Midrash Mechilta on verse

    One difference between them concerns the manner in which the revelation at Sinai was perceived by our senses. After recounting the Ten Commandments the Torah relates: "And all the people saw the sounds and the flames and the mountain smoking; the nation saw and trembled, and stood afar." ¹

    What does it mean that they "saw the sounds"? According to Rabbi Akiva, the manner in which we perceived the sights and sounds of Sinai was radically different from the way in which such stimuli are ordinarily assimilated: our senses of sight and hearing reversed their roles-we "saw what is [ordinarily] heard, and heard what is [ordinarily] seen." Not so, says Rabbi Ishmael. At Sinai, we experienced the greatest divine revelation of all time in the same manner in which man ordinarily relates to reality: we "saw what is seen and heard what is heard." The word "saw" in the verse refers to the "flames" and the "smoking mountain" mentioned later in the sentence. ²

    But both interpretations of the verse raise as many questions as they answer. Regarding Rabbi Akiva's description of an extraordinary transmutation of our senses, we can only say: Amazing, but why? We know that, as a rule, the Creator is loath to suspend the natural order of things: miracles are rare, and come only to achieve a specific end. ³ How would Rabbi Akiva explain the purpose for such a nature-trouncing feat?

    As for Rabbi Ishmael's view, it raises the question as to what this verse is coming to tell us in the first place. The Torah has already described the thunder, the shofar blast, the lightning, the fire and the smoke which accompanied G-d's descent upon Sinai. ⁴ Need we be told that the people of Israel saw these sights and heard these sounds?

Two Differences
    As tools of perception, sight and hearing differ in two significant ways.

    Sight is an extremely "physical" experience: we see the thing itself-its mass, its immanence, the brute fact of its being. Hearing, on the other hand, registers stimuli of a more "metaphysical" nature: we see a wall, but we hear music, emotional inflections, ideas. This is even more so regarding the other meaning of "to hear" which is "to comprehend" (in Hebrew, the word shemi'ah means both "hearing" and "comprehension"). We hear and understand things that are too ethereal to be captured by the physical eye.

    A second difference is the manner in which sight and hearing affect us, the extent to which they impress their "findings" upon our mind and heart. Sight is the most convincing of faculties: once we have seen something with "our own eyes," it is virtually impossible for other sensory evidence or rational proofs to refute what we now know. On the other hand, hearing and comprehension are far less vivid impressers of the information they convey. They will convince us of certain truths, but not as unequivocally as do our eyes. What we hear and understand are "facts" which have been "proven" to us; what we see is reality.

    [This difference is also reflected in Torah law. The Talmud ⁵ rules that a judge who has witnessed a crime cannot sit in judgment over the case. Why? Is not the entire point of the trial that the judge should learn the truth? Here we have a judge who knows what happened-not through second-hand information received from witnesses, but by the testimony of his own eyes! Explains the Talmud: "Since he has seen the accused commit the crime, he is incapable of seeing him in the right." For a judge must consider more than what the accused did or did not do-he must also examine issues such as intent and culpability. When he merely hears from witnesses that the accused committed a criminal act-even if he is convinced that they are telling the truth-he can still maintain the proper distance to objectively consider the other factors which may absolve the accused from guilt. But when he himself sees what happened, the fact of the accused's criminal deed is not only known but also real to him, making it extremely difficult for him to override this unequivocal reality with logical considerations.]

    These two differences between sight and hearing are interconnected. We are physical beings inhabiting a physical reality. The physical is real to us, while the conceptual and metaphysical are foreign and insubstantial. So sight, which perceives physical objects, is definitive and absolute, while the intangibles perceived via the ear and mind are, at most, "proven facts," ever subject to reassessment and reconsideration.

Given or Proven

    The story is told of the mystic who tells the philosopher: "Do you know the difference between you and me? You are constantly thinking about G-d, while I am forever thinking about myself."

    The philosopher was very pleased with the compliment. But one day it dawned on him what the old sage had meant. The philosopher is convinced that he, the thinker, exists, and doesn't give it a second thought. So he ponders the existence of G-d: Does G-d exist? What is G-d? How does His existence affect us? To the mystic, however, G-d is the very essence of reality. But where does that leave us? What possible legitimacy can our finite and transitory existence have within the all-transcending, all-pervading reality of G-d? The divine truth a given, the mystic ponders his own subjective reality: Do I exist? What significance, if any, is there to my existence? Why do I exist?

    This is what Rabbi Akiva means when he says that at Sinai we "saw what is heard, and heard what is seen." Ordinarily, it is our physical existence that is "seen" and real to us. Of course, we understand that all this has a Creator and a purpose. There is proof of it in the majesty and complexity of the universe; every throb of life bespeaks it and every stirring of conscience in the soul of man. But this higher reality is merely "heard" in our world-deduced, sensed, even experienced-but never perceived with the unequivocal realness of sight. To us, reality is the physical; everything else is merely a concept.

    But not at Sinai. At Sinai our eyes were opened: we "saw the G-d of Israel." ⁶ We saw what is heard, what is ordinarily abstract and "spiritual." And we heard what is seen: our formidable world, so real and tangible, was suddenly a distant echo, a concept. For if G-d is Reality, if the essence of existence is the infinite and omnipresent divine truth, what is our world? Just an illusion? But no, there must be a world-otherwise, what is the significance of creation? Of the Torah and its commandments? All this tells us that our world does exist-it proves it to us. What is ordinarily a given is now a substantiated theory

Holding Ground
    Rabbi Ishmael disagrees. As he sees it, the revelation at Sinai did not come to turn our natural reality upside down. The function of Torah is not to overwhelm and negate our world but to enable us to deal with it, on its own terms, and uncover its potential to reflect the goodness and perfection of its Creator.

    This, maintains Rabbi Ishmael, is an even greater miracle than for the material reality to evaporate the moment G-d introduces Himself. That would be the most obvious and "natural" thing to happen. But at Sinai we achieved an even greater feat: we held our ground. Faced with the very essence of G-d, we refused to make this an other-worldly experience, a refutation of our finite and subjective existence. Instead, we insisted on applying the revelation to our reality. We saw and heard G-dliness, but on our terms, seeing what is seen and hearing what is heard. The physical remained real and the spiritual remained abstract, and both were permeated with the vision of their divine essence and purpose.

Our Response
    A second difference between Rabbi Akiva's and Rabbi Ishmael's recollections of the revelation at Sinai concerns our response to G-d's proclamation of the Ten Commandments. The Torah relates that "G-d spoke all these words, to say: 'I am G-d your L-rd... You shall have no other gods before Me...'" ⁷ The Midrash is puzzled by the Torah's use of the word leimor, "to say." What does it mean that "G-d spoke all these words, to say"? Throughout the Torah, dozens of laws are preceded by the words, "And G-d spoke to Moses, to say...," but in those instances Moses is being instructed to convey those divine directives to the Jewish people. Obviously, leimor cannot be so interpreted in our case, as all Jews were present at Sinai. Explains the Midrash: "to say" means that the Jewish people responded to each of the Commandments, affirming their commitment to its observance.

    What did they say? According to Rabbi Akiva, "They said 'Yes' to each of the positive commandments and 'Yes' (i.e., 'Yes, we will obey') to the prohibitions." Rabbi Ishmael disagrees: "They said 'Yes' to the positive commandments and 'No' (i.e., 'No, we will not do so') to the prohibitions." ⁸

    But what is the point of their disagreement? In either case, our response was to declare our readiness to uphold both the positive and negative commandments of G-d. What difference does it make if we said the word "yes" or the word "no," if the meaning of both these responses is the same?

The Positive No
   There are two ways of relating to the divine commandments in the Torah. One approach is to view them through the lens of human experience: to extol the wisdom gained from Torah study, the spiritual elevation achieved by prayer, the tranquillity experienced on Shabbat, the educational potential of a Passover seder, the social value of charity. On the "negative" side, one can appreciate the importance of the mitzvot that prohibit theft, gossip, promiscuity, food harmful to the body and psyche, and so on. Indeed, our sages have said that "The mitzvot were given in order to refine humanity." ⁹

    But is any of this truly relevant? After all, these are G-d's commandments. What greater achievement can there possibly be than to carry out His will? From this perspective, all mitzvot are equal, for all else pales in significance before this one monumental fact. In the words of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, "had we been commanded to chop wood" this would be no less a mitzvah than the most enlightening, fulfilling and character-refining of G-d's commandments.¹⁰

    This is why Rabbi Akiva maintains that we responded "Yes" to the positive commandments and "Yes" to the prohibitions. At Sinai, Rabbi Akiva is saying, there was no such thing as a "negative" mitzvah.

    Indeed, one who views the mitzvot in terms of their beneficial effects on man and society will distinguish between the positive commandments and the prohibitions. To give a million dollars to charity is to do something. But what is accomplished by refraining from eating non-kosher foods? To eat that cheeseburger would be detrimental to one's spiritual health; but to not eat it is to do-nothing. But at Sinai, says Rabbi Akiva, we were beyond all that. We saw what is heard and heard what is seen. The material world, with its "issues," hang-ups and pretensions for significance, was but a figment of the imagination. Reality was G-d. From such a vantage point, who would think of G-d's expressed will in terms of moral and social utility?

    To one who stands at Sinai, says Rabbi Akiva, the definition of mitzvah is an opportunity to fulfill G-d's will. Everything else is of secondary, "hearable" significance. When you give a million dollars to charity, you are doing something: you are fulfilling G-d's will. When you refrain from eating a forbidden food, you are doing something: you are fulfilling G-d's will. Every mitzvah is a positive act, the same positive act, the ultimate positive act-the implementation of G-d's desire. Every mitzvah elicits the same positive response: "Yes, we will."

    Rabbi Ishmael disagrees. Assembled at Sinai, we obviously knew that the ultimate significance of the mitzvah is that it is G-d's will. But we knew this as a sublime truth, as a concept that is "heard" and understood but remains beyond our tangible grasp. Our reality was the physical existence, and the point of revelation at Sinai was not to overturn our perspective but to perfect the one we had. What was real to us-what we "saw"-was the way in which the mitzvot sanctify our daily life and create a world that is at peace with itself and its Creator.

    So there are differences between mitzvot-most significantly the difference between yes and no, as befits dealing with a world polarized by good and evil. There are mitzvot with which we develop the positive in our world, and those which guide us in the rejection of the negative; mitzvot which cultivate the light, and mitzvot which combat the darkness.

    At Sinai, says Rabbi Ishmael, we heard what is heard and saw what is seen. True, we understood that the essence of a mitzvah is beyond anything our finite physical selves can relate to. But our primary response to G-d's commandments was to embrace them as the foundation of our lives-lives defined by the yes and no of our reality.¹¹

1. Mechilta, ibid.
2. Derashot HaRan, p. 8. See also Genesis 8:22; Talmud, Shabbat 53b.
3. Exodus 20:16-19.
4. Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 26a.
5. Exodus 24:10.
6. Ibid., 20:1-3.
7. Mechilta, ibid. The Ten Commandments include "positive commandments" (mitzvot assei) e.g., "Honor your father and your mother," and "Remember the day of Shabbat," and "prohibitions" (mitzvot lo taasseh), e.g., "Do not kill," and "Do not steal."
8. Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit 44:1
9. Likkutei Torah, Shelach 40a.
10. Based on an address by the Rebbe, Shavuot 5726 (1966); Likkutei Sichot, vol. VI, pp. 119-129.