Shavuot Yizkor and Humility

Jerusalem has been in the news lately --building or not building in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in the northeastern part of the city. Jerusalem has never been far from our thoughts. Every day, we face Jerusalem and we pray. After Yom Kippur services and at the end of our Pesach Sedarim, we say, “l’shana habaah b’rushalayim,” next year may we be privileged to be in Jerusalem. Events in Jerusalem thousands of miles away from Denver often touch us as if they happened in our back yard.

Since King David founded the city for the Jewish people 3000 years ago, Jerusalem has been our holy city, our center, our spiritual home.

So I ask you a perplexing question. If Jerusalem is so central to our religious and spiritual existence, than why do we read in Torah, that of all the places in the world, the Torah was given to the Jewish people not in Jerusalem, but rather on top of some unknown mountain in the middle of the desert: called Mt. Sinai?

Is there anything more important than our Holy Torah? It is the word of God revealed to his chosen people. It is our guide, our moral anchor; it is what has distinguished us from the other nations of the world. It has given the Jewish people its identity.

The Torah is the central religious text of our people; why wasn’t it given on Mt. Zion? Why didn’t god’s revelation occur in the holy city of Jerusalem?

The rabbis of the Talmud were also perplexed about this. There are Midrashim that say that Mt. Zion in Jerusalem and Mt. Sinai in the desert were once joined together as one and when they split, the one became the site of the revelation and the other the site of the Holy Temple.

But that Midrash just begs the question. Why did they split? Why did the central religious event in our history not take place in the physical center of our religious world?

There is another Midrash that I think is more to the point. Rabbi Yose Hagalili and Rabbi Akiva were discussing just this issue. And they said that when God was about to reveal the torah, all the mountains of the world began to position themselves to receive the law. They argued for their position. Two in particular, Mt. Tabor and Mt. Carmel both called out to God, “ the torah shall be revealed on me,” and the other, “the torah shall be revealed on me.”

God looked at both mountains and said, “indeed, you are both great mountains, high and grand, but on both of you the pagans of the world have practiced idolatry, you are not fit.”

The Midrash goes on with another interpretation. It says in the Proverbs, “a man’s pride will bring him low.” The Midrash attributes this verse to Mt. Tabor and to Mt. Carmel which came from the ends of the earth boastfully proclaiming, “we are high and the Holy One, blessed be He, will give the Torah on us.” But the verse, “he who is of lowly spirit, shall attain great honor,’ and the Rabbis attribute this verse to Sinai which humbled itself by saying, “I am a low mountain, alone in the desert.” So God placed his glory upon Mt. Sinai and the Torah was given thereon so that the mountain was privileged to attain to all that honor.

Now this Midrash teaches us something all together new; that it was irrelevant to God, where exactly His revelation would take place. The mountain top where God and Moses met did not need to be the highest or the grandest. In fact, God chose a lowly mountain which sat in a wasteland. Nothing could have been less grand, or more remote.

And I think that that is the specific point the Torah is trying to make. There is nothing grand in appearance about the Torah. It is a book. It’s words on a scroll. It was given in a desert, on a lowly mountain. No one but the people of Israel saw this happen, not the Egyptians or the Amalekites or the Moabites or the Babylonians. Sinai was hidden away in a place that was uninhabitable. Nobody cared about Mt. Sinai or the Sinai desert: it was a wasteland.

From outer appearances, there wasn’t much to see on top of Mt Sinai. There was some thunder and lightning at the time of revelation, nothing terribly miraculous, though. Cecil B. Demille had to make up a whole dramatic scene for this event because there is precious little drama described in the Torah.

God was simply not concerned here with outer appearances. The Egyptians made big deal pyramids, great buildings to show their greatness to the world. Not the Jews. Their formative religious event happened in the desert, the drama kept to a minimum and no one saw what was happening in any case.

To look at the Torah, a person is not so impressed. To be impressed, you must look within the Torah. For what is within, changed the course of human history.

The Jews have always been the smallest, the least dramatic, and from outer appearances, the least impressive people in the history of mankind. But we have survived and thrived longer than any other people in the history of mankind.

For what is great about the Jewish people cannot be seen with the naked eye: what is great about our people is our inner character, our souls, our commitment to a God that also cannot be seen.

I bring all this up today, in particular, because today, the second day of Shavuot, we not only recall the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, but we also remember during Yizkor, those who we loved who are no longer with us.

And if you are like me, what we remember of our loved ones was not their public persona, it wasn’t their appearance: how they looked to other people. What we remember of them what was most important about them to us: was the person they were; their inner character, their souls.

One of my wisest teachers in rabbinical school once said to me: it isn’t what you know, it isn’t how you look, that ultimately counts in this life. But rather, it is who you are. Who you really are. It isn’t the physical appearance that everyone sees, or the talk and the persona that you present to the world. It is the soul.

There is a wonderful Hasidic story about the great village rabbi who knew the whole Talmud by heart. He was revered for his teaching, his piety, and his commanding presence. Over the years, legends arose about this rabbi, one in particular that piqued the interest of one of his students. Since this rabbi was mysteriously absent from shul every Yom Kippur mourning, the legend arose that the rabbi would actually ascend to heaven on this morning, and bow at the foot of God to pray for the welfare of the congregation.

But his student, was a skeptic, and he just didn’t believe the legend, so on Kol Nidre, the student hid under the rabbis’s bed to see what would happen to the rabbi in morning.
The morning came, the rabbi arose and put on work clothes and walked into the forest with his axe. The student followed him. . The rabbi walked out into the woods and cut down a tree and began to split the logs into fire wood. He then carried the wood to an old woman’s cottage and brought the wood into her home. The woman cried, “Oh, woodcutter, I have no money to pay you for the logs. And the rabbi said, “you pay me later; you need the wood to stay warm for the coming winter.

Then the rabbi returned home, put on his good cloths and went to shul.

The student was amazed, and never again doubted that the great rabbi, indeed, went to heaven each year on the morning of Yom Kippur.

There is often great beauty that rests deep within the soul and I have no doubt that it is that inner beauty, it is what lies within that makes the difference in a person’s life.

And that is the lesson of Mt. Sinai. Mt. Tabor, Mt. Hermon, Mt. Zion: certainly greater mountains than Sinai. Revelation on these mountains would have been a great show, a wonderful drama, truly impressive for the people of Israel and for the world. But God chose otherwise, because for His people, He knew that their greatness would never be in their numbers, or in their outer appearance, nor in the face they presented to the world. But rather, their greatness would always lie within. Like the Torah, the words and traditions written within, on the soul of our people, is what has transformed the world.

That is true lesson of God’s revelation. And a true lesson of life.