Yom Yerushalayim 5765 (2005)

?They reaccepted it?

Rav M. Elon

Discourse delivered in Yeshivat ha-Kotel prior to Ma?ariv

Is there a Jewish child who does not know of Ma?amad Har Sinai? (Literally ?The Standing at Mount Sinai,? i.e. The Revelation at Sinai). Of course not everyone understands the exact nature of this event in all its details, yet it is deeply embedded in the national consciousness.

However we all know that this event was involuntarily forced upon us,

?God turned the mountain over them like a barrel.?

(Shabbat 88a et. al.)

In other words, when the entire world exists in such a state whereby not a single bird flew nor chirped, in such a convincing reality ? even if there was someone who did not truly desire to accept the Torah he was completely incapable of resisting.

Only seven weeks previously we had just exited two-hundred and ten years of slavery in Egypt, years when we had dropped through the forty-nine levels of impurity. Would anyone have considered that with such speed we would be worthy of the tremendous treasure that God awarded us? Of course not! This is the concept of the coercion that God had to employ in this great event.

Hazal (Our Sages) teach us that:

?They reaccepted it (the Torah) in the days of Ahashverosh.?

(ibid.)

In the era of Ahashverosh, Mordekhai, and Ester Am Yisra?el reaccepts the Torah, this time out of love. There, under the reign of a tyrannical despot, against a far less dramatic backdrop, without all of creation standing still, without any Divine revelations, and in the wake of the decree to ?destroy, to kill and annihilate? (Ester 3:13 et. al.), Yisra?el reaccepts God?s Torah with tremendous love.

If we were to ultimately accept the Torah out of pure and true love, why did God have to give us the Torah under a state of coercion? Why did we not accept the Torah from God with love in the first place?

It would seem that the key to understanding this issue lies in the understanding of the concept of ?Hinukh? ? ?Education.? A true educator is first and foremost his own person. A student developing in the Beit Midrash knows that his greatest test lies primarily not between the walls of the Yeshivah, were he sees the ?fire and lightning,? but rather in those dreary, grey moments when he is not within the study framework of the Yeshivah. The test lies in those moments, hours, and days when he is outside the protective framework of the daily routine and learning schedule within the Yeshivah.

So often when there is a great ?event? or ?happening? its effects do not last past the short-term, and thus we have the colossal collapse of the sin of the Golden Calf. This is due to the great gap between the tremendous spiritual occurrence and its place in the emotional-intellectual appreciation of that event. In other words, when one does not possess the correct spiritual-psychological tools to contain the great wonders, then collapse and disintegration soon follows.

Now we may return to our question as to why it was necessary to receive the Torah through coercion and then later through love. We may answer that ?it is that which our eyes have seen and no outsider has seen,? the answer lies in those things that we have seen in the generation that our fathers and grandfathers never beheld for generations. [Cf. ?That which my eyes have seen, and no stranger (has seen),? (Iyov 19:27.)]

In Psalm one-hundred and seven which we recite on Yom ha-Azma?ut and on Yom Yerushalayim, it describes how:

?And He makes the hungry dwell there, and they establish a city for habitation.?

(Tehillim 107:36)

Is there any one of us who knows what true hunger is? Have we ever encountered someone completely emaciated by hunger as our fathers saw in the valley of death of Auschwitz and Majdanek?

Do any of us understand how those completely emaciated by hunger, scalded by fire and horrendous tortures are able to ?establish a city for habitation?? Can this even be grasped or comprehended?

?He pours contempt upon nobles and causes them to wander in the wilderness where there is no way.?

(ibid. v. 40)

What contempt does He pour on those cynics who sixty-years ago spoke of the end of our nation? Then, in their clear view, those very survivors establish a city for inhabitation!

We have experienced three stages until now:

?Let them praise God for His hesed (benevolent kindness), and for his wonderful works to the children of man.?

(ibid. v. 8)

We were taken ?one from a city and two from a family,? (Yirmeyahu 3:14), and we arrived at Erez Yisra?el of the swamps and the malaria, to our homeland and heritage, the land of our forefathers. We didn?t understand how we arrived at this land, yet we indeed found ourselves here.

Fifty-seven years ago a group that numbered no more than five-percent of the Jewish Nation declared the establishment of a Jewish State in Erez Yisra?el ? the State of Israel. Barely nineteen years had passed since that day, we still could not fully fathom that miracle when we experienced a second miracle. We reached the Ma?amad Har Sinai of our generation, we reached Har ha-Moriyah, the Temple Mount. Thirty-eight years ago, at this very moment we reached the gates of the holy city Yerushalayim and of the Beit Mikdash. No one planned it, and no one requested it. Suddenly we find ourselves in the presence of Har ha-Moriyah, in a process of coercion of overturning a mountain as a barrel.

He who understands the nature of the holy declaration ?Har ha-Bayit be-yadenu? ? ?The Temple Mount is in our hands? ? understands the nature of the event of Har ha-Moriya of our generation when the entire world stood still as the eternal nation returned to the eternal land. Children aged seven and eight walked around as kings in the streets of Yerushalayim and Hevron. At that time one was able to perceive the iron curtains of the world cracking; the process of Yisra?el?s return, the process of freedom, shocked the very foundations of the world and slowly the cry of freedom was heard in the world.

Then came the next stage, we reached the ?Revelation of Har ha-Moriyah? ? not in a measure corresponding to our spiritual level, Israel?s army did not even plan to reach the gates of Yerushalayim, and the government did not even dream of it. The planning of the heads of the state and of the army was only to halt the offensive, and then suddenly ?our legs were standing in your gates, Yerushalayim,? (Tehillim 122:2).

And now began, and begins, the next stage: the acceptance through love of our places, of our roles, of Yerushalayim. He who considers it will realize that the entire Tanakh lies between the Ma?amad Har Sinai and Megilat Ester, between the acceptance of Torah through fear, and the reacceptance of Torah through love. Now we too must reaccept Har ha-Moriyah with love, with all the ramifications of such an act, we must accept the State and the return to Zion with love. This is the stage that we are currently in, it is less heroic without the ?thunder and lightning,? (Shemot 19:16), yet it is the stage when these concepts infuse and permeate one?s inner being. Each and every one of us is akin to those paratroopers who must re-conquer the strongholds of love within the souls in order to bring them to the state of ?They reaccepted it? in our generation, with great love.

We posed the question as to why God had engineered it such that were required to accept the Torah at Ma?amad Har Sinai through coercion ? why were we not able to receive the Torah already then with love? Certainly it would seem that had we not been compelled to accept the Torah by force we may never have accepted the Torah at all, for it was necessary for God to throw us into the water, so to speak, and only then our potential as swimmers could have been revealed. Thus, at that great event of revelation, when after the terrible collapse of the Sin of the Golden Calf we saw Mosheh break the Tablets, we then understood how we desired the Torah. Then we felt that great impulse and drive to dispatch Mosheh again in order to receive the second set of Tablets.

Today is Yerushalayim?s day, the twenty-eighth of Iyar according to the internal value of the day is the hesed she?be-malkhut, (?benevolence in kingship? ? each day of the Sefirat ha-Omer has a Kabbalistic value according to pair-combinations of the seven Sefirot, the seven manifestations of God?s Providence in this world). Today is the day when the Divine hesed compelled us to be present at the Ma?amad Har ha-Moriyah in order to establish His Kingship in the world, and to redeem an entire world of its afflictions.

We are indeed far closer to the finishing line than we are to the starting line. We are approaching the level of ?They reaccepted it,? and approaching the finishing line is always more difficult, and the trials and tests become more complex.

?Let them praise God for His hesed and for His wonderful works to the children of man?

Whoever is wise let them consider these, and let them contemplate the hesed of God.?

(Tehillim 107: 8,43)

Wisdom is not sufficient, one is to deeply contemplate reality in order to see the hesed of God.

The fifth day of Iyar (Yom ha?Azma?ut) always falls out on the same day of the week as the seventh day of Pesah. These two days symbolize our exodus from all types of ?Egypts? wherein we were enslaved throughout the generations. And the twenty-eighth day of Iyar, Yom Yerushalayim, or as we term it, ?Ma?amad Har ha-Moriyah, always falls within a week of Ma?amad Har Sinai, Shavu?ot.

That which was not concluded on the seventh day of Pesah began to reach its conclusion on the fifth of Iyar; that which was not concluded at the Revelation on Har Sinai begins to reach its conclusion at Ma?amad Har ha-Moriyah.

And now the great test has arrived ? to conclude the process of acceptance of the Torah, the Holy Nation, and the Beit Mikdash with love. In addition, never to forget the hesed of God, the city that ?was united together,? (Tehillim 123:3), in these precise hours, thirty-eight years ago.

?This is the day God has made, let us rejoice and be glad on it.?

(Tehillim 118:24)

Translated by Sholem Hurwitz.

Copyright Keren Yishai/Rav M. Elon