Shavuot, originally a celebration of the wheat harvest of the land of Israel, became centered on the revelation at Mount Sinai in the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction and the onset of the exilic era. It was the rabbis who officially rebranded it as zman matan torateinu: the season of the giving of our Torah.
In the biblical passages describing the giving of the Torah (especially Exodus 19), which is read in synagogue on Shavuot, one thing stands out: the noise! The mountain trembles. Thunder rolls. A shofar blast grows louder and louder. The experience of divine revelation is auditorily overwhelming. In vain, the people beseech Moses to shield them, to stand between them and that awesome, terrifying sound. The classical midrash goes so far as to imagine the event having been so staggering that the Israelites required not just resuscitation but actual resurrection.
Which makes it strange that the Zohar, when it arrives at Sinai, ultimately lands on silence.
Let’s explore a few zoharic texts on the sounds of Sinai, starting with a striking passage found in Zohar Chadash (a collection of zoharic material not included in the Mantua 1558 edition) that describes the world as a body. In the zoharic imagination, the land of Israel is the torso with Jerusalem, and especially the Temple, as the navel, where heaven and earth exchange sustenance. The head, naturally, is in the heavens. And the mouth is Sinai.
Why is Sinai the mouth? Because it is the channel through which God’s voice entered the world. The zoharic passage continues with a story: From the moment of creation until Israel stood at this mountain, the mouth was nistam, sealed. The voice of God remained beyond this plane of existence. It was the gathering of Israel at Sinai to receive the Torah that opened the portal of God’s voice into the world. (Zohar Chadash, Shir HaShirim 39)
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What was the nature of that voice? In the Torah, the overwhelming sound emanating from Sinai is called kol hashofar, “the voice of the shofar,” (Exodus 20:16). In the Zohar, building on classical rabbinic antecedents, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai digs deeper, exploring the subtle nature of that voice:
Rabbi Shimon said: “The voice of the shofar,” (Exodus 20:16) — the place from which the voice issues is called shofar.
Rabbi Shimon said further: Come and see, “the voice of the shofar” — corresponding to what is written: “but on everything emanating from YHVH’s mouth does the human live” (Deuteronomy 8:3). What is emanating from YHVH’s mouth? “The voice of the shofar” — greater than all of them, more powerful than all of them, as is written: “the voice of a shofar, very strong” (Exodus 19:16), which is said of no other voice.
Rabbi Shimon said: Upon this voice of the shofar depends all. It is written: “a mighty voice” (Deuteronomy 5:19).
Zohar 2:81b
Based on the translation by Daniel Matt.
To this point, Rabbi Shimon seems merely to be echoing the tradition that accentuated the strength and power of the divine voice heard at Sinai, though perhaps with a twist by highlighting its specifically vivifying nature — a point made by the integration of the verse from Deuteronomy. The verse in question, however, already plants a seed of subtle subversion as, in context, it serves as proof and reminder that God taught Israel the value of humility through the desert wandering.
At this point, Rabbi Shimon’s teaching pivots away from sound to silence:
And it is “kol demamah dakah — a voice of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12), with radiance more subtle and lucid than all.
Explore this passage in context on Sefaria.
The mighty voice at Sinai, Rabbi Shimon asserts, is one and the same as the famous whisper the prophet Elijah heard when he fled from Queen Jezebel into a cave at Horeb (the Bible’s other name for Sinai). Rabbi Shimon’s teaching not only insists on this paradoxical identification but asserts that deep silence — the profound inner voice of Sinai — is also the appropriate response to revelation. What does the word demamah, “stillness” or “silence,” come to teach us? Rabbi Shimon explains: “That one must be silent about it and muzzle one’s mouth.”
Why must we respond in stillness and silence to the voice of the shofar, to the voice of God’s revelation? One reason may be found in a teaching offered by Rabbi Yose just a few lines above:
Rabbi Yose said: Just as a shofar emits voice, air and water, so too is all included in this, from which other voices issue.
Explore this passage in context on Sefaria.
The voice of the shofar, the voice of God, is one in which “all is included.” It expresses everything at once. The inclusive, integrative tone of the shofar communicates a singular comprehension that human speech would shatter. The totality that is the divine voice overwhelms the human mind and its limitations. A suitably modest response to an encounter with this transcendent inclusivity can only be silence.
The implication of this teaching is radical. We are accustomed to thinking of the Torah as, at least in part, the laws of “do” and “do not”, of “this is good” and “that is bad.” Zoharic theology, however, imagines a God that transcends these dichotomies. The classical rabbis believed that the revelation at Sinai was more than human beings could handle, but the Zohar takes this insight a step further. Yes, we got the Torah we could comprehend; that’s why it’s (mostly) in black and white (at least on the literal level). Yet we must never forget that the voice behind the Torah was a voice that transcended all dichotomies. It was — and remains — God’s voice, which, when “heard” ought to bring us to stillness, to silence. The voice of Torah and the voice of those speaking in the name of Torah will never be the loudest in the room.
This piece was originally published as part of A Year of Zohar: Kabbalah for Everyone, an original series produced by My Jewish Learning and Sefaria. Sign up for the entire series here.
