We’ve all been there. Something important happens, but before we can reflect or absorb it, life pulls us into something else—leaving it behind before it can shape us.
That experience lies behind one of the Torah’s most striking features. Parshat Behar opens: “And God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai.”
At first glance, there is nothing unusual here. But that is exactly the problem.
We are near the end of Leviticus. The revelation at Sinai took place back in Exodus—45 chapters earlier. And yet God is still speaking at Sinai. We do not leave the mountain for another 12 chapters—well into Numbers.
Nearly one third of the Torah takes place at this one location, within a single year.
Why are we still here?
The question sharpens when we look more closely at the opening of Behar. After opening, the parsha turns to the laws of the sabbatical year. The people are commanded to let the land lie fallow every seventh year.
This leads the commentator Rashi to pose a question: “What does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai?” Why mention Sinai here? Were not all the commandments given there?
Rashi answers that just as the laws of the Sabbatical year—in all their detail—were given at Sinai, so too every commandment was given there, in full detail. In other words, God did not transmit just general principles at Sinai. He transmitted the details too.
Sinai is not only the starting point of the Torah; it is the source of its ongoing continuity. According to rabbinic tradition, what was given at Sinai had two parts. The Written Torah is the text itself—the five books of Moses. The Oral Torah is the explanation: how the laws are understood, applied, and lived in practice. Both emerge from Sinai and unfold from it over time.
This was developed further by the medieval philosopher Maimonides. He describes how the teachings of Sinai were passed down from generation to generation, beginning with Moses. By the first two centuries of the Common Era, however, conditions had changed. There were fewer students, the Roman Empire was growing stronger, and the Jewish people were becoming scattered across different lands.
To make sure the tradition would not be forgotten, a great rabbi known as Judah haNasi—Judah the Prince—collected and wrote down the teachings of the Oral Torah in a work called the Mishnah, which became the basis for the Talmud.
In other words, writing the tradition down was not a break from Sinai. It was a way of protecting it under new conditions.
The Jews’ extended stay at Sinai is not a delay. It reflects the essence of Sinai.
At Sinai, the Jewish people are given the laws they will live by. The Torah lingers there because learning how to live by them takes time.
So why are we still here?
Because Sinai is not only where the story begins. It is something we are meant to carry forward—not as a place on a map, but as a way of living. It continues, wherever we study, wherever we live by its laws, as part of the ongoing process through which they are understood and transmitted, from one generation to the next.
