‘The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb saying, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain.” (Deut. 1:6)
When Moses recounts this to the children of Israel, he is enunciating a deep characteristic of the Jewish tradition.
Recall that Horeb is another name for Sinai, so God is telling the Israelites that they cannot stay too long at the mountain of revelation, the place where the summit of history and spirit joined together. If we think of Sinai as a place where Torah is received, what can it mean that we do not stay there?
First, it means that receiving Torah alone is not enough to live a good life. Just as the Israelites could not stay at that mountain, Judaism never created monastic retreats, because to live alone on a mountaintop in Jewish tradition is to disdain the world. The Torah was meant to be lived, not merely received. The prophet Elijah, having fled to the wilderness in anger at the people’s defection to Ba’al, is told by God to turn back and be with the people. If you don’t live where rituals and regulations can be practiced, where other people must be understood, you cannot live a life of Torah. Stay at the mountain and you will have Torah but you will never live Torah.
Second, you must respect those who live apart from the mountain. Many years ago I was teaching a class on Jewish business ethics to a group of businesspeople. The more I taught the more I became uncomfortable with the reality that although I knew the tradition, I had never practiced business. I did not know – not really, not in my “kishkes” – what it was to try to be ethical in a business environment. I had not tried to sell goods in a difficult market or negotiate contracts or advertise without lying. They had a great deal to teach about how the Torah’s regulations spoke to the world they knew. I had stayed at the mountain, been studying and teaching, but the businesspeople with whom I met had moved through the wilderness, seeking to live the Torah I could only teach.
This is why the rabbis of the Talmud had professions. To make shoes teaches something about the world that all the study-halls on earth cannot teach you.
There is a third, subtle disguised teaching from this verse as well. For the words used for “long enough” are rav lachem, the same words used by Korah to say to Moses that he had taken on too much, that he had been self-aggrandizing. Someone who believes he can stay at the mountain, the Torah seems to be teaching us, has too exalted a view of his own spiritual capacities. No one is pure enough to stand always beside Sinai. Sometimes even the best of us find that to stand always beside Sinai is to breathe oxygen alone.
The Torah is insistent that no human is perfect, and it is in the rough and tumble of daily life that we show our spiritual striving. Ecclesiastes is explicit: “There is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does only what is right and never sins.” (7:20)
After the terrible incident of the golden calf, we can imagine that Israel was terrified. It was hard to move forward. They wanted to stay in place where God has spoken to them, and not move out into the wilderness and the unknown land. But there is more courage in facing the vicissitudes of life than in living a cloistered existence, far from the mountain of security. We know that a common response to fear is to freeze. It must have been tempting to stay at the mountain forever.
But God’s next words are “Turn and go.” Don’t stay at the mountain. It is a beautiful sojourn, but no place to live.■
The writer is Max Webb senior rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and the author of David the Divided Heart. On Twitter: