X. Additional Study Texts

A few days before Shavuot, Moses gathered the Elders together and said: "These are the words which God will soon wish to command. Do you favor adopting them?"

They answered: "Why not? Haven't our fathers already adopted these rules of conduct before us? Jacob accepted God and removed idols. Joseph swore by the life of Pharaoh and not God, and he prepared a Shabbat table. Isaac honored his father and made no protest when led to the sacrifice. Judah opposed killing Joseph. Joseph opposed adultery. Judah identified before his father the bloody shirt of Joseph and did not lie. Abraham refused to steal from Sodom. We shall be just as eager to accept God's words as were our fathers."

Pesikta Hahadash, Otzer Midrashim 489

 

God is revealed by several masks; when God speaks of rewards it is with a joyous face, when God speaks of penalties it is with a white face.

Pesikta Rabbati 21:6

 

When the Torah was given the earth rejoiced, but the heavens wept. It is like a beloved princess given in marriage to a distant prince. The wedding-day is a holiday in the city of the prince but a day of mourning in the city where the princess has grown up.

Pesikta Rabbati, ibid.

 

Rabbi Simeon said: "No one knows how to fashion the jewelry of the bride, Torah, like our friends. The bride should go to the wedding canopy on Shavuot with pride, with the jewelry we have made for her." And he said to his son Rabbi Eleazar: "Make a gift for the bride, who goes to the wedding canopy tomorrow on Shavuot. What is the gift? A new interpertation of Torah."

Zohar 1,8

 

When God uttered the first of the ten Divine words on Sinai, the souls of the people suddenly fled from them. The Torah then rushed back to God and said: "Master of the World, have you given me to the living or to the dead?" "To the living, of course!" God replied. "But they are all dead, " the Torah said; "they look as if they are alive but their souls have run away from them."

 Shemot Rabbah 39:3

 

Rabbi Oshaya Rabbah said:
The Torah says, "I was the artisan's tool for the Holy One, Blessed be."

As a rule an earthly King who is building a palace does not build it according to his own ideas, but according to an architect; and the architect does not know how to build it out of his head, but has parchments or tablets to know how to design the rooms and openings. In this way, God looked into the Torah and created the world.

Bereishit Rabbah 1:1

 

When the Holy One created the earth, he said to it, "If Israel accepts the Torah you shall survive, but if not, I will return you to chaos."

Tanhuma Genesis, Shabbat 88a

 

Once the world was created, it could not have been sustained had it not occurred to the Divine Will to create human beings to engage in the study of Torah. For just as God looked into the Torah and created the world, humans look into it and sustain the world.

Zohar 161 a-b

 

Why was the Torah given in the wilderness? To teach that if you do not set yourself free, like the wilderness, you do not merit the Torah. And just as wilderness has no end, so Torah is without end.

Pesikta De Rav Kahana

 

 

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