Shavuot
Revelation:
For we believe that it may happen
that one who is fit for prophecy and prepared for it should not become a
prophet, namely, on account of the Divine will.
To my mind this is like all the miracles and takes the same course as
they.
Maimonides (12th
Century)
When you say that I deny to God
the acts of seeing, of hearing, of attending and of willing, etc.
and their occurrence in him in an eminent degree, then you do not know
what kind of God I have…I do not wonder at this, since I believe that a
triangle, if only it had the power of speech, would say in like manner that God
is eminently triangular, and a circle would say that the Divine Nature is
eminently circular, and in this way each thing would ascribe its own attributes
to God, and make itself like unto God, while all else would appear to it
deformed…If you ask me whether I have as clear a mental image of God as I have
of a triangle I shall answer no. For we cannot imagine God, but we can, indeed conceive him.
Baruch Spinoza (17th
Century)
Torah, therefore, should not be
understood as a complete, finished system.
Belief in the giving of the Torah at Sinai does not necessarily imply
that the full truth has already been given and that our task is only to unfold
what was already present in the fullness of the founding moment of
revelation. Sinai gave the community a
direction, an arrow pointing toward a future filled with many surprises. “Halakha”, which
literally means “walking” is like a road that has not
been fully paved and completed…
David Hartman (Contemporary)
The Torah has been revealed in
words, and words are the principle vehicle of human understanding. Words are a human device that can as little
penetrate to the Torah-in-itself as the world-in-itself…Words have no special
power to disclose reality…What is necessary is disciplined inquiry, not
criticism…we know the world that is perceived by us without daring to negate or
to correct that which appears to us puzzling…
Isaac Breuer (20th
Century)
For many Jews, the only meaning of
sacred history and the Revelation it brings us is to be found in their memories
of the stake, the gas chambers, and even the snubs dealt to them publicly in
international assemblies or implicitly in the refusal to allow them to
emigrate. Their experience of the
Revelation is transmitted through persecution…For many Jews today…the
Revelation is still understood in terms of a communication between Heaven and
Earth and corresponds, therefore, to the most obvious interpretation of the
Biblical accounts…The Talmud affirms the prophetic and verbal origin of the
Revelation, but lays more emphasis on the voice of the person listening. It is as if the Revelation were a system of
signs to be interpreted by the auditor and, in this sense, already handed over
to him. The Torah is no longer in
heaven…Maimonides traces back the Revelation to the prophetic gifts…
Immanuel Levinas
(20th Century)