Uncertainty is not just a philosophical challenge; it is a psychological weight. We are wired to crave clarity, seek control, and fix meaning wherever we can. Silence unnerves us. Mystery unsettles us. We want to see, name, and understand. And when we cannot, we reach for whatever will steady us.
We demand clarity, seek control, and construct ideologies that claim to explain everything. We turn politics into religion and slogans into sacred truths. Social media amplifies this collapse. Every argument must be won, every mystery must be mastered, and every silence must be filled.
But revelation does not begin with mastery. It begins with mystery.
At the beginning of the Torah, God does not banish the darkness. He speaks into it. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). This is not the eradication of chaos; it is the act of forcing light into it, of carving meaning into what stretches beyond knowing. It is a voice that breaks open the void.
It does not explain everything; instead, it begins something. Creation is not the end of mystery; it is the invitation to walk into it and make light.
After creation, revelation continued. It did not overwhelm but moved quietly, fragment by fragment, from life to life. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – each carried a part of it forward. They did not conquer the darkness. They bore light carefully within it, knowing that mystery still remains.
At Sinai, the voice that spoke light into darkness is heard again. But this time, it does not speak to one person. It gathers a people. Because revelation is not only about encounter; it is about forming a community that can carry a covenant together and pass it forward. It binds them to memory, responsibility, and one another. The mountain shakes, the heavens roar, and fire and sound tear through the sky.
Yet the voice itself remains unchanged. Though it now speaks to a nation, it does not conquer, overwhelm, or explain. It opens a path within mystery, calling a people to live inside what they cannot grasp. The revelation at Sinai does not eliminate mystery. It gives it form – through law, memory, and covenant – so that the people can live with it and carry it forward.
The revelation at Sinai does not eliminate mystery, it gives it form
ALREADY AT Sinai, the danger appears.
The Torah tells us: “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning... and they fell back and stood at a distance” (Exodus 20:15). What should have drawn them deeper into the mystery instead caused retreat. They could not bear to stand before what they could not understand, what they could not control.
And so, at the foot of the same mountain, they build a golden calf. Revelation demands the courage to live inside uncertainty, and the people cannot bear it. They need something they can see. Something they can command.
An idol is not merely a statue of stone or gold. It is the freezing of what should remain beyond grasp. It is the human refusal to stand small before what cannot be contained. It is the longing to replace trembling with certainty.
And so, we collapse again and again; not only then but across history. The silence becomes unbearable. The absence of clarity becomes too much. We build idols, not always of gold, sometimes of ideology, sometimes of certainty, always of control. We claim what was meant to be carried. We possess what was meant to be revered. We master what was meant to be held in trembling.
But while the people retreat, Moses moves forward.
While they build gods they can control, he enters the uncontrollable.
While they seek certainty, he embraces mystery. “Moses approached the thick darkness” (Exodus 20:21).
And there, in that darkness, the Torah speaks its most profound truth: “Asher sham ha’Elokim” – “Where God is,” not in our certainties but in our questions; not in what we grasp but in what grasps us; not in the answers that end seeking but in the mystery that sustains it. The divine presence waits not beyond the cloud but within it. This ancient encounter at Sinai illuminates humanity’s timeless struggle with uncertainty.
A more honest reckoning with our own psychology
We need a more honest reckoning with our own psychology. The desire for certainty is not a flaw; it is a deeply human response to vulnerability, a way of reducing anxiety, restoring order, and holding fear at bay. Under certain conditions, it helps.
In crises, like now, it can provide temporary clarity. In grief, it can anchor us. It allows action when the alternative is paralysis. It gives structure where the ground has given way.
But what begins as a coping mechanism can become a closed system. Left unexamined, the need for certainty hardens into ideology. It resists complexity, punishes doubt, and flattens nuance in the name of coherence. In religion, it produces idolatry, not only of objects but of ideas. In politics, it turns opponents into enemies. In life, it becomes the closing of the heart to what lies beyond understanding.
But complexity is not a threat to truth. It is the condition in which truth lives.
The work is not to escape it but to learn how to hold it: to hold tension without collapse, contradiction without retreat, and maintain the relationship without resolution.
This is what Judaism asks of us.
It asks us to remain faithful within complexity, not overcome it; to stand within mystery, not banish it; to carry the light carefully into darkness, knowing we will never illuminate everything.
This is the forgotten courage of Sinai – the wisdom that has sustained our people through millennia. It is the courage to approach the cloud rather than retreat from it, to live inside questions rather than worship answers, and to find holiness within mystery.
As we have just celebrated Shavuot, we have again stood at the foot of the mountain, hearing once more the invitation to enter the darkness where God is.
This is the courage of revelation. This is the enduring wisdom of Sinai.
The writer made aliyah from the United Kingdom.