By Rachel Rubin-Green, May 22, 2026, Shavuot Day 1, 5786
I want to speak with you this morning about Revelation. After all, the holiday we are celebrating today, Shavuot, is Z’man Matan Torateinu, the holiday of the giving of the Torah.
Revelation is essentially about God giving the Torah and about Israel receiving it. There are multiple commentaries, both scholarly and poetic, about this moment, or should I say these moments.
The idea that revelation may have been more than one moment is comes from a comment by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel interprets the verse, “The Lord came down upon Mt. Sinai,” Exodus 19:20 as saying that HaShem, the one who is beyond all space and time, was humbly here for all Israel to sense. Heschel then interprets Exodus 20:22, “I have talked to you from heaven,” as saying that HaShem did not descend to earth; but that His word welled from heaven. These passages do not contradict each other, Heschel says, they refer to not one but two events. Revelation was an event to God and it was also an event to Humans. Exodus verse 19:20 refers to God in the third person, “The Lord came down….” Which describes a human event. Exodus verse 20:22, “I have talked to you….” Is in the first person, describing a divine event. Heschel concludes that Revelation had two aspects, God both did and did not descend upon the earth. The voice came from heaven but people heard it at Sinai.
If God experienced revelation one way and people another, there are many comments, poems and stories about what humans experienced. Heschel’s comments imply a collective human experience in revelation. However, the ancient rabbis put forth a very different perspective on Mount Sinai. Rabbanit Aliza Sperling, founder of Svivah, an online Jewish women’s collective, cites Pesika deRav Kahana, a 5th century rabbinic work, as imagining the Giving of the Torah as an intimate, personal moment where each person experienced the Divine revelation in their own way:
She quotes from Pesika deRav Kahana 12:25. “Rabbi Levi said: The Holy One appeared to them as a statue with faces on every side. If a thousand people were looking at it, [they would experience it as if] it would be looking at each of them. So it is with the Holy One, blessed be the Eternal. When God spoke, each and every person of Israel said: The Divine is speaking with me. [And that is why] it is written (in Exodus 20:2) “I am the Lord your God”, [with] “your” not [being in the plural, addressed to the whole nation], but rather “your” [in the singular, addressed to each individual].”
In her Shavuot teaching, Rabbanit Sperling included several poems describing individual experiences or interpretations of Revelation at Mt. Sinai. I will include one of them here:
The Revelation by Adam Kaye:
The still, small voice was looking for itself
She knew from the prophecy that there
was
To be a still, small voice up on the
mountain.
The climb to the top was difficult
The people, the boundaries
All making access to the mountain
So difficult. But the prize, so great.
To be the sound heard by the
Whole Jewish people,
The people that surround
This beautiful mountain
The prophet had told me that
After the wind and the rocks
And the earthquake and the fire
That my still, small voice would be heard.
So I tried to get through the boundary,
Avoiding the other women
As I had been told to.
Then on the third day
In the morning
I awoke before all the others
And climbed to the peak so
I could be there to be
The sound on the top of the mountain.
And yet,
There was no space for me,
The still, small voice.
The only sounds I heard were everything
I am not;
Thunder,
Lightning
And the shofar
Screaming out loud from the heavy
cloud.
So I descended
Looking for someone to help me,
To hear me, to listen,
To tell me that there had been a mistake.
There wasn’t.
And I am still looking for an
Opportunity on this mountain of God
To show that there can be a
Still, small voice amongst the people.
I want to briefly mention the Midrashic notion that we all stood together at Sinai to accept the Torah. In this concept, we were all there together. This included Jews of all nationalities and of all eras. Jews who had not yet been born. People who did not yet know that they would become Jews. The statement that we all stood together at Sinai is a statement, and a concept, of radical inclusion. I hope to explore this idea more deeply at another time.
Several years ago Joel Grossman mentioned something that has stuck with me ever since. He mentioned that we bless God for giving the Torah in the present tense. Notein Ha Torah, God who Gives us Torah. I started this talk with a reference to “Z’man Matan Torahteinu,” the time of God having given us the Torah. I want to close with this quote from “Tales of the Hasidim” by Martin Buber. The Rabbi of Kotsk was asked “why do we call this holiday the time of the giving of the Torah not the time of receiving the Torah?” The Rabbi answered: “The Torah was given one time, but the receiving occurs at all times.”