‘The Fire before the Fire’ Parashat Va’etchanan 5786
Moshe’s final monologue in the Book of Devarim is not merely a review of Jewish history. It is a lesson in Jewish destiny. Yet the order seems backward. First he asks [Devarim 4:33]: “Has any people ever heard the voice of G-d speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and lived?” Then he asks [Devarim 4:34]: “Or has any G-d ever attempted to go and take for himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, like all that G-d did for you in Egypt before your eyes?”. Historically, the Exodus preceded Sinai. Yet Moshe mentions Sinai before Egypt. More startlingly, only ten verses later do we read [Devarim 4:44]: “This is the Torah that Moshe placed before the Children of Israel”. The Netziv[1] notes this unusual sequence. Why does Moshe begin with the revelation of Sinai and only later introduce the Torah itself?
I suggest that an answer lies in a single word: “the fire (ha’esh).” Not simply a fire, but the fire. A specific fire. A familiar fire. Prima facie, Moshe is referring to the flames of Mount Sinai. But perhaps there is a deeper dimension. Our Sages in the Midrash teach that the Torah preceded the creation of the world, comparing the Torah to an architect’s blueprint, that the Torah was G-d’s instrument of creation and that the world was created for the sake of Torah. The Esoteric Torah (Zohar) develops this idea even further. Before creating the world, G-d “looked into the Torah and created the world.” Torah is therefore not merely a book handed to the Jewish People at Sinai. It is the conceptual framework through which reality itself came into being. Before there was a world, there were letters. Before there was matter, there was meaning. Before there was history, there was Torah.
This suggests a bold possibility. The fire of Devarim [4:33] is not merely the fire of Sinai. It is the primordial fire that preceded creation itself. The Divine letters generated that fire and through that fire G-d brought the universe into existence. This is admittedly a very esoteric reading but it fits remarkably well with the text. If so, then Moshe’s chronology is not historical but metaphysical. Historically, the Exodus came before Sinai. Metaphysically, Sinai reaches back long before the Exodus. When the Jewish People stood at Sinai, they were not merely receiving commandments. They were encountering the same creative force that brought heaven and earth into being. The fire of Sinai was a brief glimpse behind the curtain of creation itself. Moshe therefore begins not with redemption but with origin. Not with Egypt but with the fire that preceded Egypt. Not with history but with the source of history.
Last week, while visiting the Great Neck Synagogue, I noticed a remarkable curtain (parochet) overing the ark (aron hakodesh). At the bottom stood a mountain engulfed in flames. Above it floated a cloud of Hebrew letters. Connecting the two was a narrow channel, as though something were moving between heaven and earth. A friend explained that the donors were Holocaust survivors and that the image alluded to Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion. The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah [18a] recounts that the Romans wrapped him in a Torah scroll and burned him alive. His students asked him, “Master, what do you see?” He answered, “The parchment is burning, but the letters are flying upward.” Fire could consume the parchment, but not the Torah itself. The Divine letters remained forever beyond the grasp of Rome. It is difficult to imagine a more powerful symbol for Holocaust survivors who had witnessed entire communities go up in flames while somehow the Torah itself endured.
But standing before that ark, I saw the image differently. I did not see letters ascending from a burning Torah. I saw letters descending into the fire below. The letters hovering above the mountain seemed to belong not to the end of a life, but to the beginning of the world. The conduit connecting the letters and the mountain appeared to depict Torah entering creation. It was as if the primordial letters were flowing downward into the fire, becoming the substance of the world and eventually the words revealed at Sinai. Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion saw letters rising from destruction. I saw letters descending toward creation. He witnessed the separation of Torah from the physical world. I was seeing the moment when Torah first entered the physical world.
This image can explain why Moshe begins with “the fire” before introducing the Torah. The revelation at Sinai was not merely an event that followed the Exodus. It was the moment when the letters that had created the world entered human history. The Torah did not begin at Sinai. Sinai was the point at which the eternal Torah became accessible to mankind. The fire came first because the fire represents the source. It represents the meeting point between creation and revelation, between G-d’s blueprint and G-d’s covenant. The mountain on fire was not merely the setting for revelation. It was a portal connecting the Jewish People to a reality older than the world itself.
Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion’s vision and the image in Great Neck describe opposite movements of the same reality. At Sinai, the letters descend. At martyrdom, the letters ascend. At creation, the letters enter the world. At destruction, they return to heaven. And yet neither movement is permanent. The letters that rise eventually return. That is the story of Jewish history. Romans burn scrolls, but Torah survives. Exiles scatter communities, but Torah survives. The Holocaust destroys centres of Jewish life across Europe, but Torah survives. The parchment burns, but the letters endure. They endure not as abstractions floating in heaven but as letters that continually descend once again into Jewish homes, Jewish schools, Jewish communities, and Jewish lives.
This insight is especially meaningful in the days following Tisha b’Av. Tisha b’Av commemorates destruction. We mourn the burning of the Holy Temples (Beit HaMikdash). We mourn Jerusalem. We mourn the loss of sovereignty. It is tempting to focus exclusively on the flames. But the Jewish response to destruction has never ended with fire. The haftorah of the Shabbat that follows Tisha b’Av begins with the words [Isaiah 40:1] “Be comforted, My people.” Consolation is possible because destruction is never the final chapter. Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion’s students saw a Torah consumed by fire. He saw letters ascending. The survivors who donated the ark in Great Neck experienced a similar reality. They saw a Europe consumed by fire, yet they also witnessed the letters descend once more into a rebuilt Jewish world. The same letters that rose from the parchment returned to Jewish history. This, perhaps, is Moshe’s deeper message. The Exodus made the Jewish People free. Sinai made us responsible. But the fire points to something even older than both. It points back to the beginning of creation, to the primordial fire through which the Divine letters entered reality. When Moshe asks, “Has any people ever heard the voice of G-d speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and lived?” he is not merely recalling a historical memory. He is reminding them that they encountered the very source of existence itself. The miracle of Sinai was not only that we heard G-d’s voice and survived. The miracle was that finite human beings became the custodians of the letters through which G-d created the world. And that is why the consolation after Tisha b’Av is so profound. Fires may rage. Buildings may fall. Empires may rise and disappear. But the letters remain. Sometimes they ascend. Sometimes they descend. Yet they never vanish, because they are older than history itself. They belong to the Torah that preceded creation, the Torah through which G-d fashioned the world, and the Torah that continues to illuminate it even after the flames have seemingly died out.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ari Sacher, Moreshet, 5786
Please daven for a Refu’a Shelema for Rachel bat Malka, Iris bat Chana, Sheindel Devora bat Rina, Esther Sharon bat Chana Raizel, Meir ben Drora, Golan ben Marcelle and Hodayah Emunah bat Shoshana Rachel.
[1] Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Berlin, known as the Netziv, who was the dean of the prestigious Volozhn Yeshiva in Lithuania in the 19th century
