"I am the Lord your God"
STUDENT
SUMMARIES OF SICHOT OF THE ROSHEI YESHIVA
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With
gratitude and in honor of the bar mitzvah,
this year b'ezrat Hashem, of our
twin sons,
Michael and Joshua - Steven Weiner and Lisa
Wise
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This
shiur is dedicated by Rabbi Jonathan Morgenstern
Young Israel of
Scarsdale
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PARASHAT
YITRO
SICHA
OF HARAV AHARON LICTHENSTEIN SHLITA
I
am the Lord your God
Translated
by Kaeren Fish
I
am the Lord your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of
slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. (Shemot
20:2)
The
Rishonim are divided as to what this verse means. Ramban explains that
represents a positive commandment to believe in God:
This
statement is a positive commandment. God says, I am the Lord Who is
instructing and commanding them to know and to believe that there is a Lord, and
that He is their God (Elokim) meaning, existing, primal, from Whom
everything emanated through His desire and ability. Furthermore [your God indicates that]
He is a God to them, Whom they are obligated to serve. And He says, Who brought
you out from the land of Egypt because His bringing them out of there
indicates His reality and His will, for it was through His knowledge and His
Providence that they came out. And
it also indicates that God created the world, for if the world were eternal
[there would no possibility of miracles, since] nothing would change from its
[eternal] nature. And it also indicates ability; and ability indicates His
uniqueness, as it is written, In order that you may know that there is none
like Me in all of the land.
The
Rambam, too, counts this as a positive commandment, and lists it first in his
Sefer ha-Mitzvot. In his explanation, the commandment assumes a more
philosophical nature:
The
first commandment is
to believe in the Divinity, meaning that we must believe
that there is a First Cause that acts on all of existence. This is what God
means by His words, I am the Lord your God."
The
Sefer ha-Chinukh likewise considers this a positive commandment, but here
it is understood as including the obligation to believe in Gods eternity, in
the exodus from Egypt, and in the giving of the Torah:
To
believe that the world has one single God Who brought all of creation into
existence, and that it is by virtue of His power and His will that everything
came about, and that He always was, and will be forever, and that He brought us
out of the land of Egypt and gave us the Torah, as it is written at the
beginning of the giving of the Torah, I am the Lord your God Who brought you
out of the land of Egypt
(Commandment 25)
In
contrast to these Rishonim, the Bahag
does
not consider this verse to be a commandment. The reason for this would seem to
be its formulation as a statement rather than as an imperative (for example, the
verse could have said, Know that I am the Lord your God). Why,
according to the Bahag, does the Torah not command faith in the existence of
God? Furthermore, according to the
Rishonim who believe that this is indeed a commandment, we must ask why
it is stated as a fact rather than as a command.
We
might explain that a commandment to believe in God is inherently problematic,
for two reasons. First, it is
unreasonable for the Torah to command faith in God without explaining who God is
and what is His nature; however, such an explanation is problematic in itself.
Second, there is a logical problem with God Himself commanding belief in Him.
For these two formal reasons, the requirement to believe in God cannot be
formulated as a command. God is saying, as it were, It is indeed obligatory
that you believe in Me, but accept this as given.
A
second possible explanation is that even if it were possible for the Torah to
command the belief in God, this would be undesirable. Bnei Yisrael had lived in
Egypt for many years, and had absorbed the influences of their pagan
environment. Egyptian culture was characterized not only by belief in a number
of gods, but also by the idea that each of these gods acted upon physical
reality. The gods were perceived as controlling all that happened in the world.
The God of the Torah, in contrast, is different not only in that He is One, but
also in that He is transcendental i.e., His existence transcends material
reality.
Hence,
before Am Yisrael could start to learn all of the commandments, they first had
to understand and internalize this message. Had the matter of faith in God been
formulated as a regular commandment, they would have had no way to understand
that this belief and faith were fundamentally different from anything that they
had known previously.
However,
if this is so, we must still explain how, by means of the statement, I am the
Lord your God, God conveys to Bnei Yisrael the absolute contrast between Him
and the gods of Egypt.
Rashi
(20:19) expounds on the revelation at Sinai and grapples with an apparent
contradiction in the verses:
For
from the heavens I have spoken however, here in our text it says, And God
descended upon Mount Sinai. [Is
this not a contradiction?] Therefore a third text reconciles them:
From the heavens He made His voice heard to you, to afflict you, and upon the
land He showed you His great fire. His glory is in the heavens, while His fire
and might are upon the land.
Rashis
explanation illustrates the paradoxical and seemingly impossible nature of the
revelation at Sinai. On the one
hand, had God remained in the heavens and not descended onto the mountain to
convey the commandments to them, they could not have understood or absorbed
anything at all. On the other hand, it was important that Am Yisrael understand
that God is transcendental, and altogether unlike the Egyptian gods to which
they were accustomed. Therefore, a profound experience was needed in order to
convey this complex message: His fire and His might are upon the
land."
The
revelation at Sinai was a profound experience that affected the deepest level of
the soul. Am Yisrael needed this experience and this revelation in order to be
able to experience God as a Presence and not only as the source of
commandments. Every person has within him a triad of will-emotion-intelligence,
and a powerful experience penetrates and impacts on all three levels. Since it
is not sufficient that a person knows that he must subjugate himself to God, but
must also desire (will) to do so, it was necessary that Am Yisrael experience
the actual presence of God, His actual existence, not only His identity as the
source of commandments. Hence I am the Lord your God.
(This
sicha was delivered on Shabbat parashat Yitro 5756
[1996].)