Chasidut zu Schemot 19:1
בַּחֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ הַשְּׁלִישִׁ֔י לְצֵ֥את בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם בַּיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֔ה בָּ֖אוּ מִדְבַּ֥ר סִינָֽי׃
Den dritten Monat nach dem Auszuge der Kinder Israel aus dem Lande Ägypten, am Tage [des Neumonds] kamen sie in die Wüste Sinai.
Kedushat Levi
Exodus 19,1. “In the third month after the Israelites having departed from the land of Egypt, (on the first of the month), on this day, they came to the desert of Sinai.” You may be familiar with the “nickname” given by his contemporaries to Rav Yoseph, who called him סיני, Sinai. (B’rachot 64) The reason why this Rabbi was given this title, was that he had a photographic memory concerning halachot, and could recall them at will at any time. A closer look at the word סיני reveals that it is a term used for expressing the entire range of the Torah in all its ramifications. According to our author we are all aware that קול, “sound,” is a composite of several components, i.e. fire, water and wind, (air). When speaking of דבור אלוקים, “G’d’s speech,” or utterance, this is something beyond man’s ability to define and analyze. The terms קול, דבור, “sound” and “speech” respectively, are indistinguishable when applied to G’d. The two commandments at Mount Sinai, אנכי and לא יהיה לך, which the entire Jewish people heard with their ears directly from G’d’s ‘mouth,’ actually combined within them the entire Torah, something that the mouth of a mortal person is certainly unable to express simultaneously. Our limited powers of perception do not even enable us to express two different subjects simultaneously, how much less so the entire Torah. Studying the written Torah handed down to us by Moses, shows us [according to the popular expression:שבעים פנים לתורה , “the written Torah comprises 70 facets.” Ed.] that something similar is true of the sayings of our sages in the Talmud, i.e. every saying has more than one meaning, the reason being that the root of all these sayings is based on the Torah.
We read in psalms 125,2: ירושלים הרים סביב לה וה' סביב לעמו, “Jerusalem is enfolded by hills, and the Lord enfolds it.” The word ירושלים there is a simile for the collective soul of the Jewish people, known also as כנסת ישראל. The words: וה' סביב לעמו, mean that seeing that everything in the universe revolves around the Jewish people, Hashem, naturally, is intimately involved in the fortunes of this people. The הרים, hills, mentioned in that verse refer to the three patriarchs, who personify the roots of holiness in the celestial regions. These patriarchs “surround” the collective soul of the Jewish people. It is therefore incumbent upon every individual Israelite to attach himself to this “root” of holiness. The function of this “root” is to illuminate the path of the “branch,” (the descendants) without any screen being interposed, or intervention by any spiritually negative, sinful forces. Man’s function in this world, vis a vis his fellow man, is to dispense loving kindness; however, the most important aspect of this “doing good,” is that it be based on the spiritual values of the “root,” the patriarchs who have shown us the way.
While it is clear that doing kind deeds is morally positive, the definition of what is a good deed is not up to man, but up to G’d and His Torah. Unfortunately many people, including leaders of the Jewish people, have failed in this regard, performing what they thought were “good” deeds, expressions of pity and mercy, but wasted on unworthy individuals. Our sages on Kohelet Rabbah 7,16 אל תהי צדיק הרבה, ואל תתחכם יותר, “do not be overly righteous, and do not try to be too smart,” have said in explaining this: כל הנעשה רחמן על האכזרים, ”showing mercy to the cruel people,” suggest that what Solomon had in mind was King Sha-ul who, when asked to wipe out Amalek including children and livestock, questioned G’d’s instructions (through the prophet Samuel) by asking what the children had done wrong and how the livestock had sinned. As a result of his misguided sense of when to practice mercy and when to be steadfast, he allowed the king of the Amalekites Agog to survive with historically terrible consequences for the Jewish people, whereas he killed a city of Jewish priests, Nov, merely on suspicion and the accusation by a single prejudiced general. He, personally, paid for it with not only his own life, but the lives of three of his sons. Leading the kind of life the Torah has taught us, requires among other virtues, that one does not allow one’s personal prejudices to influence one’s decisions. When one reaches such a level one is surrounded in all three dimensions by the protective emanations of the patriarchs, first and foremost among their virtues being the virtue of אמת, truth. Making truthfulness, also versus one’s own self, the focus of one’s virtues, enables a person to distance himself from nearly all evil influences.
When the Torah stresses the fact that the month when the Children of Israel entered the desert of Sinai was the “third” month after they had left Egypt, the number “three” symbolizes “truth”, as it does in the letter ש which has three “lines” symbolizing the emanations חסד, גבורה, and תפארת, harmony.
When a person has attained the domain, environment, of אמת, truth, and made it his permanent spiritual abode, he has truly left behind יצא, all aspects of evil, רע, as well as the seducers luring him into committing evil. The Israelites in the desert at this point had finally graduated from their slave-mentality, and all the temptations that are part of the daily lives of slaves. The Torah emphasizes this aspect by repeating: ביום הזה באו, on this day they “had arrived.” The Torah’s choosing to refer to this day as יום הזה, “this day”, rather than יום ההוא, “that day,” proves how completely clear the experiences about to be accumulated by the people were to them. Coming back to the word סיני also being a word describing someone’s perfect memory, (page 413), the arrival in the desert called [afterwards, I presume, Ed.] “Sinai,” was given this name as the Israelites’ memory absorbed all the lessons they were going to learn (revelation, Moses’ ascending the Mountain and returning with the Tablets, etc.) while around that area and around Mount Chorev which dominates that area. Everything experienced by the Israelites during their stay in that area for over eleven months, had to be internalized and to be imprinted on their memory. The vast majority of their experiences in that region were connected to the spoken word, words which had to be committed to memory.
We read in psalms 125,2: ירושלים הרים סביב לה וה' סביב לעמו, “Jerusalem is enfolded by hills, and the Lord enfolds it.” The word ירושלים there is a simile for the collective soul of the Jewish people, known also as כנסת ישראל. The words: וה' סביב לעמו, mean that seeing that everything in the universe revolves around the Jewish people, Hashem, naturally, is intimately involved in the fortunes of this people. The הרים, hills, mentioned in that verse refer to the three patriarchs, who personify the roots of holiness in the celestial regions. These patriarchs “surround” the collective soul of the Jewish people. It is therefore incumbent upon every individual Israelite to attach himself to this “root” of holiness. The function of this “root” is to illuminate the path of the “branch,” (the descendants) without any screen being interposed, or intervention by any spiritually negative, sinful forces. Man’s function in this world, vis a vis his fellow man, is to dispense loving kindness; however, the most important aspect of this “doing good,” is that it be based on the spiritual values of the “root,” the patriarchs who have shown us the way.
While it is clear that doing kind deeds is morally positive, the definition of what is a good deed is not up to man, but up to G’d and His Torah. Unfortunately many people, including leaders of the Jewish people, have failed in this regard, performing what they thought were “good” deeds, expressions of pity and mercy, but wasted on unworthy individuals. Our sages on Kohelet Rabbah 7,16 אל תהי צדיק הרבה, ואל תתחכם יותר, “do not be overly righteous, and do not try to be too smart,” have said in explaining this: כל הנעשה רחמן על האכזרים, ”showing mercy to the cruel people,” suggest that what Solomon had in mind was King Sha-ul who, when asked to wipe out Amalek including children and livestock, questioned G’d’s instructions (through the prophet Samuel) by asking what the children had done wrong and how the livestock had sinned. As a result of his misguided sense of when to practice mercy and when to be steadfast, he allowed the king of the Amalekites Agog to survive with historically terrible consequences for the Jewish people, whereas he killed a city of Jewish priests, Nov, merely on suspicion and the accusation by a single prejudiced general. He, personally, paid for it with not only his own life, but the lives of three of his sons. Leading the kind of life the Torah has taught us, requires among other virtues, that one does not allow one’s personal prejudices to influence one’s decisions. When one reaches such a level one is surrounded in all three dimensions by the protective emanations of the patriarchs, first and foremost among their virtues being the virtue of אמת, truth. Making truthfulness, also versus one’s own self, the focus of one’s virtues, enables a person to distance himself from nearly all evil influences.
When the Torah stresses the fact that the month when the Children of Israel entered the desert of Sinai was the “third” month after they had left Egypt, the number “three” symbolizes “truth”, as it does in the letter ש which has three “lines” symbolizing the emanations חסד, גבורה, and תפארת, harmony.
When a person has attained the domain, environment, of אמת, truth, and made it his permanent spiritual abode, he has truly left behind יצא, all aspects of evil, רע, as well as the seducers luring him into committing evil. The Israelites in the desert at this point had finally graduated from their slave-mentality, and all the temptations that are part of the daily lives of slaves. The Torah emphasizes this aspect by repeating: ביום הזה באו, on this day they “had arrived.” The Torah’s choosing to refer to this day as יום הזה, “this day”, rather than יום ההוא, “that day,” proves how completely clear the experiences about to be accumulated by the people were to them. Coming back to the word סיני also being a word describing someone’s perfect memory, (page 413), the arrival in the desert called [afterwards, I presume, Ed.] “Sinai,” was given this name as the Israelites’ memory absorbed all the lessons they were going to learn (revelation, Moses’ ascending the Mountain and returning with the Tablets, etc.) while around that area and around Mount Chorev which dominates that area. Everything experienced by the Israelites during their stay in that area for over eleven months, had to be internalized and to be imprinted on their memory. The vast majority of their experiences in that region were connected to the spoken word, words which had to be committed to memory.
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Kedushat Levi
Exodus 11,4. “Moses said: ‘thus has the Lord said, etc.;’” we have to understand why the expression כה was used here to introduce Moses’ prophecy when we had learned that whereas all the other prophets introduced their prophecies with this word, Moses prophesied by using the vision he referred to as זה, “this,” i.e. as a clear vision.
We gain the impression from this preamble to the prophecy of the plague of the death of the firstborn that Moses had not been granted to see this vision as clearly as he had seen other visions, and that he had attained the level of seeing visions described as זה, only at the revelation at Mount Sinai. In Exodus 19,1 we read ביום הזה באו מדבר סיני, “on this day (first of Sivan) they arrived in the desert of Sinai.”
The words of that verse help us understand the formulation of the question in Deuteronomy 6,20, attributed in the Haggadah shel Pessach to the “smart” son, מה העדות והחוקים והמשפטים, “what are the testimonies, the statutes and the social laws, etc.?” The Torah there should have written: על מה, i.e.” why were these laws given,” not “what are these laws”, seeing that the questioner had demonstrated that he was familiar with these laws already!
Looking at this verse purely from the p’shat,, the “smart” son appears to enquire for the reasons underlying these various types of commandments in the Torah. He does not address the commandments themselves. Seeing that this is so, he should have asked: על מה, “why or what for”, did G’d command these different observances? Not only do we find the formulation of the questions difficult to understand, but, at least in the Haggadah shel Pessach, [as opposed to the answer given in the written Torah, Ed.] how does the answer of אין מפטירין אחר הפסח אפיקומן, “one must not eat a dessert after having consumed the meat of the Passover offering,” answer the question?
The proper answer to the smart son’s question is that G’d took us out of Egypt using all kinds of supernatural miracles in doing so, and that this redemption was not a temporary redemption subject to being reversed, but that it made of the Jewish people a free people, a people never again to become enslaved collectively. Not only did the Egyptians “let us go,” but they tried to “expel” us out of fear that more of their number would die if we stayed on their soil a minute longer. The answer that the author of the Haggadah shel Pessach suggests that the father give to this “smart” son seems to leave out the principal reasons for the legislation by concentrating on something of secondary or even still lesser significance.
We gain the impression from this preamble to the prophecy of the plague of the death of the firstborn that Moses had not been granted to see this vision as clearly as he had seen other visions, and that he had attained the level of seeing visions described as זה, only at the revelation at Mount Sinai. In Exodus 19,1 we read ביום הזה באו מדבר סיני, “on this day (first of Sivan) they arrived in the desert of Sinai.”
The words of that verse help us understand the formulation of the question in Deuteronomy 6,20, attributed in the Haggadah shel Pessach to the “smart” son, מה העדות והחוקים והמשפטים, “what are the testimonies, the statutes and the social laws, etc.?” The Torah there should have written: על מה, i.e.” why were these laws given,” not “what are these laws”, seeing that the questioner had demonstrated that he was familiar with these laws already!
Looking at this verse purely from the p’shat,, the “smart” son appears to enquire for the reasons underlying these various types of commandments in the Torah. He does not address the commandments themselves. Seeing that this is so, he should have asked: על מה, “why or what for”, did G’d command these different observances? Not only do we find the formulation of the questions difficult to understand, but, at least in the Haggadah shel Pessach, [as opposed to the answer given in the written Torah, Ed.] how does the answer of אין מפטירין אחר הפסח אפיקומן, “one must not eat a dessert after having consumed the meat of the Passover offering,” answer the question?
The proper answer to the smart son’s question is that G’d took us out of Egypt using all kinds of supernatural miracles in doing so, and that this redemption was not a temporary redemption subject to being reversed, but that it made of the Jewish people a free people, a people never again to become enslaved collectively. Not only did the Egyptians “let us go,” but they tried to “expel” us out of fear that more of their number would die if we stayed on their soil a minute longer. The answer that the author of the Haggadah shel Pessach suggests that the father give to this “smart” son seems to leave out the principal reasons for the legislation by concentrating on something of secondary or even still lesser significance.
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Me'or Einayim
And that is [the meaning of the verse] On this day they came into the wilderness of Sinai (Ex. 19:1), which our Sages of Blessed Memory interpreted as “[Torah] should be new for you as on the day when it was given” (Tanhuma, Yitro 13); but how is such a thing possible – was the Torah not given long ago, and how could [Torah] be new like the day it was given? But according to our words above it can be understood well, that in each and every day he puts we will do before we will listen, for this is the essence of receiving the Torah as we have clarified.
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