Shavuos - 016 Returning To Har Sinai

Clear Emunah

By the giving of the Torah, when Hashem gave the Torah to the Jewish people, He said, “I am Hashem Your G-d (who took you out of Egypt).”

There is a dispute in the Rishonim if belief in Hashem is counted as one of the 613 mitzvos. Some say that emunah is a mitzvah. Other Rishonim say that it’s not possible to list emunah as a mitzvah, because a person cannot be commanded to believe in Hashem; for if he wouldn’t believe, chas v’shalom, it would be possible for people not to feel commanded in this mitzvah.

It is explained, however, that even those Rishonim who do count emunah as a mitzvah are not saying that we are simply commanded to have emunah; rather, that it is a mitzvah upon us to let internalize our emunah, more and more. We cannot be commanded to actually have emunah - but we can be commanded to let our emunah penetrate into our daas (mind) and into the depths of our heart.

The mitzvah to have emunah in Hashem, then, is to be clear about it - using the power of daas in our mind. When we have clear emunah in our mind, it can then penetrate into our heart. It can penetrate the innermost depths that exist in the heart.

Our Emunah Was In Exile

“I am Hashem your G-d, who took you out of Egypt”. When Hashem took us out of Egypt, what did He take us out of? Simply speaking, He took us out of the land of Egypt. But the depth is because our very emunah, itself, was in exile!

When we were in Egypt, Moshe complained to Hashem that the people are not believing in him to perform miracles. In other words, their very emunah was in exile.

Until the people were absolutely sure that Moshe was the “faithful shepherd” of Hashem who would take them out, their own emunah was in exile. Hashem promised Avraham that his descendants would inherit Eretz Yisrael, and Avraham asked Hashem for a sign for this. There were Rishonim that say that this was some imperfection on his level of emunah, and for this he was punished that his descendants would endure exile. Thus, the entire exile came about through a lack of emunah – and even more so, the nature of the very exile itself was that there was a lack of emunah.

The Egyptian exile was full of difficult labor, the bricks and the mortar, the terrible physical suffering, the avodas perach (cruel labor) in which men had to do women’s labor and women had to men’s labor, etc. But this was all but the physical aspect of the exile. As we know, everything in Creation consists of two layers – chitzoniyus (a superficial layer) and pnimiyus (an inner layer).[1] The chitzoniyus of the exile was the physical suffering there, while the “soul” of the exile, the pnimiyus of the exile, was the absence of the light of emunah from our minds and hearts. When emunah isn’t revealed to us - that is a deep form of exile.

There was exile to our bodies there, but there was exile as well to our souls. We are made of body and soul. Just as the body is made of many parts, so is the soul made of many parts. The root of the soul is emunah. It is the ‘head’ of the Jew’s soul. Egypt was the root of all exiles to come. It was the root of all suffering to our soul – an exile upon the root of our soul, our emunah.

Thus, the depth of the redemption from Egypt was that our emunah became revealed. We believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant. At first the people did not believe in Moshe, and now that there was a redemption from Egypt, they were able to believe in Moshe. From that, we became eligible to receive the Torah.

The Revelation of Perfect Emunah

The giving of the Torah revealed a clarity of emunah, a perfected level of emunah. The Sages say that when Hashem said I am Hashem your G-d, the words of Torah became carved on our hearts. The Vilna Gaon[2] says something a bit different: Emunah became carved onto their hearts.

At the splitting of the sea, everyone saw the miracle and believed. The Sages say that a typical maidservant there reached levels of vision that even the prophet Yechezkel did not see. They saw great visions of emunah, but it wasn’t yet engraved in the depths of their heart. Only at the giving of the Torah, when Hashem said “I am Hashem your G-d”, did emunah become carved on their hearts. Our emunah, ever since then, has become imprinted onto our hearts. That emunah knows no end and it is the very havayah (essence) of a Jew’s soul.

At the giving of the Torah, the possuk says that all souls were present – those that were there, and even those that weren’t there. Some were there in body and soul, some were there only in soul – but all of the Jewish people were there. There, the depth of emunah was engraved on our hearts.

Remembering Har Sinai: Returning To Our Emunah

But it didn’t last for long. As we know, the sin with the Golden Calf made us once again plummet to the damaged level of mankind where we are cursed with death. But the emunah still didn’t leave us! It has been covered over and hidden. Therefore, emunah is in the depths of every Jew’s soul, but it is just very covered over, unrevealed.

“Remember the day you stood before Hashem at Choirev.” What is the depth of remembering Har Sinai? It is to remember the clear emunah we had there. There are many facts to this mitzvah, but the root of the giving of the Torah was “I am Hashem your G-d.” The depth of remembering Har Sinai is to return to the clear level of emunah we had there, as much as we can, which resembles our level of standing at Sinai.

But the question of all questions is: how do we return to it?

The Current Generation and the ‘50^th Level of Spiritual Impurity’

Our Sages said that in Egypt, the people were steeped into the 49^th level of spiritual impurity, and they were on the verge of entering the 50^th and worst level. Had they remained even one more moment, they would have descended into the 50^th, so they had to get out right away, or else they would go lost forever in their depravity.

The Ohr HaChaim writes that in our final exile, the ‘50^th of impurity’ has already been opened. If so, he asks, why did our Sages say that we couldn’t get out of Egypt had we entered the 50^th level of impurity, yet we are guaranteed to leave this current exile even though we are in the 50^th level? The Ohr HaChaim answers that in Egypt, they didn’t yet have the Torah, so there was no way for them to get out of it had they entered. Therefore, they had to get out right away, lest they become forever entrenched. But in our current exile, we have the Torah, and with the power of the Torah, we can leave even the worst level of impurity.

Based upon his words, it must be clear to all of us what kind of time we are found in; what kind of situation we are in. We are in the 50^th gate of impurity!

What they didn’t descend to in Egypt, that is what we are in now. If one doesn’t know this, he is like a person who shakes lulav and esrog on Pesach; he doesn’t know the time he is in.

The time we are in is in the 50^th gate of impurity. It is our hope each day that we be redeemed from it, but we must understand this is where we are found as of now, this is where are.

There was never an exile like this. In Egypt they didn’t get to this point we are in. They were in the 49^th level, and they were redeemed from it. The 49 ‘gates of impurity’ essentially represent 49 evil forces that prevent the light of emunah from being shined onto the soul. (In the side of holiness, there are also 49 levels of purity, which can counter this).

When the Torah was given, we were first told “Anochi Hashem”; it was revealed to us the depth of emunah, the 50^th gate of holiness, which can take us out of the ‘50^th gate of impurity’ that is the total absence of belief in G-d.

There were two times in history when we needed to be armed with the ‘50^th gate of holiness’ in order to save ourselves from evil. One time was then, at Har Sinai, when we were rescued from the impurity of Egypt. The other time is now! In our own generation, when we are in the 50^th gate of impurity, there is no way to be saved spiritually, unless we return to the ‘50^th level of holiness’ that was at Har Sinai. The deeper our exile is, the deeper of a spiritual light our soul needs.

When emunah is perfect, that is the ‘50^th gate of holiness’. By contrast, the ‘50^th gate of impurity’ is when a person reaches a point where he cannot believe.

When Truth Vanishes

The world which we are in now is called by our Sages as “alma d’shikra” (world of falsity). To be more specific, the Sages said that it is “mostly false, and minimally truthful”. Those who do have the truth are getting fewer and fewer as the generations continue, until we get all the way to the end of the exile, where truth is almost completely gone from the world, as theSages said at the end of Tractate Sotah[3], that truth will vanish in the era preceding Mashiach. It will be only be found in groups, thus it will be hidden.

If there is emes (truth), though, there can be emunah. If there is no emes, there is no emunah. When there is no emes to be found in the world, it places a person into a situation where, although there is the light of complete emunah slowly being revealed onto the world, as we head into the future redemption, at the same time, there is also a darkness enveloping the generation, which totally obscures a person from emunah. The depth of the exile we are in is that people don’t even know where emes (truth) is found.

Where is truth found? Where can we find truth on this world? Simply speaking, it is found with the Gedolim. But where is emes found in the world? Where is it??

Emes used to be openly revealed in certain places of the world. It used to be that you could go to a place and see openly the emes there. In today’s times, though, there is no place where emes is openly found. Everything is concealed. Even the writings of our Sages today are being corrupted by people today who are explaining their words as they see fit.

There is no place in the world where emunah shines completely. There are a few people who are connected to that emunah, but there is no place where we can find it.

As a result, there is much confusion everywhere. Every person, no matter what sect of Yiddishkeit he comes from, is facing various kinds of confusing thoughts about life.

There are also some groups who feel that only they have the truth and that only they live correctly, but this very notion itself is false. There is no such thing. The few people that truly seek truth do exist, as in every generation. But the general lifestyle of people today is false.

Returning To Emes: How?

How indeed can a person reach the emes? How do we sift out the truth from all the falsity that has mixed up the world?

It is through the power of returning to the event of Sinai. That is the general definition of the concept. Now let us explain how we can return to there.

The Power To Separate Ourselves

The Bnei Yisrael at Har Sinai were commanded to prepare for three days before the Torah and separate from society; they were told to isolate themselves and be separate from everything. Even the Erev Rav were apart from us then, as the Ramban says. Thus the giving of the Torah essentially enabled each Jew to separate himself from everything and be connected to nothing else, other than his own soul, the Torah, and the Creator.

The Sages recount that “For every word of Hashem, their souls left them”. At first, we were all connected with each other, with “one heart”. We all had ahavas Yisrael then. What could be greater than that? But that was only a step to get to a greater goal. The greater goal was to reach the point where our souls left us. That was the apex of the event.

These represent two totally different levels: being unified with others, and being apart from others.

The unity we had before we received the Torah came to us from purifying ourselves for 49 days. But in order to receive the Torah on the 50^th day, we needed the clear emunah. Thus, we needed to leave the body and gain the view that comes entirely from our soul. If we would have remained in our body, we wouldn’t be as purified to accept the Torah; our body always holds us back.

We must understand a very deep point.  We are made of soul and body. Our body causes us to connect to all that goes on in this world, which doesn’t allow truth to shine completely on us. What, then, is the solution? We must leave the body! “For every word of Hashem, their souls left their bodies”. So too, we must leave the ‘body’ – we must leave our connection to materialism.

One who lives only with his body will fall together with the rest of the generation who are pulled after the body. We are referring to all the many kinds of gadgets of this world that sway a person after them.

If a person has the higher perspective that comes from his soul, he can be saved; he has hope. But if one wants to remain in the body, he is far from truth.

If one merits for even one moment how a truthful and Heavenly existence feels like, he sees a whole different world. Many things which he had previously thought were truthful, he will now see as totally false.

The giving of the Torah gave us the strength to have the view of the soul as it is in the body (when we all stood as one man, “with one heart”, and we were connected with all Jews), as well as a deeper aspect: the power to leave the body, and only have the soul’s viewpoint. In other words, we can see life from the perspective of the soul in a body (which is the external perspective), or we can see life from the soul without a body (the inner perspective). Both aspects are necessary.

The Two Sides of Our Life

Now we will speak about how to make this matter more practical.

There is love of the Creator, love of the Torah, and love for the Jewish people. Love of the Jewish people is when the souls are connected with each other deeply. But that is all one side to the coin. The other side of ourselves is to feel separate from society.

If one takes either extreme, it is detrimental. One who only secludes himself and is not connected to others is forgoing the purpose of Creation. But if one only knows of ahavas Yisrael and he does not know how to separate himself from others, he is not living truthfully either.

Every person must have two sides to his life. One side of his live must include others and be deeply connected to other Jews in love. But the other side of his life must be able to isolate from others. As Chazal say, “Therefore, man was created individual.”

(This is part of the cycle of “rotzoy v’shov” (“running and returning”) which we must live with and alternate with.)

There are two different viewpoints in us – our ‘outer’ aspect and our inner aspect. The outer aspect was the fact that we were all connected together at Har Sinai, with one heart; we were each united with each other. But our inner and deeper aspect than this was what came afterwards: our souls left our bodies. We became one with Hashem. We separated from everything and everyone and integrated our being with Hashem; we each became individuals.

The tendency of man is to seek either one of these two natures, and we do not like the idea of maintain opposite aspects in our personality. Some people love to pursue ahavas Yisrael as the center of life, others think that love of Torah is all that there is to life, and others think that loving the Creator is the central aspect of life. As for the rest of the Torah, it’s doubtful if they will keep those other parts…

But if we want to know what the complete and true way to live life is, it is to be able to live alone with Hashem, along with love for others. When we have these two aspects together, we are properly balanced and living life correctly.

On one hand, we must love others, accept others, and greet each person with a smile. Chazal say that one should learn from all people. But at the same time, we each need to be able to be individuals – totally.

Seeing The Truth

Herein lays the secret of life.

When one reaches this state, he sees the truth according to the level of his unique soul. There are so many different opinions in the world, so many different ways of how to view things, so many ways of serving Hashem. The Sages said, “Just as all their faces are not equal, so are all de’os (opinions) not equal.” But each person can see the truth that is meant for him to see.

This is not referring to the truth which is gleaned from outer sources, which is usually full of falsity and only a little bit truthful.

If one doesn’t reach this place in himself, he has never clarified where he is and what his unique role is; and he surely doesn’t realize how affected he is by the outside. He has no idea which parts he picked up are good and which parts need to be thrown out.  And if a person simply accepts everything he comes across which he has picked up from the outside, he will definitely fall by the wayside, into the great mixture of good and evil that is out there.

Preparing To Receive The Torah

When we think about what it means to prepare for the Torah, we must seek an inner kind of preparation, and not a kind of preparation that is superficial. We have to make sure that we are not just going through the same motions we go through each year, and that we keep continuing this routine kind of life.

We instead need to reach our innermost depths, the place in ourselves where our soul is ready to leave everything around us. There, in that place in ourselves, we can merit the light of emunah, the true light that was at the giving of the Torah.

Then and Now

It’s very possible that many people who hear this will find these words far-fetched. But we all stood at Har Sinai; would we have said then also that it’s too much for us to hear the word of Hashem, and that we’re not capable?

The words here are close only to those who search for truth - and they are far from anyone who does not really yearn that much for an inner kind of life.

We must know that the generation today is as upside-down as can be. It is totally not like how we were at Har Sinai. It’s like two opposite sides of a coin. By Har Sinai, the ‘50^th gate of holiness’ was revealed there. In our generation, the ‘50^th gate of impurity’ is here! (If someone merits it, he can leave the impurity and enter holiness). There was never a generation as far from the giving of the Torah as in today’s generation – and surely the next generation after this is going to be further.

If someone says that it is the opposite, being that there is more Torah learning today which was never here before, all we have to do is take a look into what’s going on inside people’s hearts. Then we can see what kind of ugly level of the ‘50^th gate of impurity’ we have descended to. Almost all of have fallen into it.

Examining Our Way of Living

I will ask a very clear question. Is there anyone here who thinks that the way of life he lives is a true kind of life? I am not talking against any one particular sect of Yiddishkeit today; I am referring to the general way that we are living. Is anyone confident that his way of Yiddishkeit is the true way for him to follow?

The first question to ask is if on is taking a truth path or not. The second question is, that even if the path one is taking is a true path, how does one know if that path of Yiddishkeit is good for him to take?

There are ways that are true and ways that are false. Even the ways that are ‘true’ are only ‘true’ for those who are meant to take that path.

If a person has thought about this question, he will find that there is no end to how much we can search for truth. As an example, the Alter of Novhardok zt”l said that if there is a person who says even one statement that is perfectly true, he will cross the ocean to meet him.

It seems that the emes (truth) is found in all of the sefarim hakedoshim which we know of, and it seems that that we are all basically “on the derech”, and that we just have a few things that we need to rectify. But you should know that it is not quite like that. The emes today is very hidden.

Most people cannot deal with the emes, not because it is difficult for them to change, but because they simply do not know what the emes is; they don’t recognize it.

Reb Chatzkel Levenstein zt”l said sharply, about his own yeshivah, that people have been listening to him for 30 years, yet they haven’t even begun to understand what he wants when he speaks. This didn’t mean that people have a hard time carrying out what he says and following his advice. They didn’t even begin to know what he’s talking about.

People today can hear a shmuess, write it down, and think they understand it, and they go on to live their life, confident that they understand what was said…

But after 120, a person sees the truth. He sees if his life was really spent pursuing Hashem. Our Sages write that every person merits at least one moment in his life where he sees the truth. A person can then realize what kind of life he is living and what kind of life he must now live.

Understandably, we all make mistakes, and none of us are perfect. But the question is if we are heading towards the inner and true point of life. That is the deepest question we can ask about our life.

Learning Torah, doing mitzvos, loving the Torah, and loving other Jews are all but general descriptions of what we have to do. These are all true, and there is no doubt about this. But the question is if our soul is heading towards truth.

At the giving of the Torah, we all became aware of the total truth. That was the complete level of our emunah. Complete emunah did not mean that we knew Hashem existed and that He runs the world. That is all true, but the depth of clear emunah means that we do not see anything other than the pursuit of emunah. The Torah, the mitzvos, ahavas Hashem, ahavas HaTorah, ahavas Hashem, are all things that shine the light of complete emunah. They are all tools that bring us to a greater goal.

We reached it at Har Sinai, when we understood clearly what the truth was. But ever since we sinned with the Golden Calf and we fell from our pure state, we tend to think that there are “other” things than this that we need to pursue. Even holy acts such as learning Torah and doing mitzvos can be masking our true priority in life.

Chazal say that all tzaddikim will say in the future, “This is my G-d that I hoped for.” How much time in a person’ day does he spend thinking about this and yearning for this? We have many tools we use, the tools of Torah, mitzvos, chessed – all of these are but tools that must lead us to a greater goal!

Being ‘Alone’: Separating From The World

In order to live such a life, we cannot be connected to this world.

This is not limited to separating from the streets and keeping ourselves in the beis midrash. That’s just the first step. The more inner aspect is that we need to enter our own souls. We need seclusion, as our Sages say, that one must seclude himself each day and think about the truth.[4]

But this is not referring to physical seclusion alone; it means to enter the most secluded place in our own soul. Yaakov fought “alone” – and so do we have a power to be “alone” in our own souls.

The giving of the Torah enabled us to be a nation that is apart and alone from the other nations, at the same time allowing us to feel connected with all souls of the Jewish people. But after that, our souls left us, and we each became “alone” with Hashem. We entered the “individual” aspect in us which enables us, individually, to connect to the reality of the Creator.

One needs to set aside time every day to separate himself from everything. The first thing you need to separate yourself from is to disconnect yourself from all that’s going on in the world. Along with this, as we said, is that a person must also make sure that he feels a deep love for other Jews.

Balancing Between Connection and Being Alone

However, ahavas Yisrael is a very delicate matter, because there is a very narrow and fine border between how much we should connect to others and at what point we should disassociate.

It is very easy for a person to fall into bad influences when we too connected with people, even if we have a lot of ahavas Yisrael.

To give a dramatic example, one of the students of the Baal Shem Tov would see people and return them to teshuvah, and people would come to him and tell him all of their sins. He eventually fell into those very same sins that people were confiding to him about.

One who is very connected to his own soul is balanced. He is able to have deep ahavas Yisrael yet he can also avoid the influences of others. But if someone is not balanced in his soul, he is not fortified enough spiritually, and his involvement with ahavas Yisrael will be detrimental to his spiritual situation. He will end up stumbling; it will not be a path that brings him to emes. Even our tzaddikim who succeeded with their ahavas Yisrael were only able to do because they also knew how to isolate themselves from others.

Leaving The 50^th Gate of Impurity

These words are deep, not just intellectually, but because they are deep matters of our soul. It is describing a way of life which cannot be seen on the surface of this world we see. But that is where life is found. On the streets, there is nothing but death there.

The words here are subtle and sensitive, and (if) they can be easily misunderstood, which will be detrimental. But if we really want to live a truthful life, we need to develop both our external and internal sides of life. On our external side of life, we need ahavas Yisrael and we need to learn Torah in-depth, but we also need to develop our inner side: to be able to live ‘alone’ from the world.

Hashem opened all the heavens at Har Sinai and showed us that He is the only One. The depth of this is that He revealed to each of us our ‘individual’ aspect.

If one reaches his ‘individual’ aspect and he has succeeded in separating totally from all outside influences, that is how he will go free from the ‘50^th gate of impurity’. When one reaches this place in himself, instead of being influenced by others for evil, he cannot be influenced at all, and instead, he influences others.

Of course, if he does not balance his ‘individual’ aspect with love for others, then he will simply become stubborn and unaccepting others, and that is why he is uninfluenced. But if he has attained the balance, of being connected deeply to all Jewish souls as well as knowing how to be ‘individual’, he has gotten it right, and he is a kind of person who can avoid all influences.

In Conclusion

This is the only advice that can help a person avoid all the outside influences today. It is called the ‘giving of the Torah’ which essentially enables us to leave the ‘50^th gate of impurity’.

The influences found today are so destructive to the soul that the only way to be saved from them is to become ‘individual’ and unfazed by what goes on in the world. Upon reaching that place in oneself, one is not influenced by anything, and instead, he influences others, for holiness.

May we merit Hashem’s help, all of us, to return to standing at Har Sinai, and receive the Torah completely, and merit the complete redemption, speedily, and today. Amen.