Parshas Yisro 5785 - "Vechol Ha'am Ro'im Es Hakolos" - the novelty of Mattan Torah

00:00 [unclear] Parshas Yisro 5785. Shabbos, [unclear]. The Rebbe spoke at a farbrengen about the difference between Moshe and Aharon. Moshe Rabbeinu represents Torah, while Aharon HaKohen represents prayer. Moshe Rabbeinu is called “the King’s attendant,” and Aharon HaKohen “the Queen’s attendant.” In other words, Aharon HaKohen brings the Queen—he brings the Jews to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is prayer, in which a Jew rises from below upward. Moshe Rabbeinu, on the other hand, is “the King’s attendant,” bringing Hakadosh Boruch Hu to the Jews through Torah. The Rebbe spoke about the difference between Moshe’s service and Aharon’s service as it is expressed in a person’s own service. When we speak about prayer, a Jew rises: “A ladder set on the earth.” In prayer, a Jew stands within the world and rises. Prayer is a ladder: he climbs another rung and another rung, another level and another level, higher and higher, closer and closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is Aharon HaKohen’s role: he raises Jews from below upward, from the world to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. With Moshe Rabbeinu, by contrast, the matter is Torah. Torah begins, from the outset, from above downward. Torah is “From the heavens I spoke with you.” It is Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s Torah: “I am Hashem your G-d.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu comes and speaks to the Jews. So with Torah, from the outset, [unclear] world,

01:39 there is Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu descends from above and speaks to the Jews. The Rebbe explained this in relation to Moshe Rabbeinu’s service, the study of Torah. The Rebbe said that for a Jew connected to Torah, his starting point, from the very outset, is that there is Hakadosh Boruch Hu. There is no world, no physical world, because the whole matter of the world is entirely open to question: its entire existence is only the existence of Torah. As he cited the point brought in Chassidus: when a Jew says, “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One,” it means that, in his eyes, Hakadosh Boruch Hu alone exists. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is one and unique, and there is nothing besides Him. “You have been shown to know that Hashem is G-d in the heavens above and on the earth below; there is nothing else besides Him.” There is nothing besides Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Until suddenly someone comes and says there is a world. How do we know there is a world? Who says there is a world? Only because the Torah itself says, “In the beginning, G-d created”; the Torah reveals that there is a world. And the Rebbe said: a child, anyone who is still before bar mitzvah, or a young man sitting in yeshivah whose parents take care of all his needs—he does not have to worry about earning a living or about his physical needs—all he has to do is sit and learn. His entire existence is nothing but [unclear], G-dliness and Torah.

03:10 How does he know there is a world? Only because it says so in the verse. Then, at that same farbrengen, the Rebbe suddenly turned his gaze toward the children standing in front. A twelve-year-old boy was standing opposite the Rebbe. The Rebbe pointed his holy finger at the boy and said to him, “You—how do you know there is a world?” The Rebbe himself answered: “Only because you know the verse, ‘In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.’” If the Torah did not say there was a world, how would anyone know there was a world? Who says so? After all, “There is nothing else besides Him”; there is nothing besides Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And that is Moshe Rabbeinu’s role. Moshe Rabbeinu revealed Torah to the Jews. Torah means that there is Hakadosh Boruch Hu, that “there is nothing else besides Him,” and with Him [unclear]. Only because the Torah said there is, there is, there is a world. That boy is—the well-known, one of the great [unclear], Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Jacobson. And this is what our parsha, Parshas Yisro, discusses. In it we find the verse, [unclear], one of the verses in our parsha: “And all the people saw the sounds and the flames and the sound of the shofar and the mountain smoking; and the people saw and trembled and stood at a distance.”

04:56 What verse appears immediately after Matan Torah? “And all the people saw the sounds.” There is a well-known Mechilta on this. The Mechilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai asks there: What does “And all the people saw the sounds and the flames” mean? What did they see? Sounds are not something you see. Sounds are something you hear. Sound belongs to hearing. Flames, fire, are something you see. How do we interpret the verse, “And all the people saw the sounds and the flames”? The Midrash records a disagreement about this between Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Yishmael says the verse should be understood as: “They saw what is seen and heard what is heard.” It does not mean that they saw the sounds. Sounds are something you hear. What could be heard, they heard. What they saw was the flames. There is no need to change the order of things here in the verse. “They saw what is seen and heard what is heard.” The verse is not telling us that the natural order was altered here. Why would there have to be changes? Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not perform miracles for no purpose, as I’ll explain further, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not perform miracles for no reason. So plainly, “saw” certainly does not refer to the sounds, but to the flames. And they heard the sounds. That is Rabbi Yishmael’s view. Rabbi Akiva says: “They saw what is heard and heard what is seen.” He changed the entire order of things. No, that itself

06:33 is what the Torah wants to tell us: there was a miracle here. Something normally heard—the sounds—they experienced through sight: “They saw what is heard.” And things associated with sight—the flames—they heard. A strange thing, but that was the miracle of Matan Torah: “They saw what is heard and heard what is seen.” It seems impossible, but that was the innovation of Matan Torah: precisely the reverse. And here the simple question arises: What is the point of this? After all, Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not perform miracles for no purpose. “For no purpose” means, as we say, for nothing. So what was the point of this miracle? Why should they “see what is heard and hear what is seen”? What is Rabbi Akiva’s approach? What is the reasoning behind the disagreement between Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva? On the face of it, if things happened in the ordinary way, what would that tell us? What would we learn from “They saw what is seen and heard what is heard”? What does that mean? And here is something interesting. What does Rashi do? On the verse “And all the people saw the sounds and the flames,” Rashi brings: “They saw what is heard.” In other words, Rashi adopts Rabbi Akiva’s view. Rashi understands that since the plain meaning of the verse says “they saw the sounds,” we must say that they really did “see the sounds”—“they saw what is heard,” “something impossible to see elsewhere,” in Rashi’s words. This was a unique innovation, a unique miracle that had never happened before: “They saw what is heard.”

08:11 What is interesting, first of all, is why Rashi has to adopt Rabbi Akiva’s view. One could also say that Rabbi Akiva’s view describes something astonishing, something completely out of the ordinary. So, seemingly, the simpler question is: Why perform miracles when there is no need for them? And Rashi in particular, who deals with the plain meaning of Scripture—if we can explain it much more simply, why say that such an upheaval took place? One can offer various answers, but in the end, what is the point of it? Why does Rashi have to adopt Rabbi Akiva’s view? But even more interestingly, Rashi quotes only half of Rabbi Akiva’s words. Rashi brings “They saw what is heard,” but does not bring “They heard what is seen.” And that is precisely what is interesting: What is the point of that? On this, when the Rebbe [unclear] Shavuos, [unclear], when the Rebbe brings this Midrash and this Rashi, [unclear], he explains that this is the foundation of the whole nature of Matan Torah. Because Matan Torah brought about a revolution in the entire reality of Jews. This is not some side point. In this Midrash, in this account, in the disagreement between Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva, an entire foundation of serving Hashem is revealed, an entire foundation of what Matan Torah is meant to accomplish. And here there are two approaches to the nature of Matan Torah: Rabbi Yishmael’s approach and Rabbi Akiva’s approach, each consistent with his own view. And then there is also Rashi, who studies the plain meaning of Scripture with

09:44 A child; Rashi is not a Midrash. Rashi teaches the five-year-old beginning to study Scripture. Rashi is saying that a five-year-old who is just beginning to learn Chumash needs to understand what “seeing what is heard and hearing what is seen” means. What is the difference between seeing and hearing? To understand the miracle here, we first need to understand the difference between them as it ordinarily applies to people. Sight relates primarily to physical things. With our eyes we see physical reality; we do not see something spiritual. Hearing is the opposite. Sound is something intangible: we do not see a voice, but hear what it conveys. The same is true of spiritual matters. That is the simple difference between sight and hearing: sight grasps the physical, while hearing grasps the spiritual. There is another difference, which we can observe in a person when he sees or hears something. Seeing affects a person at an entirely different depth from hearing. When a person hears something,

11:22 it is not absolutely clear to him. It remains something external to him. We can see this plainly: even after a person has heard something, he can still hear arguments on either side. Even if he has formed a particular opinion because what he heard influenced him, someone else can come and show him that perhaps he was mistaken and should think the exact opposite. After all, he did not see it for himself. By contrast, when a person sees something, it is clear to him. Sight penetrates the soul in such a way that the matter becomes obvious and certain to him, to the point that it could not be otherwise. We find this in halachah: “A witness cannot become a judge.” Someone who saw an event as a witness cannot serve as a judge. Why? A judge must be capable of hearing arguments: “The congregation shall judge, and the congregation shall save.”

12:15 A judge must be capable of hearing both sides. Someone who has seen something can no longer see two sides to it. He saw it himself; as far as he is concerned, it cannot be disproved. He cannot entertain a contrary argument. So sight penetrates the soul more deeply and intrinsically, until the matter becomes my own, because I saw it myself. And what is behind these two differences? Sight grasps the physical, and sight is more deeply internalized; hearing, by contrast, grasps the spiritual, so it remains something additional, not bound up with the person himself. These are not two separate differences; one depends on the other. Because we are physical people, the physical is self-evident to us. So when I see something with my physical eyes, it is self-evident and clear to me; there cannot be two sides to it. The spiritual is more distant. A person does not see spirituality and does not know what it is; it is something from another world. So it remains something external to him. He does not grasp it as something present here. It is therefore easier to challenge. It does not settle within him to the same extent, and it can be refuted. So the whole matter of sight and hearing is connected to a person’s general approach to the physical and the spiritual. His approach to the physical is one of sight; his approach to the spiritual is one of hearing.

13:39 And this is what we are told about the tremendous innovation of the Giving of the Torah. As the Midrash relates, Rabbi Akiva says that its tremendous innovation was that “they saw what is heard and heard what is seen.” At the Giving of the Torah, when there was a revelation of G-dliness, “Hashem descended upon Mount Sinai”—Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself descended upon Mount Sinai—the Jews saw it with their physical eyes. What did they see? G-dliness, the G-dly light. What became self-evident to them? The exact opposite of what had been true until then. Until then, physicality had been self-evident, while spirituality had been more distant. The Giving of the Torah turned the whole picture around. Suddenly, at the Giving of the Torah, there was sight. “And they saw”—“they saw what is heard”—and this gave the Jews a new way of relating to things. It transformed their entire reality. Matters that until then had been perceived only through hearing—spirituality, G-dliness, spiritual matters that had been distant, something remote, something added from the outside—suddenly became something they saw, something self-evident, something that became their own reality. And physical matters became more distant to them. When a Jew plainly sees G-dliness, he suddenly asks himself: Why is this here? A doubt arises: Is there a world? Who says there is?

15:16 A world? Maybe there really is no world? And then the question arises: We say, “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One,” and Hakadosh Boruch Hu is one, singular and unique—so perhaps the world is an illusion? Perhaps the world is only an appearance? That is the question that arises. And the answer is: “In the beginning, G-d created.” The Torah tells us that the world is a reality, but the power that gives it reality comes from the Torah. The Torah has reality; the world has no reality in its own right. This is Rabbi Akiva’s argument: the Giving of the Torah was not a temporary miracle. The miracle is the very essence of the Giving of the Torah. It transformed the Jews’ entire reality, so that the matters of “seeing what is heard”—spiritual matters and G-dliness—became things they saw, things self-evident to them, things they saw with their eyes. And the matters of “what is seen,” physicality, became distant to them. How should this be expressed in a person’s avodah? For someone connected to the Torah, this world has no importance; physicality has no importance to him. As far as he is concerned, there is nothing but Torah. What the Torah says is the truth. Apart from that, there is no reality at all. And when he looks at the world, from the outset he sees in it only a reality defined by Torah. The main thing in his life is Torah and mitzvos, while physical matters, in practice, have no importance to him at all. Not in the light of the matter, not

16:34 in the power of the matter. And that is Rabbi Akiva’s approach. Then comes Rabbi Yishmael. Rabbi Yishmael says: No. What does Rabbi Yishmael say? We need to understand his approach. Rabbi Yishmael comes and says: At the Giving of the Torah there was indeed a great revelation of G-dliness. But do not forget its purpose. The purpose of the Giving of the Torah was not to break the natural order. On the contrary, its whole purpose was to bring the Torah down into our world: “Hashem descended upon Mount Sinai.” Halachah must be observed within the natural order. A mitzvah must be performed within the natural order. Yes, a mitzvah performed through a miracle is not a mitzvah; it must be performed specifically in the natural way. It is explained at length that Torah and halachah are meant to be observed specifically through this physical world, with its boundaries and characteristics. So Rabbi Yishmael comes and argues: No. At the Giving of the Torah there was an immense revelation of G-dliness, but it was not a revelation that broke those boundaries. It revealed that within the boundaries of nature, with nature existing as it is—“they saw what is seen and heard what is heard”—physicality is a reality, while spirituality stands to the side. And within that framework, with the world retaining its boundaries, it is precisely there that G-dliness must be revealed, within the boundaries of the world. The Torah’s laws and mitzvos must be fulfilled within the characteristics of the world as they are, and

18:03 there G-dliness must be brought down—“a dwelling for Him, blessed be He.” Within the world, as the world exists with its characteristics and boundaries. These are two general approaches to serving Hashem, two ways of serving Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is connected to the fundamental approaches of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael, and the Rebbe discusses it at length: it is their entire approach. This is not the place to go into it at length. But we want to emphasize only how it was expressed in their lives: Rabbi Yishmael was a tzaddik and a kohen, and he came from a family of Kohanim Gedolim. As is known, Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, and so on. His avodah was the avodah of tzaddikim. As explained in Chassidus, the avodah of tzaddikim is orderly avodah, advancing from strength to strength, working within the world and bringing G-dliness down into the world’s boundaries—a dwelling in the lower realms. That is why Rabbi Yishmael argues: “They saw what is seen and heard what is heard.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu must be brought into the characteristics of the world. Rabbi Akiva was descended from converts. Rabbi Akiva was a baal teshuvah. He only began to study at the age of forty, as everyone knows from the story. So Rabbi Akiva’s path of avodah was one of leaping, the path of a baal teshuvah. The avodah of a baal teshuvah is to leave the world, to break out of this world, to leap, to jump, [unclear]. For him, all avodah is done “in one hour,” “in one moment,” above the world. “All my days,” as Rabbi Akiva says in Tractate Berachos, in the story told there in the Gemara: “All my days I was troubled by this verse, ‘with all your soul’—even if He takes your soul. I said: When will I have the opportunity to fulfill it?” Rabbi Akiva’s approach was,

19:29 [unclear]. They saw what is heard and heard what is seen. He sees how things exist in the world, on the one hand, while G-dliness is the reality. The physical becomes completely nullified. This is what we need [unclear], as the Torah says, but without the Torah, the world cannot grasp reality. And this is the difference between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael. These are two general approaches and paths in serving Hashem: the path of the tzaddikim and the path of the baalei teshuvah. Both are true paths of service that a Jew needs to have. Then Rashi comes along, and Rashi is learning with a child. Rashi is speaking to a child, and there is a wonderful lesson here in education. How do you educate a child? Can you educate a child so that the physical world has no place in his eyes? “They heard what is seen”—what is “seen” is the physical world. For the physical world to have no place in his eyes at all is not possible. A child is a child. A child does not have the senses and abilities for the physical world to stop being something obvious to him. He likes to eat, he likes to play, he likes physical things, and that is how it should be. A child should be a child, absolutely. What you can teach a child is that, at the same time, G-dliness, spirituality, Torah and mitzvos should be something obvious to him. G-dliness should be self-evident to him. “They saw what is heard”—that is something you can and must instill in a child. These must be the foundations of education, Rashi says. [unclear]

20:56 “They saw what is heard.” Rashi comes along and tells him in his commentary on Chumash: this is what the giving of the Torah must accomplish—“they saw what is heard.” Until the giving of the Torah, people looked at Torah and mitzvos, at G-dliness and G-dly spirituality, as something that made them ask: What does this have to do with me? After all, it is spiritual. Today, for anyone with a connection to Torah, studying Torah and observing mitzvos should be something obvious, something that belongs to them, something natural. This is my life; it could not be otherwise. And you can instill this in a child, because this is his life. Remove all his worries and all the distractions of life, so that for him [unclear], Torah and mitzvos will be something obvious. But Rashi does not say “they heard what is seen,” because you cannot bring a child to that point. And this is the lesson about education through the path of service that today’s parsha comes to teach: this must be the approach to education brought about by the giving of the Torah—that we must educate our children so that for them, “they saw what is heard.” Matters of G-dliness should be self-evident. The oneness of Hashem should be as obvious as anything. Because the truth is that G-dliness is self-evident. G-dliness is something obvious, spirituality is something obvious, Torah and mitzvos are something obvious. This is how one must live; it could not be otherwise. This is the truth, this is the truth of the world, and this is the ultimate truth. Afterward, when one can

22:14 reach higher levels of service—first the level of service of the tzaddikim, of Rabbi Yishmael, “they saw what is seen and heard what is heard,” and then the level of Rabbi Akiva, “they saw what is heard and heard what is seen.” And so we rise from one level to the next, until we merit the revelation of Moshiach, when the true revelation of the oneness of Hashem will be here below in the world. Then the verse will be fulfilled: “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.” May we indeed merit the revelation of Moshiach immediately, amen, may it be His will.