by Dr. Israel Eldad Shavuot is known as the holiday marking the giving of the Torah, not the holiday marking the acceptance of the Torah. Giving the Torah was indeed a matter for weeks; for it to be accepted, dozens or even hundreds of years had to pass, and some say it still hasn’t really been accepted.
Giving the Torah was a one-time act, a ceremony. It isn’t a process; it was a miraculous event, an act of Divine grace bringing together the time, the people and the conditions that were right for the gift, the inspiration, the great Heavenly grant, the insertion of spirit into body, of soul to flesh and blood. Theories of history can do no more than go around in circles, explaining the conditions and circumstances of the recipients, but they can never use rationality or explanations to penetrate the revelation, the giving.
Historians are good at explaining a posteriori the necessity in events. But with hindsight they cannot explain the events at Mount Sinai. And the factual emphasis on the “giving” as opposed to the “acceptance” proves there is no point in talking about a “ripening of conditions” or a “necessity of circumstances” or a “link in a chain of events.”
An act of Genesis is at the basis of the entire description of the giving of the Torah. It isn’t the continuation of a chain of events but the breaking of a chain, a breaking that cannot be explained with words from our sociological or historical vocabulary.
All the events of the hundreds of years that followed were no more than an immanent accepting of the previous transcendental giving. The judges and kings and prophets fought among themselves and with their nation for the acceptance of the Torah. This battle is subject to analysis and research and explanation, just as is everything in nature that followed the first moment of Genesis.
The secret of this Genesis is also the secret of many other phenomena. It is the secret of the beginning of life, of true poetry, of the birth of ideas. Doctors can see all the secrets of pregnancy and birth but only the secret of the original life of the seed – is still a deep secret.
Therefore one does not decide on ideas. Ideas are given by revelation and they exist. You decide and fight for their acceptance, to spread them or allow them to penetrate. Therefore Mount Sinai was held over the heads of the nation during the giving of the Torah, because the Torah is not the result of evolution, during which all the right conditions were quietly and calmly prepared till the bodies were ready and eagerly awaiting it. It is always a revolution, meaning something coming in opposition to what the nation is ready for and consciously desires.
Now, from the world of the Torah in general to one part of it: sovereignty.
In the past few generations, only a few extraordinary prophets taught sovereignty, gave the Torah of modern Hebrew sovereignty. But great is the distance from this new revelation to its acceptance. And apparently it, too, must pass through two stages: first the stage of being forced upon the people from above, and only afterwards, the stage of learning it from below, from inside.
And if you want to know where we stand today on our journey through the desert, let it be told: we are standing before the golden calf.
