Jewish World Review / May 27, 1998 / 2 Sivan, 5758

Revelation and Search: Man's role in seeking understanding of Torah, since Sinai

By Rabbi A. Scheinman

I. Accepting the Law --- Twice

REVELATION IS THE CORNERSTONE of faith, upon which all of Judaism rests. As Maimonides points out, it is not simply a proof of faith, but the perception of the Divine in the most direct way possible. While other miracles served to prove Divine existence, pointing to such, revelation was the experience of the Divine itself. For one brief moment, the curtains of concealment were parted, letting in the rays of the Divine in all its brightness.

Yet, strangely enough, our Sages tell us that the experience of Revelation at Sinai was somehow not the ultimate in acceptance of G-d's dominion. The Talmud (Shabbes 82) tells us that at Sinai "the mountain was poised over the Jews like a barrel." In other words, the Jews were forced into accepting the Torah; and it was not until the miracle of Purim, a thousand years later, that the Jews willingly reaffirmed their commitment to Torah. Besides the strangeness of having to be forced to accept the Torah when one has beheld and experienced the Divine in all its glory, the literal description of these events in the Torah does not mention this tradition.

The passages describing Mattan Torah (the giving of the Torah) makes no mention of force, while prior to the original Purim, the Jews were indeed threatened with extinction, until they repented and returned to G-d.

II. Searching --- to Fill the Void

IN TWO WAYS does one become cognizant of the sun. One can behold the sun in its dazzling glory. Or one can be locked into a pitch-dark room wherein every minute of waiting for a crack of light makes one even more aware of the joy of basking in the sun. Similarly, a father-son relation peaks with a warm embrace at the height of a moment of joy. Yet it can be outranked by the feelings of yearning and pining that accompany a prolonged absence from home. Many a son who has not responded to a warm embrace has found the pangs of absence unbearably strong.

This phenomenon is explained in the discussion by the Maharal on the importance of the Four Questions at Passover, and why someone who conducts his seder in a monologue fashion, not following a question-and-answer format, does not fulfill his obligetion to retell the story of Jewry's Exodus on Pesach.

He explains that when one merely hears a statement, he does not incorporate it into his personality. It is just tagged on to his awareness. This is not the case when one receives an answer to a question. For by having posed the question, he opens a void, so to speak; and the answer fills it, forming a unified entity with the person rather than adding on a superfluity.

The Vilna Gaon's commentary on Song of Songs makes a similar observation. The pleasure a person derives from a food is in direct proportion to his hunger. A sated person can be presented with the tastiest of dishes, and he will reject it in disinterest; and should he force the food in, it will not easily find its way down.

The Sfas Emes (Parshas Vayeitzei) also refers to this principle in explaining why the biblical Jacob did not receive his dream and prophecy until after he had left the yeshivah of Shem and Ever. When a man is in an atmosphere of kedushah (sanctity), his thirst for spirituality is not comparable to the thirst that wells-up within a person stumbling through the desert. He bases this on a Midrash: "My soul thirsts for you --- where? In a barren and arid land."

Compulsion Through Clarity

This, then, is the difference between Shavuos and Purim the festival of Receiving the Torah at Sinai and the holiday of its reaffirmation in Shushan. In the first instance, Jewry was compelled to accept the Torah --- but not simply by a physical force: the impact from the enormity of the event of revelation was so immense that it was likened to the mountain poised over their heads. The brilliant light of revelation left no room for doubt, and under the circumstance it was impossible not to accept the Torah. At Purim, however, it was not the threat to life in itself that inspired Jewry's repentance and its return to pristine purity. Rather the hester panim -- the feeling of abandonment -- bestirred powerful yearnings for a Sinai-like encounter with the divine.

Our Sages tell us that when Queen Esther was to confront Achashveirosh, she cried: "My G-d, my G-d why have You abandoned me!" To this day the designated psalm of Purim (according to the Vilna Gaon) is the one in which this outcry appears; and as the Sages explain, the psalm refers to the darkest hour of the night. Thus, while Shavuos marks the cognizance of G-d through revelation, Purim celebrates the cognizance of G-d that follows a desperate search in the darkness.

The Gift and the Acquisition

Torah itself consists of these two parts: One: the Written Law, which is "G-d's Torah" so to speak, was given to us as revelation. Yet, as it reads, it would remain closed to us. We must refer to the second part of the Torah, the Oral Law, also given at Sinai, to understand the written word. This encompasses the Divine interpretations and expositions, which are accessible to human comprehension; and it includes the rules of exegesis by which the Creator instructs man in how to delve more deeply into the law, and teaches him how to apply it to evolving circumstances.

Our sages describe the long and tortuous system of analyzing every word and nuance of Torah recorded in the Babylonian Talmud as "You restored me in the darkness," for struggling through passages of the Talmud is "grappling in the dark." The Oral Torah, therefore, has special properties: it introduces queries and leads the student to conclusive answers, which become integrated into his personality. The results are deeply satisfying --- not unlike the end result of the Passover Seder, as described by the Maharal.

Thus, it has been pointed out, the Mishnah opens with a question: "When does one begin reciting the Shema?" It ends with the word "Shalom" --- harmony. Understanding the Oral Law is not a matter of absorbing a statement. It is an answer derived from a query, and that is why the Oral Law (and not the Written Law) has been described as the human portion in Torah.

The same principle can be applied to explain the Maharal's statement: while the Torah was given on Shavuos, dvaikus b'Torah (clinging to the Torah) was the result of Purim. True enough, Torah can be presented to people -- and it was on Shavuos -- but it can only become integrated within one's personality through d'vaikus if first he searches.

III. Revelation Again

SEARCH is deeper than revelation, and its findings more permanent. What need, then, is there for revelation? To be sure, we must refer to the Kuzari's answer -- that not everyone, and not at every time, can a person reach G-d through a higher level of contact through personal search; nor will G-d reveal Himself to every generation. Thus G-d's original revelation at Sinai gives all subsequent generations -- especially those unable to reach spiritual heights on their own -- a tradition to fall back on.

There is yet another profound thought involved ... one that concerns our discussion. The Babylonian Talmud explains the verse "It is not an empty thing from you" to mean that if a person finds any part of the Torah "empty" -- without meaning -- it is "from you." That is, Torah cannot be faulted as being meaningless. Rather, this vacuous feeling in the student is an indication that somewhere within him, he is lacking receptivity to that part of Torah. When a work of art is meaningless to a blind man, or a concert uninspiring to a deaf person, the fault is in the viewer, with the audience, not in the composition.

The revelation at Sinai created an indelible impression on the ]ewish personality, giving us, as a people, a point of reference for all future searchings for truth. Thus, all the individual souls of Jewry had to be at Sinai --- even a proselyte had to be there. Had we not the memory of Sinai deep within us to drive us in our exhaustive search for meaning and understanding in Torah, we could not persevere in mastering Torah; and we would not succeed. We would be "empty" from ourselves. It is for this same reason that (the Talmud tells us) a person learns the entire Torah when in his mother's womb, even though he is destined to forget it prior to birth; for if he had not first learned the Torah, he would not be able to relate to it later.

Return to Torah

Studying Torah, then, is always a return of sorts. This is expressed in our daily prayers: "Return us ... to Your Torah." Indeed, parts of the Oral tradition -- such as Targum On kelos, the Aramaic translations of Onkelos -- were forgotten and later rediscovered. Human endeavor alone would have proven insufficient for composing the targumim, had it not been for the spark of Sinai buried deep within the soul. This creative endeavor was not one of initial discovery; it was a return.

There are other instances of creative recall:

The Talmud (Menachos) relates that when Moshe Rabbeinu saw Rabbi Akiva teaching his disciples, he became envious of Rabbi Akiva's vast knowledge.The Ohr HaChaim explains that, to be sure, Moshe Rabbeinu knew all of the Oral Law that Rabbi Akiva had mastered; but Rabbi Akiva's level of attainment was such that he was able to discern how the Oral Law is derived from the Written Law ... It has been said that in his last years the Vilna Ga'aon studied only Chumash -- his encyclopedic grasp of Oral Law was such that he was able to deduce which of the myriad teachings of the Oral Law are implicit in the Written Torah. In a similar vein, the Ga'aon is reported to have said: "There are three levels of understanding: pshat (simple explanation), amkus (depth), and again pshat (simple explanation). There is, however, an infinite difference between pshat before depth, and pshat after depth. The revelation one discovers after "search" is worlds apart from the revelation one starts with.

An emissary sent to strengthen Judaism in an outlying community later reported to his Rebbe that an estranged Jew had asked him to explain his mission. He told him a parable: "In the days of yore, scribes would go from town to town filling in ‘letters' that have been rubbed out from Jewish souls."

After the emissary told the Rebbe his parable, the Rebbe shook his head: "G-d forbid that a letter of a Jewish soul becomes erased! It is rather like an engraving that becomes filled with dust: blow the dust away and the original letter reappears."

We must think of our Divine service as circular, not linear. We do, indeed, start with revelation. But that which is not earned has no permanence. We must toil on our own until we rediscover the revelation imbued within each of us. For when we do arrive at our goal, it is not a new enlightenment that awaits us; rather we unearth that which has driven us so relentlessly --- the eternal flame of Sinai.

Rabbi A. Scheinman is an American who is currently studying in a Jerusalem yeshiva.

©1998, Agudath Israel of America