This happened three thousand three hundred and thirty-six years ago. On the sixth of Sivan, in the year 2448 of the Creation, God appeared to all the people on Mount Sinai and gave us the Torah. This is the famous Mount Sinai, upon which the entire Jewish religion stands.
Maimonides (in Chapter 8 of the Fundamentals of the Torah) clarifies the importance of the event at Mount Sinai: "Moses our teacher, the Israelites did not believe in him because of the signs he performed (...). And in what did they believe in him? At the event at Mount Sinai, which our eyes saw and no stranger, and our ears heard and no other." Therefore, Maimonides explains, Moses was initially reluctant to go on God's mission to the Children of Israel. He feared that they would not believe him, because what proves that the Creator had indeed spoken to him? Only when God announced that He would speak to him in the sight of all the people on Mount Sinai did he agree to go and redeem the Children of Israel from Egypt.
There is one truth.
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Among the masses, the terms 'my truth' and 'your truth' have taken root in our time. Talk to a Jew about the need to keep the Torah and its commandments, and he innocently replies: "This is your truth; I have a different truth.".
As if it's a matter of personal taste.
But when asked clearly: Did the Mount Sinai event happen or not? It is impossible to answer this with 'my truth' and 'your truth.' Either it happened in reality, as described in the Torah, or God forbid things never happened. There is no room here for more than two possibilities, and only one of them can be correct and true.
People prefer to hide behind beautiful rhetoric about 'many truths' and the right of every person to choose their own path, etc. But in the end, when you narrow things down, there is one clear question here.
If God gave the people of Israel the Torah at Mount Sinai - then this is the path that every Jew must walk; and if Mount Sinai did not happen (God forbid) - there is no foundation for the entire Torah and its commandments.
A significant historical event
So that we would have no doubts about this matter, God chose to give us His Torah in the most convincing way possible. Not through prophets, messengers, signs and wonders, night visions, and the like, but in a sublime public setting, witnessed by every person in Israel. No one had to believe anyone else. Everyone saw the mighty divine revelation with their own eyes and heard the voices with their own ears.
The Torah was given personally to every Jew, and God spoke to him in the singular: "I am the Lord your God.".
The status of Mount Sinai is an indisputable historical event. All the versions about it, which come to us from all corners of the world, are completely identical. And the fact is that even other religions, by contrast, do not deny the status of Mount Sinai, but on the contrary - rely on it.
This is the great truth that the Jewish people have carried with them for thousands of years. Adherence to this truth has sustained us as a people, despite all the terrible persecutions we have endured. Thanks to our continued adherence to this truth, we will soon be able to complete the divine mission that the Creator has entrusted to us, with true and complete redemption very soon.
