We are now in the fourth week of what is known as the counting of the omer. This signals that we are about halfway between Passover and Shavuot, the next pilgrimage festival. Another way to look at this is that Passover celebrates the Exodus from Egypt and, according to rabbinic tradition, Shavuot celebrates the receiving of the Torah at Sinai-we are then halfway between Egypt and Sinai. This journey from Egypt to Sinai is arguably the defining narrative of the Jewish people. In the opening words of the Ten Commandments God introduces Godself by reminding Israel that "I am the Lord your God who has taken you out of the Land of Egypt." The Rabbis pun on the Hebrew word for "freedom" - cherut - to say that freedom is that which is "carved" - charut - on the Tablets given at Sinai.
This journey from Egypt to Sinai is not merely of historical interest, but rather a liturgical and religious fact of our annual Jewish lives. That is, just as in every generation, in every year each person is obligated to see themselves as having left Egypt, the same must be said about arriving at Sinai and receiving the Torah. Every year, we publicly reenact with our community, receiving the Torah at Sinai. There is even a custom of staying up all night on Shavuot to study Torah to commemorate that foundational event in our lives; not only our ancestors' lives, but our lives.
It is important then to ask - what does it mean that we received the Torah? How do we experience this in our lives? To borrow a question from the great Hassidic Master, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoi: How is this event meaningful in every place and every time?
Turning to Rabbinic literature, we find that there are two dialectically opposed models of receiving the Torah. The first model is articulated in the opening paragraph of the tractate of the Mishnah (3rd century CE) known as Avoth. (This title is generally translated as "Fathers" but may also be appropriately translated as "Foundational Principles".) The tractate begins with the following mishnah:
Moshe received the Torah at Sinai and passed it on to Joshua, and Joshua [passed it on] to the Elders, and the Elders [passed it on] to the Prophets, and the Prophets passed it on to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be measured in judgment, raise up many students and create a safeguard around the Torah.
Here receiving [kabbalah] the Torah is portrayed as an orderly and ordered process which started at Sinai and continued onwards. While Moshe received the Torah himself, he "passed it on" - mesarah - to Joshua, and Joshua passed it on, etc. The Hebrew word masar, pass on, is the root of the word mesorah which means tradition. The "tradition" is the passing on of the Torah from Sinai to each generation. The whole of Avot is a recording of the journey of Torah and its articulation in each generation.
This first paragraph of Avot is also exemplary in its teaching. The three things that the members of the Great Assembly said are three ways to insure the orderly continuity of the passing on of Torah. (It should be noted here, that this is probably one of the earliest uses of the word "Torah" in its expanded sense of traditional Jewish teaching rather than the strict sense of the five books of the Bible, or even the twenty four books of the Tanakh, the Bible, the Prophets and the Writings.) In order to create the great movement of those who are eager recipients of Torah, a Sage (the addressee of this charge) must be judicious in judgment, nurture many students and preserve the Torah. In fact in chapter three of Avot we find the following aphorism attributed to Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest of the Sages: "Tradition [masoret] is a safeguard of Torah."
This picture of the orderly transmission of Torah from teacher to student, from generation to generation is abetted by many of the other charges in Avot. "Sit at the feet of the Sages." "Make your house a gathering place for Sages." "Good is that Torah which is accompanied by worldly pursuits." "Warm yourself from the light of the Sages, but be wary lest you be burnt by their fire." These are all mandates for a Jewish society, moderate in its ways, learned in Torah yet neither extreme nor zealous in its pursuit or practice. It is the fine and functioning, black and white world of the first half of the movie Pleasantville; a world of order and seriousness.
There is, of course, another picture of the receiving of the Torah. This presentation of kabbalat haTorah is explosive and dangerous, passionate and immediate. We turn now to two moments of that reception recorded in Tractate Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud (7th century CE).
And they stood at the foot of [underneath] the mountain (Exodus 19:17).
Said Rav Abdimi bar Hama:
This teaches that the Holy Blessed One overturned the mountain upon Israel as a cask and said to them:
"If you accept the Torah it is good, if not, however, there will be your burial."
Punning on the literal meaning of the description of the Israelite encampment at Sinai which was tahtit hahar-"at the foot of" or literally "underneath" the mountain-Rav Abdimi generates a scene of terror in which Israel has no choice but to accept the Torah or die. This is followed by another midrashic statement (this one attributed to Resh Laqish) which mirrors Rav Abdimi's statement:
What is it that is written And it was evening and it was morning the sixth day (Genesis 1:31)?
This teaches that the Holy Blessed One made a conditional agreement with creation, and said to them:
"If Israel accepts the Torah it is good, if not, however, I will return you to tohu and bohu.
Playing off the appearance of the definite article prefixed to the word "sixth," Resh Laqish connects this last day of creation to the corresponding sixth - the sixth of Sivan, the day of the giving of the Torah (the day of the celebration of Shavuot). The first sixth points to, and is conditioned by, the later sixth. If Israel accepts Torah, all is well; if they do not - then creation goes back to before the beginning when everything was tohu and bohu.
Thus the violence of the giving of the Torah - or perhaps more appropriately the forcing of the Torah upon Israel - is foreshadowed historically and succeeded and repeated literarily by the violence of the creation of the world. Both acts are conditional, both acts are threatening.
This is far from the orderly transmission of a moderate Torah which we saw in Avot.
The next description of the reception of the Torah follows a few lines later in Tractate Shabbat.
A certain "sectarian" observed Rava who was studying a tradition.
[Rava] put his fingers under his leg and squeezed them, his fingers were bleeding profusely.
[The sectarian] said to him: "An impetuous people, which placed its mouth before its ears, you remain in your impetuosity!
"First you should have listened, had you been able you should have accepted, and if not you should not have accepted."
[Rava] said to him: "We who walk in wholeness it is written about us 'The integrity of the upright guides them.'"
"These people who walk in perversity, about this it is written 'The deviousness of the treacherous leads them to ruin.'"
The backdrop for this story is the rabbinic understanding of Israel's famous response to Moshe in Exodus 24:7: "All that the LORD has said we will do, and be obedient." The fact that Israel first pledged to "do" [na'aseh] and then to listen or "be obedient" [nishma] was seen as meritorious by the Rabbis.
The story in Tractate Shabbat is set as a drama of conflicting gazes. The min is looking at Rava who is intently studying a tradition. The verb for studying comes from the same root as the noun for eye: ayayn is study and ayin is eye. Whilst the sectarian was eyeing Rava, Rava was "eyeing" the text. However, Rava's struggle with the text or the tradition that he was studying was played out as a struggle with himself. He was injured and bleeding from the study. Rava's body was made porous by the intense study of Torah - while his "prooftext" lauds the "wholeness" or the "integrity" of the "righteous."
This is a grounding story. A story that echoes in some ways with the the story of the mountain being held over the Israelites' heads. The grounds for understanding the Torah, for accepting the Torah personally, are not merely the conceptual reach and grasp of the intellect nor the orderly transmission from one's teacher, but, rather, the experience of personal struggle and overwhelming dread or awe of God, a repetition of the Torah's narrative wherein the Israelites were too overwhelmed to hear God's voice and begged Moses to stand between them and God and relay the commandments. The ground of understanding is even the puncturing of the integrity of the human body. The blood of Rava's struggle is an embodied practice of study - it is an extreme performance of the Divine knowledge overwhelming the human ability to grasp and understand.
The sectarian's question shows that he understands none of this. He demands rational order - first listen and then accept if you judge that you are able to do so. Rava's spiritual practice is that acceptance is not optional - if you accept (that same kabalah that we saw earlier in kabbalat haTorah) then it will be fine, if not here will be your grave. Can this be translated into a rational order in which there is assessment and then cognizance and then acceptance? It is the righteousness of the adept which guarantees that acceptance is inevitable, inviolable and viable. Contrasting perversity with wholeness, Rava claims the path of integrity, wholeness, simplicity. This is the path in which pzizut - undue haste, not well thought out - is the mark of humble piety. Simple yet excruciating. It is the path in which the overwhelming Torah which is accepted, rips into one's body, tears up one's body, threatens to destroy one's body.
The sectarian in this story, however, seems to resemble the Sages of Avot. Be judicious. Safeguard the Torah. What then, to return to our opening question, are we to do?
These two opposite experiences are both necessary to receive and pass on Torah. If we don't become students of the tradition and raise up many students ourselves, there will be no Torah after us. Torah depends on an orderly and persistent transfer of religious and spiritual knowledge, of the message of Sinai. At the same time, the message of Sinai was written in fire on fire. It is only the passionate, and perhaps risky and even dangerous struggle with Torah on a personal existential level that guarantees that Torah will not die the slow death of domestication and habit.
As we are now travelling the path to Sinai, we should, each of us, be seeking our own balance between the dread and awe of existential struggle, and the pledge of loyalty to a smooth tradition that dates back to Sinai. Draw close enough to the fire to be warmed by it, partake of its flame, yet be not consumed.
Shabbat shalom.