Rabbi Wayne Allen wrote, “Almost all religions begin with some epiphanic experience whereby an individual or a group feels a direct, personal, intimate, and transformative encounter with the Divine.” For we Jews that experience is Sinai, when the entire people of Israel stood before God, not just those who left Egypt, but also all generations that had come before and all the generations that were to come. Thus the revelation at Sinai is happening continuously and each of us experiences it. Our Torah says that God recited the Ten Commandments, or as we say in Hebrew, the Ten Utterances (Asseret Ha Dibrot). According to our tradition, God did not just speak the Asseret Ha Dibrot, God revealed the entire Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) and not just that but the entire Oral Torah as well, all the rabbinic interpretations of Torah, even those that have not yet been revealed. So all Jewish thought is a continuing unfolding of the revelation at Sinai. Jewish mystics say that God spoke to each person individually in the language they best understood. Further, they say that God revealed all this through the recitation of one letter, Aleph, which is a letter that has no sound. In other words. The problem with religious revelation is that it happens once. But the Jewish view is that Sinai is always happening, to each of us, in a language we can understand. Our challenge is to be present so that we can hear it.
Yitro, Exodus 18:1-20:23, Parshat Hashavua for Shabbat, February 11, 2023
February 10, 2023 by tbhrich • Drashot
Rabbi Wayne Allen wrote, “Almost all religions begin with some epiphanic experience whereby an individual or a group feels a direct, personal, intimate, and transformative encounter with the Divine.” For we Jews that experience is Sinai, when the entire people of Israel stood before God, not just those who left Egypt, but also all generations that had come before and all the generations that were to come. Thus the revelation at Sinai is happening continuously and each of us experiences it. Our Torah says that God recited the Ten Commandments, or as we say in Hebrew, the Ten Utterances (Asseret Ha Dibrot). According to our tradition, God did not just speak the Asseret Ha Dibrot, God revealed the entire Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) and not just that but the entire Oral Torah as well, all the rabbinic interpretations of Torah, even those that have not yet been revealed. So all Jewish thought is a continuing unfolding of the revelation at Sinai. Jewish mystics say that God spoke to each person individually in the language they best understood. Further, they say that God revealed all this through the recitation of one letter, Aleph, which is a letter that has no sound. In other words. The problem with religious revelation is that it happens once. But the Jewish view is that Sinai is always happening, to each of us, in a language we can understand. Our challenge is to be present so that we can hear it.