A Torah Tale of Two Mountains

Dear Friends,
 
Our people were given the mitzvah – Divine mandate – to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sanctuary three times a year. The Torah states that this pilgrimage should take place on, “the Festival of Matzos, the Festival of Shavuos, and the Festival of Succos” (Deuteronomy 16:16). When the Holy Sanctuary was established in Jerusalem through the building of the Temple on Mount Moriah, our people made the pilgrimage to Mount Moriah.
 
I would like to ask the following question: Why were we not given a mitzvah to make a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai? At the very least, we should have been told to make the pilgrimage to Mount Sinai for the Festival of Shavuos, when we celebrate the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. I would like to suggest that the beginning of an answer can be found in the following statement of Moshe, our teacher, to our people. “See! I have taught you statutes and social laws, as Hashem, my God, has commanded me, to do so in the midst of the Land to which you come” (Deuteronomy 4:5).
 
The goal of the Revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai is to fulfill the Torah in the Land! We were reminded of this spiritual goal when we made the pilgrimage to the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah, for within the Holy of Holies of the Temple was the Ark of the Covenant, and within the Ark were the Tablets of the Covenant that we received at Mount Sinai. On the Tablets of the Covenant were written the Ten Commandments, and according to the Zohar, the classical work on the hidden wisdom of the Torah, the Ten Commandments are the underlying principles of all the mitzvos of the Torah (Yisro 93b). Within the Ark was also the Torah scroll transcribed by Moshe, and according to another view, this scroll was placed on a board protruding from the Ark (Baba Basra 14a-b).
 
Within one of the courtyards of the Temple on Mount Moriah was the Chamber of Hewn Stone where the Supreme Court of Torah Sages – later known as the Sanhedrin – guided our people through their Torah teachings and through their decisions regarding the halacha, the detailed requirements of the Torah path. The Temple on Mount Moriah is to therefore serve as a center of Torah – the Divine Teaching. This is why it contains the Ark of the Covenant with the Tablets of the Covenant, the Torah, and the chamber for the Supreme Court of Torah Sages. In this spirit, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch reminds us that the Temple is the “House of the Torah” (commentary to Exodus 23:19).


“Mount Moriah” – The Midrash explains that the name “Moriah” is related to the word “hora’ah” – teaching. A reason why this mountain was called “Moriah” is because from this sacred site, the teachings of the Torah will eventually go out “to the world” (Genesis Rabbah 55:7). The Midrash adds that “Moriah” is also related to the word “ohr” – light; thus, another reason why the Temple Mount was called “Moriah” is because from this sacred site, light will go out “to the world” (ibid). In his commentary on this Midrash, Rashi explains that this spiritual light will come from “the Sanhedrin in the Chamber of Hewn Stone”; moreover, Rashi mentions that the Prophet Isaiah alludes to this light when he proclaimed, “For from Zion will go forth Torah” (Isaiah 2:3). These teachings reveal that the spiritual and universal purpose of the Revelation on Mount Sinai is to be fulfilled through the Temple – the house of the Torah on Mount Moriah. We therefore make the pilgrimage to Mount Moriah, and not to Mount Sinai. 
 
The Chofetz Chaim, a leading sage of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, offers a related teaching which can give us another perspective on why we make the pilgrimage to Mount Moriah and not to Mount Sinai. He explains that the People of Israel are a holistic unity of body and soul, and he writes:
 
“The soul of Israel is the holy Torah, and the body of Israel is the Land of Israel.” (Chofetz Chaim on the Torah, Parshas Bo)
 
Just as the soul needs the body in order to fulfill its mission in this world, so too, the Torah needs the Land of Israel in order to fulfill its mission in this world. This is why the Chofetz Chaim reminds us that many mitzvos of the Torah can only be fulfilled in the Land (ibid).
 
The soul reveals the higher purpose of the body, and the Torah reveals the higher purpose of the Land of Israel.  “But the Land of Israel without the Torah,” stresses the Chofetz Chaim, “is a body without a soul” (ibid). We therefore need the harmonious interaction of the soul and the body – the Torah and the Land of Israel.  The Chofetz Chaim finds an allusion to this idea in the following statement where Hashem proclaims that He is the One, “Who firmed the land and its produce, Who gave a soul to the people upon it” (Isaiah 42:5).
 
If we would make the pilgrimage to Mount Sinai where we received the Torah, we would be journeying to the place which represents the soul of our people, but not the body. When, however, we make the pilgrimage to the Temple on Mount Moriah, the center of the Torah within the Land of Israel, we are journeying to the place which represents the holistic unity of our body and soul!
 
Throughout our long and painful exile, we yearned for the rebuilding of the Temple on Mount Moriah so that we can once again experience this holistic pilgrimage. We therefore sing the following words at the Shabbos table:
 
“May the Temple be rebuilt; may the City of Zion be full of pilgrims; there we shall sing a new song, and with joyous singing ascend!” (Tzur MeShelo)
 
Have a Good and Sweet Shabbos,
Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen  (See below)
 
Related “Soul” Teachings:
 
1. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch was a leading 19th century sage and biblical commentator. In his famous work, “The Nineteen Letters” (Letter 8), he wrote that we became a nation at Mount Sinai “whose soul was Torah.” He also wrote:
 
“A land, prosperity, and the institutions of statehood were to be put at Israel’s disposal not as goals in themselves, but as means for the fulfillment of the Torah. Accordingly, they were all granted to Israel on one – and only one – condition: that it would indeed fulfill the Torah.” (Ibid)
 
2. The followers of Rabbi Hirsch opposed the attempts of the World Zionist Organization to have nationalism replace the Torah as the guiding spirit of our people. The followers of Rabbi Hirsch also had a major role in the establishment of Agudath Israel, an international Chareidi organization which stressed that the Torah is the soul of our people. Agudath Israel was founded by leading Torah sages, including the Chofetz Chaim. The first president of Agudath Israel, Moreinu Yaakov Rosenheim, was a follower of Rabbi Hirsch’s teachings. When he spoke at the founding conference in 1912, he said:
 
“The aim of Agudath Israel is to revive an ancient Jewish possession: the traditional concept of Klal Yisrael – Israel’s collective body, animated and sustained by its Torah as the organizing soul.” (The Struggle and the Splendor)
 
3. As we learned, the Temple on Mount Moriah reminds us of the holistic unity of Israel’s soul and body. It also reminds us of the holistic unity of the human being’s soul and body, for there is a tradition that the human being –a combination of body and soul – was created at the site of the future Temple in Zion.
 
This tradition is cited by Maimonides in his code of Torah law, Mishneh Torah, where he states that the human being was created at the site of the altar of the Temple on Mount Moriah (Beis Habechirah 2:2). The tradition that the human being was created at the site of the Temple is cited in Midrash Genesis Rabbah (14:8), and in Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer, at the beginning of Chapter 12.


The human being was created as a unity of body and soul, as it is written:
 
“And Hashem God formed the human of dust from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life; and the human became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)
 
4. The body was created to serve the soul, and Rabbeinu Bachya, a noted sage and biblical commentator of the 13th century, writes:
 
“When the body assists the soul, both are united in the service of Hashem, the Blessed One.” (Kad HaKemach – Atzeres)
 

Hazon - Our Universal Vision