You Make Sinai Happen!

The Children of Israel are on the cusp of entering the land after a forty-year journey through the wilderness. Moshe’s final message to his people is intended to carry them through the ages, inspiring them to embrace their identity and their mission:

This day (hayom hazeh) the Lord your God charges you to do these statutes and these laws, and you shall keep and do (v’shamarta v’asita) them with all your heart and with all your being.
(Deuteronomy 26:16)

The rabbinic sages knew how to draw the maximum meaning from the Torah’s language by asking pointed questions:

What is the meaning of “this day”? Had the Holy One, blessed be He, not commanded Israel until now? And was this not already the fortieth year [since they had left Egypt], as it says: “And it came to pass in the fortieth year…” (Deuteronomy 1:3)? What, then, is the meaning of the words “this day”? Rather, thus said Moshe to Israel: “On each and every day, let the Torah be as dear to you as if you had received it this very day from Mount Sinai….” (Tanhuma, Ki Tavo 1)

Taking the words “this day” literally posed both a problem and an opportunity for the sages who composed this midrash. The Torah had, after all, been given forty years earlier, not at the moment when the people stood poised to enter the land. The author of the midrash therefore transforms Moshe’s message into a kind of pep talk, meant to keep the people’s relationship with God’s law fresh, immediate, and inspiring. The observance of the Torah becomes a means of reliving the most monumental event in Israel’s history: the revelation at Sinai.

This idea is expanded by one of the greatest sages of Eretz Yisrael during the Talmudic period, Rabbi Yohanan. In true rabbinic fashion, he finds additional significance in the apparent redundancy of the words “keep and do,” understanding them as words of special emphasis:

Rabbi Yohanan said: “When anyone performs a single commandment sincerely—literally, truthfully—Scripture ascribes it to him as if it had been given [through him] from Mount Sinai, as it says: ‘You shall keep and do….’” Rather, anyone who observes the Torah and fulfills it sincerely, it is as if he himself arranged it and gave it from Mount Sinai.

And Rabbi Yohanan also said: “Anyone who does [what is written in] the Torah sincerely, Scripture ascribes it to him as if he had made himself, as it says: ‘At that time the Lord commanded me to impart [to you laws and rules to make you do]’” (Deuteronomy 4:14). It does not say, “to do them,” but rather, “to make you do them.” From here [we learn] that Scripture ascribes it to him as if he had made and created himself. (ibid.)

Rabbi Yohanan thus dramatically enhances the human role in revelation. For him, the performance of the mitzvot, the carrying out of God’s will, makes those who observe the Torah into genuine partners in revelation. In a sense, then, every day on which we carry out God’s will is another day of attendance at Sinai. We do not merely remember revelation; through our actions, we make it happen anew.

Rabbi Yohanan goes a step further still. Carrying out God’s will does not merely renew the revelation at Sinai; it turns each of us into a co-creator of our own being. Through the choices we make and the mitzvot we perform, we participate in shaping and remaking ourselves.

This is an especially powerful message as we approach the season of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These are the days when we are challenged to examine ourselves and, in a very real sense, to recreate ourselves. Rabbi Yohanan reminds us that God has already given us the tools to do so. Every sincere act, every mitzvah performed with integrity and commitment, gives us the opportunity to renew Sinai and, in turn, to renew ourselves.

Each day, through what we do, we can make Sinai happen again.