Sinai: A Revelation for Future Generations

When I envision revelation, I see Moses ascending Mount Sinai, with all of B’nai Yisrael (the Israelites) at the bottom, purifying themselves and preparing for a life-altering experience. Moses returns from atop a cliff and, standing above them, he speaks. They await with awe the words from one of their own who has conversed with God. Moses appears to them and speaks, a proud leader of the Chosen people. As his words – which are really His words – touch and penetrate all Israel, the sparks of the Divine are placed within all who are present, and those not present. Even generations unborn were at Sinai.

Moses is in a special category of greatness. He stands alone as the greatest prophet, because he had a personal relationship with God. We can achieve this great relationship – this closeness, this real-ness – through appreciation of the amazing qualities of what was revealed to us at Sinai.

Revelation, not as in THE revelation at Sinai, but revelation as a human process of having things revealed before us (the opposite process of realization, which is self-imposed) is a crucial mechanism through which we as Jews, can identify with God and our people.

It was Moses, after all, who provided us with the physical Torah. He was our messenger. He was the mortal liaison to the Divine. He was God's pen, writing down the dictated Torah, and hearing from God the direct words of the law.

Because the Torah is not the work of man or his independent thought but the work of God himself, the laws cannot be changed and God will never go back on his word, and the words of the prophets that he has commanded and inspired are, thus, also immutable.

"Personal revelation" or the belief that revelation is continuous, is the result of the Americanization of Jewish religious thought. It has been accepted by the American Jewish community that commandedness is not an issue, and that religion is a take-it-or-leave-it, come-as-you-are event, not the beauty and, as well, the responsibility of a diverse heritage, rich with blessings and curses alike. Revelation is not, as some claim, spirituality, nor is it a change in a state of human consciousness. Revelation was the phenomenal, awesome occurrence of the Divine interacting with the mortal world that He had created, and providing guidance and morality to a people who had just left a culture of immorality and strife.

Revelation created a deeper level of life for humanity, a partnership with God in love, trust, understanding, and most of all, faith.

[Posted 5/30/03]