This is an edited version of my D’var Torah on the Shabbat just preceding Shavuot in 5782 (2022). It’s among others another take on the midrashim about the giving of the Torah that I teach over and over, and a meta-take on what it takes for Torah to be significant when we engage with the pressing issues of our world.
The second chapter of the Babylonian Talmud begins with a short discussion of a Mishnah, which teaches: If one was reading in the Torah and came to the passage “Shma Yisrael”, and it was the time of day when you are supposed to recite the Shma in the evening or the morning — if one intended or directed your heart, one has fulfilled the obligation to say the Shma.
The Talmud asks: What does this mean, “directed your heart”? The person was actually reading the passage — what other proof do you need that they meant to read the passage?
And the Talmud answers in a kind of Monty Python-ish way: Well, they could have just been proofreading the Torah scroll. That doesn’t count as reading at all.
I know this might seem like silly hairsplitting when there is so much to talk about in our world on fire, but the brief Talmudic discussion highlights that there are at least three ways of encountering the Torah. (1) You can proofread it — you can just literally look at the letters without any regard for their meaning. (2) You can read the Torah, pay attention to the words and even study them yourself or with someone.
And (3) the third way, which this particular Mishnah is interested in, is you could read the Torah for the sake of a mitzvah. You could read with commitment to the words you are reading — in this case to the unique divinity of Hashem and to the responsibility that comes with an awareness of the One Who brought us out of Mitzrayim, out of slavery. On this page of the Talmud, the rabbis are interested in the person who intends to read the Torah in this way, with an added awareness that is different even from reading the Torah in services or studying the weekly parasha.
Tonight begins Shavuot, and I have been using the anticipation of the upcoming chag to think about what it means to encounter the Torah as Torah, as revelation at Har Sinai. And what that encounter means for bringing Torah to the pressing matters of the world today.
Of the three levels of Torah that the Talmud discussed, I know that I am engaged in the first two. It’s not that I proofread the Torah, but I do love how the Torah sounds and I love how it looks. I love chanting it and hearing it chanted beautifully. I love accuracy; I am embarrassed when I am not well-enough prepared. I love the scroll itself, looking at beautiful script and thinking about the ways it contains life, in the parchment skin and the nut-based ink.
I live mostly on the second level, where the Torah is teachings that I read and think about, that I teach and talk about. Lil’mod ul’lamed, lish’mor v’la’asot, in the words of the prayer we say right before reciting the Shma: Torah for living, Torah for ethics. For this Torah I love the printed version called Mik’raot Gedolot, where a few lines of Torah exist on the page overpowered spatially by a dozen translations and commentaries, all far more wordy than the Torah itself, argumentative with each other. I love the oral Torah around the written Torah, and the idea that in that Torah I don’t have to be some kind of unique original but just willing to pick up the flow of the conversation, to take seriously what it means to be prepared to say something in it.
But this second level of Torah is not the Torah of Mt. Sinai. It’s the Torah from Sinai, but not at Sinai. It’s the Torah of the Chumash and the books and the internet, of longer d’rashes and shorter notes, a piece at a time at a human speed.
But when we read the story of the giving of the Torah and the receiving of the Torah, Matan Torah and Kabbalat ha-Torah, it’s described not as teaching and learning, but as something penetrating in all our senses. Fire and volcano, yes, but also requiring every single soul standing in one place so we can together catch it and all its layers, because without any one of us Torah is not entirely received. Somehow all of the Torah at once entered our community and each one of us, requiring the uniqueness of each person. Everyone with our different experiences and personalities and strengths caught one part of it amazingly well, and we depended on everyone else to have it all.
And at the same time the Torah suggests that this kind of receiving the Torah is fleeting, it doesn’t stay. Maybe it even happened only once ever, and hopefully that kind of revelation gives us the energy we need for the Torah of the books and the conversations.
For most of my spiritual life I have not been eager for revelation. I have been more than content with study. We say as Jews that the age of prophecy is behind us, and it yielded to Sages. We don’t depend on people of special spiritual insight; the Torah belongs to all of us and we all have a say in learning it and explaining it and defining it for our time.
But I am also aware that the Torah of the mid-level might have a vulnerability. When we treat the Torah as its words and its teachings, even the sum of all of them, we mix it as we should with all kinds of other teachings and all kinds of other words. Poetic and inspirational, philosophical and political. The Torah as one more set of interesting and valuable insights; it’s in that mix. I was thinking about my own podcast about “The Good Place” and Torah, which is mostly conversation where Torah and TV each get an equal voice. I learn a lot of Torah that way, actually, listening for how other modes and creators can teach me Torah.
But there is a danger that Torah is just another set of good words. Not that we don’t need good words, as many as we can get. But are we teaching Torah as Torah — am I, to you and to our kids in the next generation?
When we bring Torah to public policy, does it sound like just another quote, just another article? Just another point to make in an argument defined by someone else? Can people tell Torah from personal ideology, even if I think I can?
The Torah has to be a Torah of commitment, of the third level. To talk leading to mitzvot, flowing out of the deep meaning of the unity and uniqueness of the One, who brought us out of Mitzrayim, and to the responsibility of living in an awareness of that One who is the source of all Torah.
There are different ways to make sure the Torah we speak is really that Torah. These past few weeks leading toward Shavuot have for me been a process of purification, at least, opening up to the possibility that revelation has something to add something new or a new layer to my Torah, and to ours.
The Rabbis say that in the moment the Torah was being spoken, there was no other sound in the world. Not a conversation, not a bird singing, not an angel by the Divine throne signing Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh. Imagine being able to tune out everything else, so you could hear Torah without distraction and not confuse it with something else, even something good someone wants to tell you.
The Rabbis say that time stood still at Har Sinai and for each of the Ten Commandments, every individual Jew had the words personally delivered, along with an unhurried tutorial in which you could ask and object and clarify for as long as it took for you to be able to say: I accept this — and receive a kiss.
Imagine if there was something we all knew, as deeply and specifically as we needed to, and we all knew this about each other so we could believe in each other as we worked on translating those words from a desert retreat into a functioning society.
The Rabbis say that every soul of every Jew ever was there at the foot of Mt. Sinai, from every era. Imagine if we believed that everyone was necessary for us to really understand Torah. If we believed that we needed not just traditions but the new generation, who could hear something others before didn’t or couldn’t. Imagine if we could start any debate by asking what’s your Torah, what part did you get, can I tell you mine, let’s get theirs too before we say we know for sure.
The Rabbis say that receiving the Torah was sweet and supportive and scary and overwhelming all at the same time. Imagine if we could own up to all of that, if we could remember the experience of being certain and being frightened all at once.
The Rabbis say that receiving Torah was fleeting, and only lasted as long as everyone stayed in it — but that it’s possible to recreate that moment. Every time we say in the Shma hayom al levavecha, “these words I charge you with today are on your heart.” Imagine if it’s possible not just to learn particular words of Torah, but to revisit when Torah was whole, the whole Torah and the whole you.
The Rabbis say the Torah is black fire on white fire. Imagine if whenever you mentioned or taught words of Torah, or argued about them, you knew they were alive with divinity and humanity more than the other words people use that are just on paper or in air, and all that divinity and all that humanity stood with you whenever you used a word of Torah.
I listen to what I am saying, I read this — and what does it look like, and is it possible, and is it possible even for me?
But I know in our society and even in our community, words of Torah as a teaching here and a teaching there is not enough. There are weeks I feel that the experiences we are having these days in our lives and as citizens of this country and the world are more powerful and alive than the words of Torah we are hearing or exchanging. If we say this teaching is wise, that is not enough; that is not working. The only way Torah will come into this world again is through revelation — by reconnecting somehow to the experience of receiving Torah. Not just to what it’s like after the Torah is written down in our scroll and our books. We need not just to have Torah, but to receive it, and if possible to receive it together.
And even so there will be work to do, because the Torah is never clear. But our Rabbis say that when the Torah is really received, by everyone involved trying to receive Torah, then the process of debate and argument is itself elevated and helps make the Torah clearer and stronger in the world.
I don’t have a clear to-do to suggest, other than the “imagines” I have said. Torah needs to be more than wisdom, it needs to be alive. So think about what makes Torah alive for you: how it embodies connection with teachers and other generations not in the abstract but for real, how you can feel presences human and divine when you encounter Torah. The world needs more Torah, and the Torah needs us to be not just learners of Torah but receivers of Torah, so it can be in the world. And the Torah and the world need us to believe that we can be receivers of Torah, receivers of revelation, shoulder to shoulder every one of us, because we once were centuries ago when we met at Mt. Sinai. Saw you then, and see you there again tomorrow.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!
Leave a Reply