In ancient synagogues the cantor would read the Torah portion from the scroll, verse by verse, while a Turgeman – Interpreter would translate into the vernacular. Now, from the phrase, ‘Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him’ the Talmud deduces the law that the interpreter may not raise his voice louder than the cantor . The mediaeval commentators were hard-pressed to understand the correlation here, for the opposite seems to be true. Surely, they argue, God speaks while Moses interprets? How can we even imagine Moses raising his voice above that of God?
For the Izbicy, this Talmudic teaching makes perfect sense, because it is God who is the interpreter while Moses speaks the Ten Commandments . God, the interpreter of the Ten Commandments? How does that come about?
Elsewhere we have discussed the notion that each of us is animated by a divine command, word or impulse, and that we have God inside; every individual is, in fact, another aspect or Face of God. That’s why we are all unique, since God never repeats Himself; He is infinitely creative (Radical Vayigash). Every human is another and distinct iteration of God (Radical Re’eh), we are all windows in the black wall of ignorance, transparent to God who animates our flesh and blood (Radical Bo). To discover his purpose, every person has to access his or her own divine command, to discern what God means by creating and sustaining him (Radical Nitzavim).
We learn in the Talmud:

It is written, ‘And the LORD will be king over all the earth. On that day the LORD will be one and His name one.’ (Zach. 14:9) And now, is He not one? This is what the prophet means: In this world it is written YHV”H while being read ADONAI, but in the world to come it will be written YHV”H and read YHV”H (Pesachim 50a).

In Radical Bo we discussed at some length the benefits that accrue to us, Jews, who have mastered the art of reading God’s name, YHV”H with our eyes while pronouncing it ADONAI with our mouth, lips and tongues, and how it has protected us from many subtle forms of mind-control wielded by those who control the images we are bombarded with on a daily basis.
Why is it necessary to protect ourselves by this linguistic trick, bifurcating our brains this way? Why can we not stay ‘on-top-of’ our own minds, distinguishing what is real from the illusory and the truth from the propaganda by using the intelligence, clarity and discernment of the mind itself? The answer, as it was given in the two previous Sidras, is somewhat dispiriting: it is because we each carry around our own serpent inside us, the spine, spinal cord and central nervous system built upon the unconscious and subconscious BIOS governed in the main part by the lower or limbic brain.
But imagine if this were not the case, imagine what it would feel like to inhabit a body if there were no dark and hungry portions of the mind operating on timetables and to specifications of which you were oblivious. Imagine there were no oblivion inside you at all, no impulse-to-act in which you were not an equal planner and decider. Imagine what it would be like to feel whole in every sense, to have access to your ‘lower’ the way you do to your ‘higher’ functions.
This, says the Izbicy, is what the above Talmud is referring to. In the world to come every person will be able to see how his or her grasp of things is one with the flow of Divine Light, that there are no dark or hidden impulses in the human being, no hungry, driven portions, just God, beside whom nothing exists. For what did Moses mean when he said, ‘It was shown to you to know that the LORD is God. There is no other besides Him.’? (Deut. 4:35) Most people think it means there are no gods besides Him, but we understand that Moses was stating something more fundamental. Nothing exists but God. The Hebrew phrase AIN OWD does not refer to gods, it simply means there is no-else.
If we really internalized the idea that there is no-else but God, we would not be able to read YHV”H with our eyes while pronouncing it ADONAI, it wouldn’t be true. We only do it because we ourselves are split. We cannot integrate our whole Self into our higher, speaking, verbalizing self, because too much of our functioning self remains trapped within an autonomous nervous system; the serpent/dragon wallows in its river, saying ‘This is my river, I made it!’.
The Izbicy says something even more radical: The fact that I see myself as flawed is because I cannot see how God is integrated throughout the universe, I don’t experience God-in-everything, since if I did so I would also experience myself as whole in every way. It is only when I feel my own wholeness that I can experience God’s immanence throughout the world and God becomes One .
If I experience myself as flawed, it is only because I cannot see God’s Oneness. And I will only be able to see God’s Oneness when I am no longer split between higher and lower Self, between intellectual goals and instinctual impulses, rational choices and primal urges, thoughts and emotions. According to the Izbicy this is the only way to understand the metaphor stated at the beginning of Genesis, ‘God made the firmament and so divided among the waters below the firmament and the waters above the firmament, and it was so.’ (Gen. 1:7) As long as this split prevails, it prevents us from accessing and integrating our Whole-Self, as I have discussed at length elsewhere (Radical Emor). Frankly, asks the Izbicy, what is rational man and what could he possibly achieve through his own intellect and with his own thoughts? On the other hand, what a person does with his natural inclination, in the grip of his instincts, is being done with the power that God put in him .
As was discussed in the previous two Sidras, the serpent part of us carries the instinctual commands necessary to the maintenance and reproduction of life, and may occasionally reveal the Holy, Ancient One representing God’s desires before Creation (Radical Beshalach), something the rational mind is incapable of doing.
But the split is illusory, and this is essential rabbinic teaching. Our own hierarchical mindset (the fact that we think there is a higher and lower) prevents us seeing our wholeness. Rabbi Akiba tried teaching this lesson to his brightest students before leading them into Paradise. ‘When you reach that place of pure marble-stone do not say, “Water, Water!” for the liar cannot prevail in God’s presence.’ (Hagiga 14b) Only Akiba came out of Paradise in one piece. His students could not hold onto this essential teaching, so they died or went out of their minds. The split between higher and lower is an illusion interfering with our perception of God’s own Oneness.
Even Moses cannot hang onto this insight, as the sages inform us: ‘Things not revealed to Moses are yet revealed to R. Akiba and his friends.’ (Num. Rabba 19:6)
We all express a unique Face of God for He is infinitely creative. However, it is not easy to discern and become aware of the particular divine phrase, word, command or instinct which makes up our personal Torah.
So we are given the Torah at Sinai collectively, and charged with guarding, studying, obeying and celebrating it equally. I have to apply all its teachings to myself as though it had been written only for me, and so must you. This is our collective duty and the covenant we swore at Sinai to uphold forever.
But the goal of every individual has to be to find his own Torah, to discover what unique divine command animates him, to reveal his own specialness and explore his connection to God.
Moses was a shepherd, that’s all he was and ever aspired to be. Everything he became was simply the result of exploring his shepherd nature, searching and finding God, the Shepherd inside himself. Moses was merely developing and expanding upon the pioneering genius of Jacob (Radical Vayetze). Moses would have told you that in shepherding he was only following in the footsteps already trodden by his ancestor, a spiritual path he was drawn to follow (Radical Zot Habracha). The point Moses would have emphasized is that he wasn’t even being original, that others before him had already explored the spiritual dimensions of this connection to God.
And yet, look to what heights his personal exploration took Moses! Finding the divine within doesn’t have to be seen as a mystical quest, at all. It is more the search for authenticity and substance, than a mission in pursuit of holiness.
Another way of comprehending the difference between ‘this world’ and the ‘world-to-come’ has to do with the way we comprehend one another. As humans we depend on speech for the most part, to convey our feelings and thoughts, our intentions and needs. On a more ‘primitive’ level there are other means of communication such as ‘body-language’, stance, posture and attitude, etc. At an even deeper level such decisions are being made by our unconscious and subconscious, autonomous systems.
In the world-to-come when we are no longer split between our conscious, aware, human mind and our un/subconscious serpent mind, communication between people will operate at a much deeper and intuitive level.
Rebbe Reb Bunim of P’shischa describes the world-to-come as a state where no person will have to explain the Torah inside him to anyone else, because the other person will already resonate to it, because of the Torah that person has in him. As everyone becomes aware of the divine in himself, learning to recognize God in his own personality, in his drives and characteristics, so meeting and encountering another person becomes an exercise in resonance. As I look at you, the God in me informs me of the God in you without you having to explain anything to me .
At Sinai God decided to give the Torah through Moses, which meant that the Torah would have Moses’ imprint upon it forever. In fact, in fourteen different places throughout Scripture, it is referred to simply as the Moses’ Torah.
While Moses was speaking the Commandments, God was carving them into our hearts. This is what the Talmud means when referring to God as Moses’ interpreter. God carved the words and their meaning into us, every Jew received the Torah their own way, in their own light, in harmony with the original GodWord animating each of us and our unique God-given soul. And when we say God-given, what we mean is that God gives Himself. God is the given. God writes himself into the words of the Torah and asks to be received, taken, owned and cherished. It’s a God-given Torah.
At that moment when we all stood at Sinai receiving the Torah, it was in God’s power to open it infinitely large for each of us, a unique and individual Torah for every person who stood there, as for all generations; but He did not. That would not have been Moses’ Torah; it would have meant the interpreter raising his own voice over that of the cantor.
God could have given us such a Torah as would never, ever have left us; that we would never have been able to forget, forsake or falsify. But that would have meant there were versions of the Torah greater and more powerful than Moses’.
The Five Books of Moses end with the promise, ‘Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face,’ (Deut. 34:10) but had God lifted each of us up to our potential at that moment, who knows how many prophets equivalent or greater than Moses there would be?
As Malachi, the last of the Hebrew prophets, tells us in God’s final prophetic message, ‘Remember the Torah of Moses My servant, which I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel, the statutes and ordinances.” (Mal. 3:22) Referring to His Torah as Moses’ Torah, God humbles Himself before the most humble man ever to walk the earth, for this is how Torah is born, and this is its primary teaching.
i (Berachot 45a)
ii Mei Hashiloach Vol. I - Yithro
iii B(asic) I(nput)/O(utput) S(ystem)
iv Mei Hashiloach Vol. II – Likutei Nevi’im: Zecharia
v Sefer Yetzira: Chronicles of Desire
vi Mei Hashiloach Vol. I – Emor
vii Kol Simcha - Beshalach