Moshe's Role: Historical Savior

When one reads the final verses of the Torah, something very subtle becomes immediately apparent. In Moshe's waning breaths, he is described by Hashem as the prophet sine qua non, the only one who would know God, "face to face." No mention is made of the giving of the Torah. What is mentioned is Moshe's historic mission to free the Jews from Egypt, one he was uniquely apt to fulfill, cultivated to perform from the moment he was conceived. Yet, as the simple meaning of the text would have it, the giving of the Torah was not an act uniquely reserved for Moshe. Rashi does interpret the words, "the strong hand" -  in the final verse of the Torah - as referring to the strong hand that held the tablets, but the simple meaning, or pshat would seemingly be more in keeping with the Ramban. Moshe precipitated the revelation of Hashem's "strong hand and outstretched arm" in Egypt. 

Thus, the question remains, why doesn't the Torah explicitly proclaim Moshe's fame, and accredit him with the giving of the Torah, perhaps the most monumental of his deeds, and the culmination of the Exodus from Egypt? I do not have an answer, and perhaps that's what impelled Rashi to interpret the "strong hand," as the giving of the Torah, for otherwise, it would be a lacuna so blinding so as to be inconceivable. Moshe Rabbeinu literally gave the world its ethical compass, its direction, one without which the world could not exist, or persist, without which it would simply implode and rot from the inside. Yet, it is ever so conspicuously absent. 

If I had to take a gander I would say that the giving of the Torah is not mentioned in keeping with the teaching in Chazal that the forefathers intuitively kept the Torah without having been commanded to do so. That teaching is one of the most famous, namely, that each of the forefathers kept all of the 613 commandments as a way of life, something organic to their very nature. 

Thus, perhaps, to attribute the giving of the Torah to Moshe Rabbeinu, and him alone, would subvert our understanding that the Torah is something that is naturally part of us, embedded within, and a reflection of who we truly are - and in so far as we are the descendants of Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov, Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah, we likely had the potential, from a certain vantage point, to live a life of Torah, by listening to our inner voice and becoming who we were meant to be, the direction choreographed by the life of our predecessors who are a beacon onto us all. 

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