וַיִּסְעוּ מֵרְפִידִים וַיָּבֹאוּ מִדְבַּר סִינַי וַיַּחֲנוּ בַּמִּדְבָּר וַיִּחַן שָׁם יִשְׂרָאֵל נֶגֶד הָהָר. 

Having journeyed from Rephidim, they entered the wilderness of Sinai and encamped in the wilderness. Israel encamped there in front of the mountain. (Exodus 19:2, Translation from Sefaria) 

ויחן שם ישראל: כְּאִישׁ אֶחָד בְּלֵב אֶחָד, אֲבָל שְׁאָר כָּל הַחֲנִיּוֹת בְּתַרְעוֹמוֹת וּבְמַחֲלֹקֶת:

And there Israel encamped as one man and with one mind — but all their other encampments were made in a murmuring spirit and in a spirit of dissension.

Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael 19:2:10, Translation from Sefaria

Why is the unity of the Jewish people emphasized before the giving and reception of the Torah?

Is national unification necessary or meritorious for a complete relationship with God?

In present times, how can unity among the Jewish people be enhanced?

There are many linguistic resonances linking Sinai with the Tabernacle, including references to God’s “glory,” and to His voice emerging “from the midst of the fire,” and “from between the cherubim” (the gold of the Cherubim representing fire). The Mishkan is to provide a solution to the problem of retaining Revelation - how is Sinai to remain with them, part of them, central to them? How is the possibility of linking the sublime and the mundane realms to become a bearable reality? How is the fire of Sinai to be tolerated in ordinary life? Is there an imaginable version of an intersection between these two realms, a portable fiery nexus, that will not consume its vehicle? Otherwise, Sinai will become a remembrance of the past. For Ramban, this possibility is realized in the people’s transformation at Sinai. They are now worthy to carry a version of Sinai with them on their travels through the wilderness, a medium for God to continue revealing Himself.”

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus (Schocken Books, 2011), 316.

According to Dr. Zornberg, how does the Mishkan perpetuate the feeling of revelation within the people?

How do you carry revelation with you when we no longer have the Mishkan?

When Torah is received, man is reborn, he gets a brand-new life. For did not our Rabbis tell us that at the foot of Mount Sinai, when God gave Israel its greatest treasure, the Torah, the angels stopped their singing, the winds stopped blowing, the seas froze in their places, animals ceased their noises, the heavens stopped in its path, and the souls of all Israel left them? Aye, their soul left them, their old souls passed away, and instead they received new, more precious souls - they were reborn by Torah. We too, then, at this moment that we are mekabel Torah, can achieve rebirth, attain meaning in life, assure ourselves of immortality, but only if we grasp and hold hard…

Rabbi Norman Lamm, Torah Beloved: Reflections on the Love of Torah and the Celebration of the Holiday of Matan Torah, edited by Daniel Gober (OU Press, 2020), 7.

What do you think Rabbi Lamm means that receiving the Torah can “assure ourselves of immortality?” 

What does it mean to you to strongly “grasp and hold” the Torah?

For in truth this always was our greatest gift: the Torah, our constitution of liberty under the sovereignty of God, our marriage contract with Heaven itself, written in letters of black fire on white fire, joining the infinity of God and the finitude of humankind in an unbreakable bond of law and love, the scroll Jews carried wherever they went, and that carried them. This is the Torah: the voice of heaven as it is heard on earth, the word that lights the world.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Ceremony & Celebration: Introduction to the Holidays (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, 2017), 322. 

What do you think Rabbi Sacks means when he describes the Torah as the constitution of liberty under the sovereignty of God?

How do you think the partnership of “the infinity of God and the finitude of humankind” sustained the Jews through exile? 

How does the Torah sustain the Jewish people in today’s world?

At Sinai a new kind of nation was being formed, and a new kind of society – one that would be an antithesis of Egypt, in which the few had power and the many were enslaved. It was to be, in Abraham Lincoln’s words in the Gettysburg Address, “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Indeed without the covenant at Mount Sinai, Lincoln’s words might have been inconceivable. For nowhere else do we find anything like the politics of Mount Sinai, with its radical vision of a society held together not by power but by the free consent of its citizens to be bound, individually and collectively, by a moral code and by a covenant with God.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Exodus: The Book of Redemption: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, 2010), 150. 

According to Rabbi Sacks, as envisioned at Sinai, what should the ideal society look like?

Where in the Torah can one see a practical application of equality before the Law?

In what ways do our societies live up to the vision of the Torah?

לעסוק בדברי תורה to engage in study of the words of Torah. The word la’asok, to engage, suggests a habitual activity that does not necessarily involve specific intent. When a mother plays with her child, for example, there is an acute awareness of her child’s existence. But even when the mother is working at a job or is distracted by some other activity, there is a natural, latent awareness of her child’s existence that expresses itself in commitment, devotion, and a feeling of identification. The same is true with regard to Torah. The acute awareness present when actually studying may not pertain all day, but the latent awareness is always there.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Koren Mesorat Harav Siddur: A Hebrew/English Prayer Book with Commentary by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, edited by Arnold Lustiger, Gil Student, Simon Posner, Michael Taubes, Gidon Rothstein, Moshe Schapiro, and Chaim Yitzchak Genack (The Orthodox Union & Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2011), 8. 

How do you think one develops a “latent awareness” of Torah while not directly engaged in Torah study?

What does the word la’asok mean to you?

Do you find that Rav Soloveitchik’s conception of an “acute” and “latent” perception of Torah has similar parallels in other aspects of Jewish practice?

“The Torah Moses commanded us is the heritage of the congregation of Jacob” (Deuteronomy 33:4). It is a legacy left to us by our parents, grandparents and forbears since the beginning of time. In it I recorded the annals of man’s greatness as well as his depravity. Towering Saints like Moses move through its sacred script even as petty scoundrels like Balaam worm their way into the all-encompassing picture of man on earth. It is the chain of tradition which links us with all the giants of history whose blood pulsates through our own veins at this very moment.

Rabbi Norman Lamm, edited by Daniel Gober, Torah Beloved: Reflections on the Love of Torah and the Celebration of the Holiday of Matan Torah (OU Press, 2020), 4.

How do you experience the continuity of our collective experience when studying Torah?

Is there a particular individual or episode in Torah or Jewish history that most resonates with you?

‘I bore you on eagles’ wings, and I brought you to Me.’ The effect of the image is, of course, to convey intimacy, protection, love, speed; but also, I suggest, the enormous power of the adult eagle, effortlessly carrying its young through the air. In other words, it engenders in the people a sense of their own lightness. It deflates their grandiosity, and evokes a relation to God, in which their kavod, their weightiness, becomes insignificant. The image itself thus achieves the uncanny: it evokes past experience, the physical sensations of carrying and being carried, the imagined empathy with eagle and young, to convey a spiritual modality in which the weight, the substantiality of self are neutralized. Past identities are swept up in a rush of God’s wings. History is driven entirely by God’s motion. The human reality, the gravity of personal experience, is absorbed into that surge.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus (Schocken Books, 2011), 258.

How does the neutralization “of self” allow a person to connect to God?

Have you ever experienced a sensation like that which Dr. Zornberg described?