Moses and You

Hashem revealed Himself no less to you at Har Sinai, than he did to Moshe Rabbeinu. That's one of the key points in the story that we so often miss. 

If it was not directly to us, then it was to our ancestors, but Hashem tells the Jewish people they are no less obligated to the Torah's precepts than Moshe Himself. Moshe perhaps spoke regularly with Hashem, "face to face (Numbers 12:8)," but at that unique moment, one of revelation which Hashem Himself attests was like no other - "Has any people heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire, as you have, and survived? (Deuteronomy 4:33). 

Hashem revealed Himself to the Jewish people through fire. The idea is repeated no fewer than three times, adding to its saliency and significance: "From the heavens Hashem let you hear the divine voice to discipline you; on earth Hashem let you see the great divine fire; and from amidst that fire you heard God’s words.

When Hashem first introduced Himself to Moshe, it was from within the burning bush; the fire, heavenly fire that remained with the Jewish people throughout the desert, illuminating their way and revealing itself in its full glory to each and every one of us. 

The significance of the consonance between Moshe's private revelation and that of the Jewish people comes to bear vis a vis the eternal, inseparable relationship we share. 

I'd like to share two similar stories that connote that principle. 

After the Holocaust, not only were Hassidic Rebbes' families depleted, but likewise were entire followings. One of the visionary Rebbes who helped the Jewish people rehabilitate itself was the Rebbe of Bobov, Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam, who personally helped my grandfather's brother, R' Boruch Barth after the war. He embraced him, and brought him closer, something my grandfather, who experienced the ravages of the war, did not have. Boruch, who had been learning in Pinsk before the war, was incorporated into the Russian side, but, having come to America thereafter, had no family, no spiritual guide, no ember of hope besides a long-forgotten home. The Bobover Rebbe, famously, looking for a 10th man for a minyan on a Shabbos morning, saw a Jew who had survived the war. He was smoking a cigarette. He told him that they needed a hazan, a cantor and that he was just the person. 

That fire had not been extinguished. 

Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Faivelzon shared a similar story about his father, Rabbi Shmuel Faivelzon, likewise a survivor. A secular Jew had wanted to experience a little of the Torah world, so he drove up to Safed the day before Shavuot to speak to Rabbi Faivelzon and learn from him. Come Erev Shavuot, Rabbi Faivelzon asked him where he'd be for the holiday. He told him he didn't know how to learn. He told him, "So I'll learn with you."

They spent Shavuot night together. The next day, the Jew wanted to drive home. He thanked the rabbi for his teachings and time, and said thank you for inviting him for the holiday. Rabbi Faivelzon in response said, "The holiday is not over yet," to which the Jew responded, "But I'm not religious." Rabbi Faivelzon responded, "Nowhere in the Torah does it say that only religious people have to keep holidays."

That fire, thanks to the fire Hashem exposed to each and every one of us, was a fire that nobody can extinguish, that Hashem promised will not be extinguished. Maybe it will be one, or two generations later - we simply don't know - but this idea manifests itself even on a halachic level. 

The Sefer Hachinuch teaches that one has to return the lost object even of a self-hating Jew, a min, who tries to undermine Judaism and whose ways of life border on the idolatrous, because, "He may have children who return to the path of Judaism." 

May we blessed with the continued revival of our nation, and may the miracles we see in the protection of our people only grow and become magnified as we find ourselves surrounded by an unabating see of enemies.