Shavuot 2017: The Continuous Process of Revelation

I. The Sound of Silence

“Said Rabbi Abahu....in the name of Rabbi Yochanan...When the Holy Blessed One gave the Torah, no bird chirped, no fowl fluttered, no ox lowed, the angels did not fly, the Seraphim did not utter the Kedusha, the sea did not roar, the creatures did not speak; the universe was silent and mute. And the voice came forth “Anochi Adonai Elohecha” (I am the Infinite, your God).—Shmot Rabba 29-7

God is under our Noses

"Some Hasidic masters take it a step further, amplifying the human role in matan Torah. For example, R. Naftali Tzvi Horowitz of Ropshicz (1760-1827) quotes his teacher, R. Menachem Mendel of Rimanov (1745-1815), to the effect that God only pronounced the first aleph of anochi. He then explains that the letter aleph represents the name of God, Yahweh, because the א is written as a combination of two yods and one vav, which is the numeral equivalent of י-הוה. The human face also represents the same numeral equivalent: the two eyes stand for the two yods, and the nose stands for the vav.This indicates that humans are a reflection of the divine. During matan Torah, God only uttered the letter aleph. As if to say, “you want to see me? Here I am, literally right under your nose.”^[6]"

- from "A Hasidic Matan Torah" by Yoel S.

"R. Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin (1823-1900) makes this point succinctly:

In the beginning of the revelation, before matan Torah, it says: “And there were sounds.” That is the beginning of the uproar in a person’s heart to become attached to God, blessed is He. Then came the lightning, which means that they experienced the gleam of God’s light (Pri Tzadik, Shavuot 16.^[3])

Instead of our being passive observers of the divine revealed, we were, and continue to be, active participants in the act of revelation. This way, Hasidic theology solves the problem posed at the beginning of this essay: how did we know it was God’s voice? The answer: since we comprise a part of the divine, we simply recognized our own, inner godly voice from within the clouds."

- from "A Hasidic Matan Torah" by Yoel S.

II. Revelation as a Continuous Process

"The Ba’al Shem Tov took the kabbalistic notion of divine revelation to its logical extreme, proclaiming that God is inherent in all existence. More importantly, he declared that God’s essence can easily be discovered: All we need to do is to uncover the divine from the numerous “garments” which obstruct it from view. Put differently, God need not reveal Godself, because God is always there. We need only open our eyes and watch God being revealed in all God’s glory.

Thus, it is not God who changes during revelation, it is we who change. We consummate the revelation that began with creation and culminated with matan Torah. Humans are bestowed with the unique gift of being able to pierce through the superficial layers of finite nature and expose the infinite divine.

Hasidic doctrine maintains that we ought to find traces of the divine in every piece of matter. What modern science calls laws of nature, Hasidism calls “divine animation”—that is what keeps the stars shining and the trees growing. But how do we detect the innermost divinity? The answer is: wherever we see such positive traits as life, generosity, beauty, wisdom etc., we discern that God is hiding there. And since such traits can be found virtually everywhere, it follows that God is present everywhere.

Our only task is to overcome our tendency to become apathetic to the marvels of nature and the magic of life, which inhibit us from seeing the divine. In order to see divinity we have to appreciate our ability to exist, to understand, to create art, to be amazed, to be alive."

- from "A Hasidic Matan Torah" by Yoel S.

Revelation as a State of Being
"Hasidism essentially renders revelation a subjective, personal, and active experience. While traditional Judaism attempts to place God and the Torah outside of the human realm, Hasidism attempts to place God and the Torah into our hearts and souls. If we want to see the divine, we have to dig into the innermost recesses of our souls and wash away the dirt, such as selfishness, conceit, and deception, all of which stall the divine rays, such as honesty, integrity, and kindness from shining forth.

For Hasidim, revelation ceases to be merely a belief in something that once occurred; instead, it becomes an activity, a state of being. Love, unity, and happiness are faith; hatred, pessimism and indifference are heresy. The Talmud teaches us that arrogance is akin to heresy. In fact, Hasidism tells us that arrogance IS heresy, because arrogance entails an illusory separation from God. A haughty person may be committed to all Jewish beliefs and commandments, and yet he or she is as far from God as can be. No amount of dogma can help arrogant people until they change their attitudes.

A central part of Hasidism is devekut. This is akin to what William James calls “experiences of the divine presence,” and what contemporary psychologists would call “a state of flow.” This state can be induced by prayer, meditation, study, or just by focusing on one of the positive forces that runs through our daily lives, even the most trivial and insignificant one. Upon reaching such a moment of transcendence, a person overflows with emotion. He or she stands in rapture and awe of the all-pervasive unity, goodness, and beauty that is inherent in the universe. This is the essence of true revelation, in which one goes beyond his or her physical limitations to grasp the inner divinity of all being. It is with this experience that Hasidic teachers came to understand the revelation of matan Torah."

- from "A Hasidic Matan Torah" by Yoel S.

"It says: ‘God had spoken with you face to face (Deut. 5:4)’. Rashi says that the speeches of anochi and lo yihyeh lecha filled the entire universe, and there was no space that did not speak to them. The explanation of this is that the Jews became so purified that there was no space in which they did not see God. Wherever they looked – in every creature – with the eye of their mind to understand its source and root, they grasped that its life is God, which constantly sustains it and enlivens it, and that our own souls are also sustained by him at every moment. And they comprehended that we constantly stand face to face with our source of life, which is God itself, the king of kings.(Bas Eiyin, Beshalach.^[8])"

- from "A Hasidic Matan Torah" by Yoel S.