blogs/rabbi-huberman

Two Torahs at Sinai

The Talmud tells us of the day that Moses was jettisoned more than a thousand years into the future, into the classroom of one of our greatest Sages, Rabbi Akiva.

Moses wanted to see how the Torah, received at Mount Sinai, would hold up against the passage of time. 

God tells Moses that, in the future, Rabbi Akiva would derive countless laws from every "jot and tittle" contained in the original Torah.

And Moses says: "This I have to see."

And so it was.  God tells Moses to "turn around," and, with the snap of God's fingers, there he is, sitting in the back row of Rabbi Akiva's classroom.

Moses is excited.  He is ecstatic that the Torah has survived almost thirteen hundred years after the events at Mount Sinai.

But soon, he begins to feel faint. He doesn't understand a word being said. The circumstances in Roman-occupied Israel two thousand years ago were wildly different from what Moses experienced in the desert following the Exodus.

During a particularly heated debate, a student asks Rabbi Akiva, "Rabbi, what is the source of the authority of these teachings?'

"Halacha L'Moshe miSinai," answers Rabbi Akiva. "This is the law given to Moses at Sinai."

Moses is calmed, and returns to the Jewish people.  He's realized that, even though the words of the Torah were the same both in the wilderness and in Rabbi Akiva's classroom, the context it would be applied to had changed over time. 

And that is why, in part, both the Torah and the Jewish people have endured for more than three thousand years.

I think about this Talmudic story each time I visit Times Square. I wonder, what would Moses -- or Rabbi Akiva, for that matter -- think, standing at the corner of Broadway and 42nd, amidst blinding lights, street vendors, honking horns, and tourists filming it all?

There is a series of sayings collected two thousand years ago which continues to be taught within Judaism.  They are known as Pirkei Avot - the sayings of our Sages. We will begin the study of Pirkei Avot this Sunday at CTI.

The introductory sentence to the volume reads as follows:

Moses received Torah from Sinai

And delivered it to Joshua,

And Joshua to the Elders,

And the Elders to the Prophets,

And the Prophets delivered it to the Men of the Great Assembly.

Notice that there is a word missing from the first line.  Moses did not receive "the Torah" but rather "Torah." 

Sages have debated whether the omission of the word "the" is significant.  I think it is.  Our tradition tells us that there were two Torahs given on Mount Sinai: written and oral.

The written was cast in stone, and the oral Torah is what we struggle with person to person, culture to culture, as we seek to apply it to an evolving world.  

Same Torah, different times.

The Shema prayer instructs us to "teach these words to our children." But what exactly are these words?

I believe they center around arguably the most important line in the entire Talmud: "The Torah begins with kindness....and ends with kindness." (Sotah 14a)

There is no person that I know who does not attempt to teach their children how to be good human beings. We try to inspire our children to be kind and compassionate. 

Whether we can quote exact Torah verses or not, each of us endeavors to pass on Torah -- that is, a code of ethics and behavior which has been transmitted to us from our parents and grandparents.

That is oral law. That is Torah.

Our Talmudic Sages asked, "Why was Torah given on Mount Sinai?"

The answer is that Mount Sinai was the smallest of mountains.  Mount Sinai is neither Mount Everest nor Mount Kilimanjaro. 

According to our mystics, Mount Sinai was not only a place but also a frame of mind.  Mount Sinai represents a starting point, a place of humility and inquiry.

This is the week when we read about the giving of Judaism's code of written laws at Mount Sinai; we will rise in synagogue as we recite the Ten Commandments.

But the Commandments are only part of the story.  What is more important is what we do with these laws. 

There is no specific commandment in the Torah to be kind, humble, or compassionate. It is through a series of stories, examples, laws, and events that the Torah inclines us towards a series of values: to be better citizens and neighbors, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, grandchildren and friends.

It is often a struggle. 

It can be difficult to apply these instructions within a context of kindness, wisdom, and patience as we interact with family members, friends and others around us.

This is the challenge of an evolving Torah.

How wonderful it is that the Torah's laws of gossip which, thousands of years ago commanded us to "watch over what comes off our lips" inspire us today, as we text, to "watch over what comes off our thumbs."

As Moses learned three thousand years ago, while the words of the Torah have remained constant over time, it is the changing context of Torah -- the oral tradition ---which has enabled us to adapt and survive.

For Judaism, the nature of prayer, the ways we love, how we eat, and the lessons we convey to our children continue to evolve from generation to generation.

As we continue to navigate through this often difficult and challenging world, let us have the courage not only to embrace the Torah, but also to discuss and debate Torah.

For it is not how many times we sit in a pew and recite words from a book, but the Torah we practice in our daily lives that makes us godly. 

Torah is a way of life. 

May we continue to pass it on to our children, as past generations did to us. Let us continue to teach these words  which have remained constant through time.

But let us also listen with our hearts to the spirit of Torah.

Indeed, our tradition teaches that were two Torahs received at Mount Sinai.

Reading from a page is easy.  Struggling to apply these values to our lives -- therein lays the beauty of Judaism.

Therein lies Torah.

Shabbat shalom, v'kol tuv.

Rabbi Irwin Huberman