Exodus 19:16-19 - The Giving of Torah
On the third day, as morning dawned, there was thunder, and lightning, and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the horn; and all the people who were in the camp trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp toward God, and they took their places at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the LORD had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently.
The blare of the horn grew louder and louder. As Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder.
We have more emotions than we have means of expressing them: crying in joy, crying in sadness; screaming in anger, screaming in excitement; running to, running away from; the range of our emotional possibilities is so large that we recourse to the same physical expressions to display contradictory feelings.
Not only that, but we have the extraordinary ability to be possessed of multiple powerful emotions at the same time. What overwhelms us, at the holiest moments in our lives, the engagements and the weddings, the graduations and the births, is not just how much we feel, but how many we feel.
So it is poignant that the Torah tells us not how we felt at Sinai, but what our expression of emotion was: “...and all the people who were in the camp trembled.” This verse, as Rashi would say, cries out, “interpret me.” Why were we trembling, we need to ask? What in fact were we feeling in that moment?
Torah’s unwillingness to describe our feelings suggests that we were possessed by many, that the experience of receiving Torah was holistic - it made a total claim on our emotional being. The Torah cannot tell us how we felt because it would be impossible to pull apart the charged web of how we experienced the Matan Torah - the Giving of Torah. Any statement would by definition exclude a piece of what shared Revelation meant to 1.2 million people (write me if you want to know how I got to that number).
And as eternal Torah made us tremble then, it should do so now as well. Torah, God, Judaism should always have the potential to affect what is deepest in us, for with Revelation, as in all relationships, the true measure of the depth of our love is the extent to which we allow our hearts to be touched.
See you all at the mountain,
Rabbi Scott Perlo
Check out more Torah on Revelation, along with the sources for this teaching, at plptorah.blogspot.com!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Lag B'Omer and the Disappearing Beard
Rabbi in Residence Scott Perlo teaches on Lag B'Omer. Meaningful subtitle commentary is provided...
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Shir haShirim Rabba
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth" (Shir haShirim 1:2)
The Rabbis, however, say: The commandment itself went to each of the Israelites and said to him, So and so many rules are attached [to me], so and so many penalties are attached [to me], so and so many precautionary measures are attached [to me], so and so many precepts and so and so many rulings from minor to major.
And the [Israelite] would reply: Yes, yes [I accept you]. And straightaway, the commandment kissed him on the mouth
Shir haShirim Rabbah
The Rabbis, however, say: The commandment itself went to each of the Israelites and said to him, So and so many rules are attached [to me], so and so many penalties are attached [to me], so and so many precautionary measures are attached [to me], so and so many precepts and so and so many rulings from minor to major.
And the [Israelite] would reply: Yes, yes [I accept you]. And straightaway, the commandment kissed him on the mouth
Shir haShirim Rabbah
Why Hartman Is Important
So why am I going gaga over David Hartman?
What I'm about to present is an idea that has possessed me for a long time, though I've not yet been able to articulate it. It may still remain, at this stage, plenty pre-articulate, but I take my inability to quickly encapsulate it as a sign of its intellectual size and importance.
Why spend so much time, one might ask, examining who we are and who we're becoming as a people and a religion? Rather just become, and let the details attendant sort themselves out. Why intellectualize the process?
By our nature as human beings we are unprepared for the future. The human soul God created is, more than anything else, a mass of infinite potential. It isn't that we can become anything - there are limits upon us - but that we can become an infinity of things. מה רבו מעשיך יה - how many are the things You have created, God. And it is a mistake to regard the future as a line that stretches out before us - the branches of what could be are uncountable.
The art of living, then, is the art of embracing what could be. The art of selecting from the many roads that lay right ahead of the now. So living well demands a consciousness of the manifold choices born in every moment. It demands understanding. This is why Torah is eternal - it is not that it doesn't change, but that it is forever designed to help us understand as we change.
והיה כעץ שתול על פלגי מים אשר פריו יתן בעתו ועלהו לא יבול וכל אשר יעשה יציח - תהלים א
And that person is like a tree planted by pools of water (that's the Torah) who gives its fruit in its own time, and whose leaves never with, and all that she does will succeed. Psalm 1
What I'm about to present is an idea that has possessed me for a long time, though I've not yet been able to articulate it. It may still remain, at this stage, plenty pre-articulate, but I take my inability to quickly encapsulate it as a sign of its intellectual size and importance.
Why spend so much time, one might ask, examining who we are and who we're becoming as a people and a religion? Rather just become, and let the details attendant sort themselves out. Why intellectualize the process?
By our nature as human beings we are unprepared for the future. The human soul God created is, more than anything else, a mass of infinite potential. It isn't that we can become anything - there are limits upon us - but that we can become an infinity of things. מה רבו מעשיך יה - how many are the things You have created, God. And it is a mistake to regard the future as a line that stretches out before us - the branches of what could be are uncountable.
The art of living, then, is the art of embracing what could be. The art of selecting from the many roads that lay right ahead of the now. So living well demands a consciousness of the manifold choices born in every moment. It demands understanding. This is why Torah is eternal - it is not that it doesn't change, but that it is forever designed to help us understand as we change.
והיה כעץ שתול על פלגי מים אשר פריו יתן בעתו ועלהו לא יבול וכל אשר יעשה יציח - תהלים א
And that person is like a tree planted by pools of water (that's the Torah) who gives its fruit in its own time, and whose leaves never with, and all that she does will succeed. Psalm 1
David Hartman!
Selections from Hartman's, A Heart of Many Rooms
We anticipate God's moves through learning and interpretation. The Torah is now our property. It is ours. In other words, the rabbinic scholar talks about God and about God's role in administering Torah law, because, in this phase of the covenantal tradition, the word and judgment of God are mediated by interpretation. (32)
The third stage of the covenant began when Jews took responsibility for their own history and not only for implementing mitzvot (the biblical stage) or their intellectual, interpretive autonomy (the talmudic stage). (34)
Talmudic Judaism thus appropriated the word of God, internalized it, played with it, sang with it, made it its own. The rabbis became shapers of revelation. That is, they became an interpretive community. (33)
We anticipate God's moves through learning and interpretation. The Torah is now our property. It is ours. In other words, the rabbinic scholar talks about God and about God's role in administering Torah law, because, in this phase of the covenantal tradition, the word and judgment of God are mediated by interpretation. (32)
The third stage of the covenant began when Jews took responsibility for their own history and not only for implementing mitzvot (the biblical stage) or their intellectual, interpretive autonomy (the talmudic stage). (34)
Talmudic Judaism thus appropriated the word of God, internalized it, played with it, sang with it, made it its own. The rabbis became shapers of revelation. That is, they became an interpretive community. (33)
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
PLP = Twitterriffic
We're proud to announce that PLP Torah is now on Twitter. Check out the PLPTorah Twitter feed.
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