Shavuot
Hearing God's Words
The (relatively late by Jewish standards) 16th century Kabbalistic custom, of staying up all night on Shavuot is to repair or compensate for the Israelites who received the Torah, who, according to the Midrash had to be woken up by Moshe. In many synagogues holding an evening, or an all-night marathon of study, each presenter chooses a topic that relates to Shavuot, Revelation, or a topic of particular interest. The traditional Tikkun actually contains a selection from all of our classic texts; a real buffet of Torah with a few psukim from each and every parashah, from every book of the Bible, a mishnah from each masechet of Talmud, selections from the Zohar and often the list of all 613 mitzvot. This vast smorgasbord means that the texts can’t be satisfactorily studied, since it takes the whole night just to read through the quantity of material.
What is the significance of words? The Torah begins with God creating the universe with words, so accordingly, words must exist before the world. God looked into the Torah to create the world through the letters of the aleph-bet. All this contrasts with Greek thought, where words are only accepted-upon labels for existing things. We all agree that ‘table’ refers to this thing with four legs, but understand that the word is arbitrary, and only an agreed upon convention. This Greek bias heavily influences all Western thought. Not so the biblical mind and the rabbinic imagination. For the ancient Hebrew, the word came first, and words have intrinsic significance. After all the Hebrew root d.b.r, in Hebrew means both speech AND thing. The words of Torah are not just words. No wonder the Rabbis are such keen readers.
Not only was the world created through words, but the Revelation at Sinai was words. But which words? Were all the disparate texts also part of Revelation? What does it mean that all of Torah comes from Sinai? The often quoted description of the Jewish textual tradition as ‘an inverted pyramid’ reflects the Jewish conception that all classical Jewish texts emerge from Torah and move outward. This image is apt as it illustrates how Torah at the apex is the base, the foundation of all future texts and discussion, and captures how the vastness of the Jewish classical library extends like a widening pyramid. But as fond as I am of this metaphor, I believe it is partially misleading, because in this pyramid, each layer forms a distinct stratum. Of course, on a certain level this is accurate: both in terms of literary genres of literature and their historical creation. Midrash is midrash; siddur is siddur. But as opposed to a pyramid of distinct stones, rabbinic thought understands that interpretation is only an uncovering of what was concealed or latent in the text and therefore is part of the text itself. The stone of layer two (even though it rests on layer one) is not part of the original layer one. True, it is even part of the greater pyramid, but not intrinsic to the original first stone. The Oral Torah and Rabbinic imagination see commentary as ‘always there.’ Rather than a manufactured, human-made building such as the pyramid, an organic, integrated structure such as a coral reef is a more suitable image as each layer of polyps actually becomes part of the whole. Or even better, a tree, where each limb branches off creatively, yet is part of the original tree and was part of the original tree’s DNA.
As Gershon Scholem puts it:
[According to the Rabbis] Truth is given once and for all, and it is laid down with precision. Fundamentally, truth merely needs to be transmitted. The originality of the exploring scholar has two aspects. In his spontaneity, he develops and explains that which was transmitted at Sinai, no matter whether it was always known or whether it was forgotten and had to be rediscovered. The effort of the seeker after truth consists not in having new ideas but rather in subordinating himself to the continuity of the tradition of the divine word and in laying open what he receives from it in the context of his own time. In other words, not system but commentary is the legimate form through which truth is approached.
What exactly does it mean that everything is ‘commentary,’ and how does it relate to how we approach the text? The maximalist position is that everything was given to Moshe at Sinai; the minimalist position is that Moshe was given only basic principles and all future Torah legislation that later commentators proposed are derived from Mosaic principles. The classic illustration of this is the Talmudic story of Moshe visiting R. Akiva’s classroom and not understanding a word and feeling faint, until he hears, ‘This is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai.’ Obviously Moshe didn’t author Akiva’s ruling—he didn’t even recognize it—but the story’s conclusion suggests that had he lived in Rabbi Akiva’s time, he would have concurred with the sage’s decision. Torah is a process, not a product. As R. Yannai says: The words of the Torah were not given as clear-cut decisions...
From this the contemporary scholar David Halivni concludes:"Contradictions are thus built into revelation. Revelation was formulated within the framework of contradiction in the form of argumentation pro and con. No legitimate argument or solution can be in conflict with the divine opinion, for all such arguments and solutions constitute a part of God’s opinion." Susan Handelman in The Slayers of Moses would agree:
While Torah represents for the Rabbis absolute and ultimate truth, this truth is never simple and single, but is always subject to interpretation; and the interpretation, while also divine, is to a certain degree a provisional and relative process. The radical notion that Revelation includes everything offered to interpret it means that commentary and exegesis have the same status as Torah itself. This rabbinic insight into the relationship between text and commentary is quite sophisticated. The boundaries between text and interpretation are considered fluid in a way which is difficult for us to imagine for a sacred text, but such fluidity is a central idea of contemporary literary theory. A text is always and only interpreted. The idea of a pure text without an accompanying interpretation is itself a product of naive historicism. Today, we would use the word ‘intertextuality’ to describe how the text echoes, interacts and interpenetrates in the Rabbis’ world. The Torah is all-embracing. There is, for the Rabbis, then no outside point of view. The text continues to develop each time it is studied, with each new interpretation, a new uncovering of what was latent in the text and therefore an extension of the text. Through study, the text is a self re-generating process.
But if there are an infinite number of meanings, is any meaning then possible? Do we then destroy the text and make it meaningless? Is there in fact no text, are there only readers? I am not sure; according to Scholem there is no singular authority in the tradition, but rather many centres, many contradictory voices. Even God has left God’s text, so to speak, to its interpreters, as my favourite Talmudic story of R. Eliezer and the Tanour of Akhnai with the carob tree uprooting itself and the river flowing backwards, and which has the divine voice of God saying, “Why are you arguing with R. Eliezer who is always right,” and the sages (mis)quoting Torah to prove we follow the majority opinion... and the punchline, God laughing and saying, 'My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me." (Of course, this story championing the authority of the Rabbis is anchored with a proof text from the written Torah itself: 'Lo bashamayim hi- [the Torah] is not in Heaven.' Another midrash even has God spending a third of the day in Torah study. Ismar Schorch asks, "Why? God wrote the book." He suggests because, even God wants to hear what we have to say. Not only does God not have the final say– but listens to us. But Scholem adds: only one who submits to the continuity of tradition, of interpretive history gains the freedom and legitimacy to creatively interpret.
Tonight we celebrate Revelation, this process of Torah, through reading and study. This evening, as we study, may we be engaged in this interpreting of tradition and read more strrenously and more audaciously— even though we know we cannot fully avoid misreading. The Kabbalists understood that the true poem was the critic’s mind, or as Emerson says, The true ship is the shipbuilder. Tonight may we open ourselves like a rose, to tradition, to study, and to listening to each other. Even our disagreements are part of Torah, and if read very carefully and listen very closely, we may even hear the voice of God. Hag Sameach.
BDS
