By: Tzvi Freeman

Question:

Give me the handle on this Sinai thing. As I got it from Hebrew school, Moses went up the mountain, sat down at his desk and took dictation for forty days and forty nights. G‑d said, “In the beginning…” and that’s just what Moses wrote… until he got all the way to the end. Right?

Or did I get it all wrong? Because if I’m right, then I’ve got a lot of questions. And if I got it wrong, then you’re going to have to fill it in, ’cause otherwise, I’m going to sound like a real heretic…

Answer:

The story you got in Hebrew school is basically true, but it’s also missing lots of the details. So it ends up coming across as a simplistic Hebrew-School story that only the most gullible believer would swallow. Let’s take a closer look at the classical sources (Midrash, Talmud, et al) that describe how Torah got to us.

The Story, According to Us

Before Moses, there were traditions. There were rituals, there were stories, there were ideas. There were writings, as well.1 When did people start writing phonetically? I don’t know. There is no way to tell. And some etchings that have managed to endure on the walls of caves in the Sinai are not going to put together a whole history for me.2 But the stories of the patriarchs are obviously very ancient and attest to the linear thinking of a phonetically literate mind. 3 Most likely, Moses had a few scrolls in his possession from more ancient times.

According to Rashi (Exodus 24:4), before Moses went up that mountain, he presented the Jewish people with an official version of the Book of Genesis, as well as part of Exodus—up to the event at which he was standing. I expect he relied heavily on some of those earlier manuscripts for his work, and that he tried to be consistent in style with his additions. That doesn’t make this any less a divine work. G‑d can work with editors just as well as He can with authors. (Ask my editor, he’ll tell you G‑d actually prefers editors.)

The Ten Commandments scene was a very mystical experience. I haven’t read of any vaguely similar experience in any other people’s tradition. What happened? A mass of people shared in Moses’ experience. They hadn’t worked themselves up to Moses’ spiritual height, so it wasn’t able to last too long. But that was basically the idea: This revelation that G‑d has things He wants us to do and not do, that He cares about what’s going on with these little critters down here and here are the basic items—in a few moments, all this became just as real to the people as it was to Moses.

Which makes Moses pretty unique, because he’s the only prophet that does such a thing. Others just tell the people, “G‑d says such and such. Trust me.” Moses, the populist prophet, says, “Let me tune you in for a minute on what I’m hearing from G‑d.” Moses is cool.

Moses then disappears up the mountain for forty days. While there, forty-nine gates of wisdom are open to him, granting him the secrets of all existence. Moses then writes down the experience of Mount Sinai along with a set of rules for a new society, which eventually becomes Parshat Mishpatim—the section written in the Exodus story dealing principally with civil law.

Is everything in Parshat Mishpatim new? I doubt it. Just as I doubt there was anything at all new in the Ten Commandments. The novelty was not the content. It was this idea that the same G‑d who transcends all nature and is responsible for the very ground of existence is really wrapped up in how we live down here. That was revolutionary. It was totally out of synch with so-called enlightened thinking of the times. People thought only little gods could get involved in this kind of thing—and they were easy to bribe. In Egypt, they called that “mata”—something like “karma” to the Hindus. They knew of some essential oneness at the core level of reality—but they thought it preposterous to consider that this G‑d could be engaged in anyone’s daily life. Never mind in the daily lives of the masses. Which gave all the more justification to the hierarchy of power and oppression that Moses had stood up against.

Moses the Revolutionary

So Moses was bringing G‑d down to earth. He was demolishing the pyramid of spiritual knowledge that he knew so well from Egypt—and so much despised. He was saying, “This G‑d is so great, He can care about everybody and everything!” Moses was making a revolution.

Why was he making a revolution? Because G‑d was telling him to. To explain that, I would need a long conversation with you about what is G‑d and how G‑d talks to people and why. Maimonides already deals with that quite sufficiently in his Book of Knowledge. Then there is Shaar Ruach HaKodesh of Rabbi Chaim Vital, where he explains that the prophet hears G‑d speaking in his own voice and his own words, (or in the voice of his teacher—as was the case with Samuel). That explains a lot.

I will only supplement by pointing out that when you or I are completely immersed in a subject of Torah and come up with a novel explanation or idea, that is also Torah. Meaning that someone else would not be permitted to study that idea before having said the morning blessing to G‑d for having “given us His Torah.” Get that: Giving us His Torah! Even though you or I came up with this idea—and it didn’t feel like it landed in our heads from Andromeda 5. Yet it is G‑d’s Torah. That’s called being one with G‑d. Read chapter five of Tanya.

My point is that really prophecy is not so foreign to human experience as you might think. We all have ideas that pop into our minds from who-knows-where. Just that most people feel they thought of them on their own. A prophet, it seems (I haven’t really been there to tell) is one who hears things clearly that others may only pick up with much distortion. He is in tune with that unknowable place from which the Unknown speaks. So he hears it speaking to him with clarity.

Moses was the prophet who got in tune with the very core of reality and heard that speaking to him. That’s why he writes in third person, like a passive observer—even of his own life: “And G‑d spoke to Moses saying…” Because, as Nachmanides explains, Moses saw the raw essence as it is, stripped of the filter of his own ego. Other prophets heard the truth as it spoke to them. Moses saw truth as truth knows itself.

          (Chabad.org)