Torah, Bread, Spirit
Maimonides interpreted Deuteronomy 4:9-10 to mean that each year we must teach our children what happened at Sinai, visibly and audibly. Sinai is not simply an origin story. It is an event of sacred history. The fire on the mountain, the thundering and thick cloud hiding the mystery of God are as important as the content received from Sinai.
| Only take heed, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children — how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’ –Deuteronomy 4:9-10, RSV |
There is a tradition in the midrash that every generation forgets and loses a bit of Torah, so that each generation is diminished. This is a result, says the midrash, of Israel fearing the power of God’s voice and asking Moses to relay the message. Had the Israelites listened to the voice of God, no generation would have forgotten any of Torah, nor would we have to constantly review and memorize its teachings.
Remembrance is vital to Jewish life. The Torah has become like bread. We eat and are satisfied, but we soon need to eat again. So, in the words of Deuteronomy, repeated by Yeshua in the desert, “man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Hashem” (Deut 8:3; Matt 4:4; Luke 4:4).
As Israel received Torah at Sinai, Yeshua’s followers received the sign of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem in the year Yeshua rose. Just as we cannot live on the ancient generation’s experience at Sinai, so we cannot live on the experience of the apostle’s generation at the Temple. In this season at Shavuot, we remember that Torah and Spirit are our bread. The bread of life, Torah and Spirit, were perfectly made known in the person of Yeshua. And our part, as with the bread celebrated at the harvest festival of Shavuot, is to partake daily and often.
