Yisro 5786 - The Purpose of Divine Revelation at Har Sinai

the mime hari with all the accompanying extraordinary fireworks with hair and the kashm and having the a and everything about it was an extraordinary mime and the a question really is what was the purpose of that awesome mment um as a whole the bala speaks about this and var frames it with a question. He says one expects that at such a great event the world's greatest secrets were revealed the workings of Maava the deep deep meanings of of of different divine attributes things like that. This is this is a a sort of a a drum roll of sorts with with you know an and in that everything that is there is a command everything is um understood it's one of the mitzvah that are self-evident sort of and except for shabas everything else seems to be um things that people naturally pick up. There doesn't seem to be any deepim, anything great or big or anything, you know, simple statements about good and bad. So why is it why is it as that? That really is the um the that's the question he puts down and Arada explains that the issue that the the challenge facing amuna was not the amuna in a divine being. Everyone did believe in a divine being. Maybe there were different ways of understanding who, what, when, where, but that was not the challenge. And it and the way he the aada says it, he doesn't think it's the challenge for his generation either. The real challenge is the sense of hashkah meaning that a kareshbar who knows, sees, wants something, gives feedback, punishes, rewards the entire complement of uh reciprocity that we call hashkah. That's something that people did not buy into. Now it's the very fact that Kaju wants a certain code of behavior that he is go notes the behavior punishes and so on. Those were things that were absent and people did not engage in. So therefore it was an event with tremendous power and impact to give over that sense that the mitzvah are very concrete that kesh who wants them that a kadesh whose um existence suffuses the world and he's everywhere and everything and so on and so forth. The aada bala says a very fascinating observation. He says the the deeper understandings quote unquote of aeshu many times um takes us away from the practical um specific um obligations to do. We read just his I'd like to read his lion because it's it's really very special. He says, "If if at the event of my would have spoken deep, he he would miss the object of what he's doing because Everything there would have been beyond human comprehension and confused him until at the end he would say Hashem is but he doesn't re but he's not exists but not an existence. He is but doesn't have an essence. He's one but it's not oneness. All all of that entangled philosophy would have been what people would have been the takeaway people. And he says that type of takeaway of takeaway is something that um that holds people back from the world of mitz. The um and he says the and therefore let alone all of that and focused on the practical specific things that person is supposed to do. Um and he says the um the the the the and that's why it starts starts with introducing as the one who took them out of as imminent as can be. In other words, I'm not the God that is above and beyond and and who's that human mind can't reach and can't even begin to understand what they don't understand and on and on and on. No, he said the one that the experience you just had now is the experience of the divine caring for you and intervening for you. He says um and therefore all of the mitzvah were very very um mitzvah that affect a person in his day-to-day living starts with and so on extremely extremely um physical practical m and so on. Now he says also [clears throat] um the he he he says because this the the purpose of this was to distance people from the philosophical speculations which tend to remove a person from it. He saidal followed suit and when spoke about they used very graphic and physical terms says you should know that what's above you there's a eye that sees there's a ear that hears everything is written down. So he says um but he's bonded by a question doesn't a language like that does not that um in induce people seduce people to think of as being physical. There's an eye, there's an air, there's a book. So he says even if the general populace the the the unlearned and unsophisticated populace thinks that these things are you know simple. It's not the end of the world. The main thing is they should have a sense of philosophy because the doubt or the twisted language of philosophers that's something that pulls away from the muna and so on. So so that is really presenting an incredible point over here. A the real barrier um or the real um challenge to avoashem lies not in the complex understanding of you know of of the the nature of the divine and so on. It lies in the lack of a sense of imminence that is here watching and so on. That is the real challenge. Point two, he says even if we um even even if by presenting it so graphically um with such force people might become might be might make a mistake in direction of thinking as if there's an ear or whatever. that so long as [clears throat] this sense of hash that Hashem is is watching is is improved then that's it's a far better choice. And finally he says for a lot of people a lot of times the philosophical type speculations have a tendency to distance a person from um from real amuna because we we take it from the world of reality um to some sort of conceptual um higher idea. which basically means that it um it it it does not obligate the person. So the is is is exped very very um he's is giving us an understanding in what our challenges are. So for instance um and this was in a sense the Muslim movement's point visav people who for instance pushed more for learning kabala type things um it's true that kabala is a part of a there's very deepma but for the for the wrong person it has a tendency to remove Torah from the here and the now and the imminent and sort of put it somewhere up in the air in some sort of, you know, kind of uh nebulous state, you know, neither here nor there anything. Um, and that's something that is far worse. It's true that when we speak for the populace, so to speak, we need to be a little more graphic. to be strong in the sense to impress on people that there is um a god and he sees and he cares and he wants the world. So mai was there to impress on us a that aeshbu is a reality and part of every reality. Our own journey from its time here is the mitzvah that kaju is interested in are the mitzvah that are the bread and butter [clears throat] of daily life. All of these are this is the divine roten it's something that the the is not there to reveal the the high and deep secrets it's to reveal how close to our allies is how much is rutson is is tied to our every deed and action. How much this is observed and noted and and and so on. And even if a person errors slightly to to to to making it a little more graphic, but it's far better that than a person errors in the other direction where he sort of makes a a kind of uh mystical thing of it where the the result is that it does not really push the person to do it right and so on. Okay.