Camp Mt. Sinai

“…they came to the wilderness of Sinai and camped in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount” (Exodus 19:2). RASHI (the great 11th century commentator) explains, “As one man in one heart.”

As we stated in the feature article, “Love, Love, Love,” the Creator is love. This is why He can sustain and provide for the whole of creation, keep its pieces in harmony, and provide life for the bodies and the souls.

When Kabbalists speak about Mt. Sinai, they are talking about the means to achieve the Creator, the quality of love. In a letter to a student, Kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) explains that according to the Talmud (Shabbat, p. 89a), the word Sinai means Sina’a (hatred). To achieve the force of love (the Creator) one must transcend one’s natural hatred toward others and become detached from the ego.

The Torah (Pentateuch) tells us that Moses climbed above the Mount (his ego) and discovered the Creator. Subsequently, he came down and told the children of Israel about his revelation. He said that if all of them united as one man in one heart, with a common wish to be in a state of mutual love for one another, they would also unite with the Creator. Once they had done so, the Creator would be within them, revealed, and they would be awarded eternal and complete life, in unity with the Creator.

As Above, So Below

“For I, the Lord, do not change” (Malachi 3:6).

Nature’s spiritual law does not change, just as nature’s physical laws do not change. Bonding with mutual love is still a prerequisite to revealing the Creator, as it was at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

In his article, “The Arvut” (The Bond), Baal HaSulam describes the practical side of this mutual love. The article is dedicated not so much to Moses, but to what the people had to do to be worthy of receiving the Torah (law) from Moses. He explains that the love and bonding that the people of Israel created—for which they received the Torah—had a very practical side: they became responsible for one another.

They were not able to secure each other’s physical well being because at the time, the people of Israel were slaves on the run, with no certainty of a future. But the one thing they could promise each other was their love, and that was enough for them to receive the Torah and discover the Creator.

Today, too, love is the call of the hour. While there is enough food to provide for the whole planet, people are still starving. And where there is no physical shortage, the most rapidly spreading illness is depression. Our time is the time Prophet Amos predicted: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (8:11-12).

We are in the midst of those days, and the words of the Lord are the love that already exists in the whole of nature, in the Creator. But it has yet to live among us. If we bond with love, we will feel this love and reveal the Creator. Like Him, our lives will be perfect and eternal. This is the state to which He wants to bring His creatures, the purpose for which He has created us.