In the Merit of the Fathers: Humility at Sinai

1“And Hashem called to him from the mountain, saying.”¹ The Midrash comments: “In the merit of ‘the mountain.’ ‘The mountain’ means only the Avos, as it says, ‘Hear, O mountains, the grievance of Hashem.’ ‘Moshe went up to God’: he went up in a cloud and came down in a cloud, and the merit of the Avos went up and came down with him.”² So we learn that Israel received the Torah in the merit of the Avos, our forefathers. But why should that be? Bnei Yisrael made great preparations to receive the Torah, adding still more holiness and abstinence to the abstinence they already practiced. Why, after all this, were they still not worthy to receive it in their own merit, but only in the merit of the Avos?

2Let us first cite the words of my holy father and teacher, zt"l, on the verse “the God of my father and I will exalt Him.”³ Rashi explains: “I am not the beginning of the holiness. Rather, the holiness is established and abides with me, and His Godliness has been upon me since the days of my fathers.” My holy father explained that this is a great principle. Even when a person is privileged to reach some level, he must know that he did not reach it by his own strength; everything comes from the power of the Avos. This is the hint in the words “I am not the beginning of the holiness.” If a person thinks, “I am the one who acts and achieves,” that thought does not come from holiness. He must recognize instead that “the holiness is established and abides with me from my fathers.” In other words, we must always know that everything we have is held for us from our fathers.

3aThe meaning of “We will do and we will hear”⁴ has been explained elsewhere in my holy father's name. “We will do,” naaseh, means rectifying the body and making it a fit vessel for receiving the Torah, the way “made” is used in the verse “and the souls that they had made in Charan.”⁵ Through this a person is privileged afterward to reach “and we will hear,” to hear and understand the Torah. So in receiving the Torah, Israel's first undertaking was to make itself a fitting vessel for avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem. We may say, then, that when Bnei Yisrael went to receive the Torah, their spirit was broken. They felt they were not yet worthy to hear the Ten Commandments from the mouth of Hashem, since they still lacked the level of “we will do”: their bodies and souls had not yet been “made” into a properly prepared vessel.

3bThat is why, even at the very end, when they went to receive the Torah, Bnei Yisrael credited it not to their own merit but to the power of the Avos' merit. Of their own they had nothing at all. This is what Chazal meant by “‘The mountain’ means only the Avos”: it was by the power of the Avos' merit that Bnei Yisrael received the Torah. It is also what the Midrash meant by saying that the merit of the Avos went up and came down with Moshe Rabbeinu to give Bnei Yisrael the Torah. Through that merit they were privileged to be called “a kingdom of kohanim and a holy nation”⁶ and to attain every level they reached at Mount Sinai, and through it they could afterward receive the Torah itself. None of this was in their own merit, for on their own account they were not yet worthy to be a holy nation. It came only by the power of the merit of their holy forefathers.

4This lets us explain a teaching of the early Midrash Tanna Devei Eliyahu. When Israel said, “We will do and we will hear,” the Holy One, blessed be He, said, “And they shall make Me a Mikdash, and I will dwell among them.”⁷ The reason is that when they said “We will do and we will hear,” Bnei Yisrael reached lowliness of spirit: they felt they were not yet prepared to receive the Torah. That feeling made them worthy of having the Shechinah rest upon them. As long as any trace of pride remained in them, they could not be privileged to have the Shechinah rest upon them, for Chazal said that Hashem says of an arrogant person, “I and he cannot dwell together in the world.”⁸ That is why, as soon as they had readied themselves, out of lowliness, to set themselves aside entirely so that His Shechinah could rest upon them, Hashem said, “And they shall make Me a Mikdash.”

5In this light we may say that this is why Hashem held the mountain over them like an upturned barrel.⁹ Tosafos, the classic commentators on the Gemara, ask why He needed to hold the mountain over them, when Israel had already said, “We will do and we will hear.”¹⁰ According to what we have said, we may answer that the very opposite is true: precisely because they said “We will do and we will hear,” they felt they had not yet prepared themselves properly to receive the Torah, and so they had to be compelled to receive it.

6aIn light of what we have said, we may also explain the verse “Moshe brought the people out from the camp toward God.”¹¹ Bnei Yisrael said they were not yet prepared to be privileged to receive the Torah, the precious vessel of the Holy One, blessed be He.¹² That is why Moshe Rabbeinu had to bring them out against their will to receive it: they did not yet want to go and hear the words of the living God from the mouth of the Almighty. “How can we fulfill ‘we will hear’ in ourselves,” they said, “and hear the voice of His majesty from Heaven?” By saying “from the camp,” the verse hinted at an answer to them.

6bIt is true that they ought rightly to have trembled at drawing near to receive the Torah. But since they were many, the whole camp of Israel together, they were certainly good, and so they were ready to receive it. As the verse says, “He has not beheld iniquity in Yaakov, nor seen wrongdoing in Yisrael; Hashem his God is with him, and the King's friendship is in him.”¹³ This is the meaning of “from the camp”: they were to go out and receive the Torah by the power of the camp of Israel. It is like what we find in Rashi, that the main preparation was being “as one man with one heart.”¹⁴ That unity is what enabled Bnei Yisrael to receive the Torah in the merit of the many.

7From this we must take to heart a kal vachomer, an argument from the lesser to the greater. The generation of the wilderness made lofty preparations to receive the Torah, and still they thought themselves unworthy in their own merit. How much more must we always think that everything comes in the merit of the Avos! We must cling to their deeds and fulfill the teaching of Chazal: “‘I lift my eyes to the mountains’: to the parents.”¹⁵ Amen, may it be His will.