Let My People Know

"One can assume with certainty that no traces of the giving of the Torah, this earthshaking event, will be found in the rocks of Sinai or anywhere else"

 

Consider the idea that the giving of the Torah is not a moment that belongs to the world in its natural run. 

It is, instead, a transcendental event and cannot be put within the boundaries, lists and timetables of everyday life.

Possible analogies are the mathematical concepts of irrational and transcendental numbers. 

Even though one can give an approximate measure of such numbers, they cannot be defined as part of the world of ordinary numbers. 

In a way, irrational and transcendental numbers pass through the field of ordinary numbers – without ever touching them. 

Similarly, one may say that the giving of the Torah is not a part of the normal existence of this world. 

It cannot be treated with the same terms and measurements and one can assume with certainty that no traces of this earthshaking event will be found in the rocks of Sinai or anywhere else. 

Thus, because the giving of the Torah is an act that does not belong to this world, it does not have a precise time or place. 

That is why the Torah was given in a desert, in what can be called “no man’s land.” 

The moment does not belong to the political realm and is not a part of any historical construct. 

That moment at Sinai is an event completely outside time and space, and from a different dimension altogether.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From a recent essay,"If Passover is the question, Shavuot is the answer"  by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz