The Body Said No at Sinai
Har Sinai was beautiful, covered with flowers. There was not a cloud in the sky–except for the Shechina perched on top of the mountain. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the Jewish people were nowhere to be seen. They overslept.
Usually, this image is used to segue into the custom of Tikkun Leil Shavuot: staying up all night learning the Torah, to rectify the “oops” of the previous generations.
Usually, the story ends there. There were no alarms in the desert. These were former slaves; they were exhausted after their long trek through the desert, followed by meticulous preparations for the receiving of the Torah, who collapsed into slumber and did not wake up on time. Yet this simple narrative falls apart quite quickly: the giving of the Torah was a momentous occasion, meant to occur once and to signify a defining point in the national development. It is so essential to one’s commitment to Judaism that another midrash suggests that all the souls of all the future Jews were present at Sinai. And still– adrenaline did not kick in, the night watches were not established, the desert beds were too comfortable, and an entire nation overslept? Ibn Ezra takes issue with this midrash and compares this night to the night of Yom Kippur and the Kohen Gadol, who, facing an experience of existential consequence— was certainly not sleeping.
If the Jewish people overslept, then there must have been a deep psychological reason for it. What were their bodies and psyches communicating? What subconscious resistance led them to physically distance themselves from Har Sinai, avoid the whole experience, and have a respectable excuse of “We were too sleepy”?
I want to suggest a similar phenomenon familiar to some parents and educators: school refusal. A child simply refuses to go to school. Sometimes it manifests as refusal to get onto the bus or the car, refusal to enter the school building, refusal to listen to the pleading parents and administrators. Often it is masked by simply oversleeping, missing the bus or the ride, and avoiding the whole situation. For parents, school refusal is deeply unsettling. It is shame and guilt–inducing: look, all the other kids are going to the temple of knowledge, learning, making friends, participating, and are set on the path of becoming mature human beings. Why is my child refusing to do what’s good for him or her? Why the self-sabotage?
From a different perspective, the child’s psyche is telling a very different story: the school experience is fraught. The building is not a safe space, conducive to learning and growth. Self-preservation kicks in, reducing the brain to the simple survival instincts: fight, flight, or freeze. The freeze looks awfully close to involuntary sleeping in.
With this lens in place, I want to return to Har Sinai and introduce a different midrash. At the time of giving of the Torah, Hashem suspended the mountain over the heads of the Jewish people like a barrel and declared: if you accept the Torah, all will be good. If not, I will drop the mountain on your heads, and this will be your grave. The midrash continues that the Jewish people accepted the Torah. However, this imagery clashes with the original midrash. The mountain is no longer an enticing destination. It is now a trap, with only one way in and only one way out. Considering how the stakes were raised and that the Jewish people had nowhere to flee in the desert, no wonder they chose to oversleep and stave off the inevitable.
Indeed, the midrash itself notes how this acceptance of Torah under coercion is not binding, and had to be rectified during the days of Mordechai and Esther when the Jews accepted the Torah willingly, on their own terms. Yet, unlike manna, there is no mention that this experience of an overhanging mountain was a test for the nation.
If the Jews were acting in their self-preservation interests, and are comparable to the child who is refusing to go to school, then who is the baffled and embarrassed parent in the story? By definition, it cannot be Hashem, who orchestrated the situation and exists beyond human emotional response. The only remaining player is Moshe, which leads to the question: what was Moshe supposed to learn from this?
Moshe was still at the very beginning of his mission of how to be an effective leader for the nation. Repeatedly, when the nation misbehaves or complains, instead of talking to the people, Moshe runs straight to Hashem, and, like an exhausted parent, vents: these people are impossible! Here, too– the mountain suspended in the background and the nation snoring peacefully in their tents –must have been a real moment of consternation. Yet, according to the Midrash, Moshe does not complain, does not abandon his people, does not reassure them with false platitudes (go get the Torah and I will give you a cookie), but awakens them and walks with them to the looming mountain without minimizing the terror of the moment.
Leadership, it turns out, is not about removing the fear nor about shaming people out of it. It is about accompaniment: helping others move forward even when the ground feels unsafe, even when the mountain looms overhead.
