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In modern Hebrew, if something sounds out of place and you want to remark on it (and show off), you might quote Rashi from this week’s parasha: מה עניין שמיטה בהר סיני, “what does Shemita have to do with Mount Sinai?” It’s used as a way of saying “What does this have to do with that?” (although, to be honest, it’s already a bit old-fashioned, I don’t know if Israelis still say this.) Rashi is commenting on the fact that the opening verse of this parasha mentions Mount Sinai, when talking about the laws of the rest of the land in the seventh year.
בהר סיני. מָה עִנְיַן שְׁמִטָּה אֵצֶל הַר סִינַי? וַהֲלֹא כָל הַמִּצְוֹת נֶאֶמְרוּ מִסִּינַי? אֶלָּא מַה שְּׁמִטָּה נֶאֶמְרוּ כְלָלוֹתֶיהָ וּפְרָטוֹתֶיהָ וְדִקְדּוּקֶיהָ מִסִּינַי אַף כֻּלָּן נֶאֶמְרוּ כְלָלוֹתֵיהֶן וְדִקְדּוּקֵיהֶן מִסִּינַי:
AND THE LORD SPOKE UNTO MOSES ON THE MOUNT SINAI — What does the matter of the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai that Scripture felt compelled to expressly state where it was commanded? Were not all commandments given on Sinai? This statement is intended to suggest the following: Just as in the case of the law of Shemittah, whose general rules and minute details were ordained on Mount Sinai, so, also, were all commandments with their general rules and their minute details ordained on Mount Sinai. (Rashi on Leviticus 25:1)
Every detail comes from the revelation of Sinai. Here it’s written explicitly so that you know that even when it’s not written, it’s the case. But what does that even mean? Probably the most fundamental differences between orthodox and non-orthodox Judaism isn’t the equality of men and women, even though that’s the most visible marker, but the understanding of the words “Torah from Sinai.” Is this a literal description of history, or a metaphor for human inspiration?
Let me give an example. The festival that we today call Rosh Hashana has almost no description in the Torah itself. We have a date and know it should be celebrated somehow (with ‘loud blasts’ according to Leviticus 23:24), but we don’t know how. In this week’s parasha, we read about the ‘celebration of freedom’ that took place every fifty years on Yom Kippur, with a shofar sounded to declare liberty to all slaves, and the return of all property to its original owners. And because the verse about this Jubilee year uses an identical word to the verse about Rosh Hashana, and because the language about blowing the shofar is repeated three times, in three different ways, it’s understood that the shofar needs to be blown on Rosh Hashana at least nine times. All this is ok, we know how Jewish minds work, but what is perhaps most surprising is that these laws are considered de’orayta, from the Torah itself, from Sinai. The orthodox understanding would be that the Torah was written intentionally with all sorts of clues encrypted into the words, so that the Jews would be able to learn all the laws of the festivals through these textual gymnastics. The non-orthodox Jewish perspective would be, I think, that the understanding of our religious practice develops over time. Just as later generations added the Shofar and its rules to the festival that became known as Rosh Hashana, so too does our understanding of God and what God wants develop in every generation. Literally revelation from Sinai, or metaphorically, the process of interpretation is revelation from Sinai.
One description of the connection between the written Torah and the oral Torah comes from the beginning of the collection known as Pirkei Avot.
משֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי, וּמְסָרָהּ לִיהוֹשֻׁעַ, וִיהוֹשֻׁעַ לִזְקֵנִים, וּזְקֵנִים לִנְבִיאִים, וּנְבִיאִים מְסָרוּהָ לְאַנְשֵׁי כְנֶסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה. הֵם אָמְרוּ שְׁלשָׁה דְבָרִים, הֱווּ מְתוּנִים בַּדִּין, וְהַעֲמִידוּ תַלְמִידִים הַרְבֵּה, וַעֲשׂוּ סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה:
Moses received Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be patient in [the administration of] justice, raise many disciples and make a fence round the Torah. (Avot 1:1)
Moshe kibel tora, Moses received Torah, teaching, instruction, something. He transmitted it, mesarah, and this transmission, masoret, goes from one generation to the next, until some rabbis are recorded as saying things. Are these words of the later sages the exact words that were transmitted from Sinai? Maybe, but more probably, being a Jew who believes in the transmission of tradition, a masorti Jew, means believing in our power to say something new and significant now, in our generation, and see it as rooted in a process of continual revelation; ancient and modern.
The other verb in this text that speaks about the transmission is kibel, to receive. In the rest of Pirkei Avot, each new character ‘receives’ the tradition, and declares something new. This touches on a paradox best expressed by the mystic knowledge known as kabbalah. Every kabbalistic text, as shocking or heterodox or innovative as it may seem, insists on it being received as an ancient tradition. We see this in the core kabbalistic text, the Zohar, which is presented as being a set of discussions and mystical experiences of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the land of Israel in the 2nd-century, but all signs point to it having been composed in the circle of Rabbi Moshe de León in 13th-century Spain. Many academics stop there, what’s important for them is to show which words belong to which century, and that the entire work is a fake. But anyone who has read the Zohar with an open heart knows that that hardly matters. The words are beautiful and powerful and true, kabbalah in the best sense; even if Moshe de León invented the text, he also received it from a source of Truth. This too is Torah from Sinai.
I mention all this because this Saturday night and Sunday we celebrate the festival of Lag Ba’omer. Everyone knows it’s a happy day, we just don’t know exactly why. One of the explanations given for these celebrations is that it’s the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. His death, as described in the Idra Zuta portion of the Zohar, was a fantastic experience with fire and mysteries. Still, it's strange to celebrate the death of an important rabbi, and there's no early source that talks about him dying on this day. The most convincing explanation about this custom is that it's due to a spelling mistake. The second printed version of the popular kabbalistic work Pri Etz Chayim from the year 1802 says that Lag Baomer is יום שמת רשב”י, the day that Shimon bar Yochai died. The first edition from 1782 and earlier manuscripts all have יום שמח רשב"י, the day that Shimon bar Yochai rejoiced!
From an orthodox perspective, this is probably heresy — a spelling mistake became a festival!? But I actually celebrate such mistakes. Change doesn't always have to scare us; whether through mistakes, innovation or creation, if the motivations are pure our world becomes richer through such developments. This, for me, is the meaning of Torah from Sinai.
Shabbat shalom!