Tradition regards the revelation at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Torah as a singular, foundational event in the history of the Jewish people. In Parashat Vaetchanan, the Torah tells us of an unexpected disruption to that awesome event. The Israelites, overwhelmed by the sound and light show of revelation, beg Moses to continue receiving the Torah without them, saying: “If we hear the voice of our Lord God any longer, we shall die. For what mortal ever heard the voice of the living God speak out of the fire, as we did, and lived? You go closer and hear all that our Lord God says, and then you tell us everything that our Lord God tells you, and we will willingly do it.” (Deuteronomy 5:22–23) The next verses of the Torah tell us that this request was received with divine understanding. God viewed it indulgently, as an appropriate fear of Heaven.
The Zohar does not. In the Zohar, we find sharp criticism of the Israelites’ choice to back out of their front-row seat at revelation, forfeiting a one-time opportunity to ascend to a spiritual height, the likes of which was not readily available to human beings before or after that moment in history. It sees their request of Moses to be their intermediary as an expression of weakness — and therefore deeply disappointing:
And Israel drew far away out of that fear, and therefore they said: “and then you tell us…” (Deuteronomy 5:22), meaning: We do not wish to receive the word from the supernal power above, but only from the place of the Female and no further … And Moses said: By this you have weakened my power…
For had Israel not distanced themselves, but heard every word as at first, the world could never afterward have been laid waste, and they would have endured for generation after generation … The Blessed Holy One wished to bring them into the Tree of Life, which stands above the Tree of Death, so that they would endure forever. They drew away and did not wish it. Then Moses’ power over them was weakened, and the other power was weakened as well. The Blessed Holy One said: I wish to establish you in the supernal palace and to have you cleave to Life — but you desired the place where the Female dwells…
Zohar 3:261a-b
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From the Zohar’s perspective, the Israelites’ choice to withdraw from unmediated contact with God and receive revelation through Moses was a renunciation of an ideal religious life in the shade of the Tree of Life, identified with the sefira of Tiferet. Had the Israelites seen the experience of revelation through to its end, says the Zohar, they would have attained — both for themselves and for all generations that would follow — a cleaving (deveikut) to the Tree of Life. They would have achieved a life of elevated, intense spirituality — an eternal life.
Instead, the Israelites preferred to content themselves with a lower spiritual station in the shade of a lower sefira, Malkhut, identified with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — or, as the Zohar habitually calls it, the Tree of Death. The Zohar sees this moment as a dramatic missed opportunity, a fateful decision coloring the religious experience of all generations to follow. From this point onward, God’s people were sadly consigned to a life of banal and distant divine service, at whose center stands God’s word (Torah), instead of direct, living, vibrant divine service in perpetual contact with God.
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The mood of yearning is palpable. The writer of this passage lovingly accepts upon himself the yoke of the commandments as an expression of divine service, yet lives with a profound sense of disappointment over a lost mode of divine worship he never merited to know.
A precursor of this perspective can be seen in the Talmud (Berakhot 7a). The classical rabbis point out that when God revealed Himself to Moses for the first time, at the burning bush, Moses also instinctively recoiled: “And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus 3:6). It then asks whether this was in fact a fitting response to divine encounter.
According to one recorded view, given in the name of Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani, by hiding his face, Moses expressed a profound and appropriate fear of Heaven. It was for this reason that Moses merited to become Israel’s greatest prophet. But according to another view, given in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, Moses’ gesture of withdrawal was met with divine rebuke and, when Moses pleaded with God on behalf of the Israelites in the wake of the terrible sin of the golden calf and asked to see his Glory, God responded acidly: “When I wished (to reveal myself to you at the bush), you did not wish it; now that you wish it, I do not wish it.”
Both the Talmud and Zohar are describing different religious temperaments. In one, religiosity centers on knowing the words of God, and deriving meaning through logical analysis and interpretation of them. In another, it centers on simply knowing God. This second type, which seems increasingly popular in our own world, does not accept the concession made at the foot of Mount Sinai. This religious seeker thirsts for closeness to God, and not only for God’s word. This seeker seeks to revive the revelation at Sinai, for the hidden paths leading up to the Tree of Life.
To a considerable extent, it may be said that the basic opposition between these two types of religious seekers lies at the root of certain contemporary tensions we are witnessing in the Jewish community — strict Orthodox halachic trends on the one hand, and Hasidic (and even New Age) trends on the other. As important and complex as these discussions are, it is important to bear in mind that these sensibilities are not new — and that the tension between reconciling oneself to the lost world and striving desperately to restore it is as old as our sacred texts.
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.
