Dear Friends,
“Sinai.” We’ve all heard about Midbar Sinai (the Sinai desert) and, of course, about Mount Sinai, where the Torah was given.
In the Talmud there is also a person who was called “Sinai” – Rav Yosef, who was one of the Amora’im (Talmudic sages) in Babylon. Rashi, in Tractate Horayot, explains the reason for this nickname: Because the Mishnahs and the Baraitahs (Mishnahs that were not included in the six Sedarim of the Mishnah) were neatly catalogued in his mind, as if they had just been given from Mount Sinai.”
This is very impressive, because the Talmudic sages were all great scholars, and still, they were not called “Sinai” like Rav Yosef.
It is even more amazing and impressive when one knows that Rav Yosef was blind, and yet he was greater than all the others and merited being defined as such.
There is a famous saying of Rav Yosef in Tractate Pesachim that describes the holiday of Shavuot wonderfully, as the holiday of the Giving of the Torah: “On Shavuot Rav Yosef said: ‘Prepare me a meal from of finest veal in honor of the day of the Giving of the Torah, because (as Rashi explains) if not for this day – due to which I learned Torah and was elevated – there are many people in the marketplace who are named Yosef, and in what way would I have been different?’”
Rav Yosef does not ascribe his uniqueness to the teacher who taught him Torah, nor does he ascribe it to the day he entered the study hall and began to learn Torah; rather, he emphasizes this particular date – the sixth of Sivan, the day of the Giving of the Torah.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe learns from this an inner Chassidic characteristic that is unique to this day: When giving us the Torah, Hashem gave us not only the content that is called “Torah”, but also the unique power to connect between the upper and lower worlds; to instill spirituality within the mundane, holiness in the everyday; to sanctify the material world and elevate it.
And it is about this that Rav Yosef said: In the merit of that day I learned Torah and became elevated. I became a different person; my entire being changed. The Torah that I learned penetrated my skin, my flesh, my blood and my bones – and I am a different person. Within me there is a wondrous and exact integration of the material and the spiritual. I am not Yosef anymore, but rather Rav Yosef. You can also call me Sinai, as in “Har Sinai.”
With blessings that you should receive the Torah with joy and Pnimiyut (being able to instill it within you)!
Shabbat Shalom, and Chag Same’ach,
Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski