In Memory of Baruch Yitzchak ben Yirmiyahu (Barry Pessin)

This weekend we celebrate the Holiday of Shavuot which commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish People at Mount Sinai. This great revelation is a foundation of our religion and belief in G-d and the Divine origin of the Torah.

This event is pointed to as being unique to our religion and therefore one of the proofs to it's authenticity. As opposed to other religions which base themselves on some "revelation" those are revelations to one man who then relayed the "word" to others. Judaism is the only religion that is based on a mass revelation to the entire nation. The entire nation millions of people heard G-d Speak and witnessed this great event.

The question is asked what did we actually receive at this event? Contrary to what some might think we didn't receive the entire Torah as some of the mitzvoth were already given to the nation before hand. Furthermore, we say in the Passover Haggadah "if G-d would have brought us to Mount Sinai and not given us the Torah it would have been enough" , isn't the whole point to give us the Torah? What else was there?

The Ramchal explains that what we did receive was the ability to impact the spiritual realms through our actions. The relevance of this is that the entire Nation was now given the ability to so to speak "join" with Hashem to bring the entire creation to completion. Until now that ability rested with a few people who had perfected themselves but now this was given over to the entire nation.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,

Heath