordinary phenomenon they became aware of their own inability to maintain such a level of proximity with the divine and implored God to communicate with them instead through Moshe. This represented the ultimate authentication and vindication of Moshe’s prophecy through which the Torah was received.

Various questions have been raised over the ambiguity of the Torah’s accounts of the Sinai revelation. Which words, if any, were heard directly by the nation and what was conveyed instead by Moshe? If the collective national memory did not preserve such details, does this not undermine the force and significance of such a revelation?

Bearing in mind the functions of the Sinai revelation that we have identified explicitly within the Torah’s text, we can argue that the content of the Commandments – while obviously important – is not what makes this event so highly-emphasised and unique. Rather it is the implications that this revelation had for the relationship between God and His chosen people. First, we gained actual knowledge that His divinity cannot be represented by anything within the physical world and secondly that our relationship with Him is eternal and non-revocable.

Once the nation had been granted third-party participatory status and thereby witnessed Moshe receiving prophecy, his authenticity as an instrument of God’s word was now beyond doubt. The question of which parts of the Ten Commandments were heard directly from God and which via Moshe’s agency becomes far less significant.

First posted to Facebook 30 July 2023, here.