The Covenant of Mount Sinai

At Mount Sinai, it was not a mere “spiritual experience” or “mystical revelation” that took place: Rav Ziegler insists on a real contract, written, with clear terms and precise commitments on both sides.

“If you listen to Me, carefully observing all My commandments, I commit to do this and that.” “If you do not listen to Me, I also commit to do this and that.”

This contract, dictated by G-d and written by Moshe Rabbenu 3300 years ago, is found mainly in the parasha of Bechukotai (Leviticus 26): prophecies up to the First Temple, and in the parasha of Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 28): prophecies from the Second Temple until our time.

Normal employment contract: an employer offers €3000 a month on condition of being listened to. The employee answers: “I agree, but I do what I want.” Reply: “Out the door! A commitment is a commitment.” If he refuses the conditions, he is free to leave.

The covenant with the Creator: according to the Rav, the commitment is terrible: “If you do not want to listen to Me, you are not free. I punish you.”

The word ברית does not simply mean “contract” but an eternal covenant, an indissoluble commitment. One cannot say “I no longer want to be Jewish, I leave the covenant.” If the people does not keep its commitments, consequences come, but the covenant remains.

A point that, according to the Rav, many do not understand: the covenant was not made with each Jew individually, but with the collective leadership of the people. The “you” of “If you obey the voice of the Eternal your G-d” is the people of Israel as a whole, represented by its leadership.

Major implication, according to the course: all Jews in Israel may be religious, yet if the leadership is not according to the Torah that is not enough; all Jews may be non-religious, yet if the leadership is according to the Torah there is blessing.

Why? Because the non-Jews look at the government of Israel, which represents the whole people in the eyes of the world and of G-d.

If the people keeps the Torah (Deuteronomy 28): “The Eternal your G-d will set you high above all the nations of the earth.” Blessed in the city and in the field, in your coming and your going; the economy will succeed, the army will be victorious, everything will work.

If the people abandons the Torah: the Rav notes that there are three pages of curses and that he did not include them all “because I do not want to end up all alone!” They include the destruction of the Temple, exile among all the nations, dispersion, constant persecution, the impossibility of settling durably and remaining few in number.

According to the course, one can therefore “oblige” G-d to fulfill His positive promises: if we keep our part, He must keep His, otherwise the whole system collapses.

The Rav sets out the current dilemma: a non-Jew looking at Israel today sees, in his view, that the people has abandoned the Torah, that it has adopted Western democracy instead, and that only a few “religious” people (regarded as marginal) still follow the Torah.

If He blessed Israel despite the abandonment of the Torah at the level of leadership, He would be telling the world that democracy is better than His Torah. He cannot: His honor and the credibility of His contract are at stake.

That is why, despite the enormous individual merit of many Jews in Israel, as long as the leadership does not conform to the Torah, the full blessings cannot come.

“Even when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not have rejected them or abhorred them so as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them.” (Leviticus 26:44)

G-d committed: the people of Israel will always be eternal, despite all exiles, all persecutions, all attempts at destruction. The covenant is eternal.