Our Jewish life is both a personal and a communal journey towards Mount Sinai in freedom, and then with a conscious commitment of responsibility moving into the world to bear witness to the blessing of a meaningful life—one of respect and dignity.

The journey of freedom from bondage in Egypt is well known, recounted in the biblical book Exodus, a Greek word meaning “departure” or “journey out.” In Hebrew, the book is known as Sh’mot, which means “Names,” derived from the opening sentence: “Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob (1:1). Briefly, Sh’mot proceeds to tell of their people’s redemption and their journey to Mount Sinai. Passover (Pesach) is a commemoration of God’s redemptive act, the freedom given.

The fifty days following Pesach are referred to as Counting the Omer (omer is the word for sheaf, though more strictly it is the name of a measure). A measure of barley was brought to the Temple as an offering of thanks for a good barley harvest. We are measuring the days. This is a period for personal reflection. What does my freedom mean? What is my personal relationship to others? What is my relationship to the world? This is a time of anticipation for receiving the Torah. This festival, known as Shavuot, is a commemoration of the giving of the Torah to the Israelites.

But is this enough for our understanding?

We tend not to think of Judaism as a pilgrimage religion. We associate pilgrimages with Christianity, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. However, in a philosophical sense, a pilgrimage “Is a journey often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life.”

For the Israelites departing from Egypt, their journey was to an unknown and foreign destination. For Jews throughout history, the journey was more than an exile during the Babylonian period, and later the Diaspora; it was a deeper experience that expanded their understanding of themselves personally, as a people, the world, and of the Divine.

There is a parallel between our weekly observance of the Sabbath and the departure from Egypt. The Sabbath is sanctified. We set aside the ordinary, the common or mundane that is our “bondage,” if you will, to our daily work and activities, with an awareness of the liberty of our spirits. If we allow ourselves to see, we walk towards and experience the Sinai encounter between our ancestors, ourselves, and the Divine.

On Friday evening, we gather with family and friends to welcome the Sabbath. The name of God is Shabbat, as the theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel noted. We are like the Israelites, filled with anticipation, aware that this day is different as we dine with a deeper sense of the division of time between the sacred and the profane—their unity comparable to the body and the soul— and the holiness in time.

On Sabbath mornings, like our Israelite ancestors, we begin our journey towards the synagogue for the service, just as they started theirs towards Sinai. I prefer arriving early. This allows me to collect and direct my thoughts towards God. On entering the sanctuary, I often feel as I standing before the mount.

How lovely are your dwellings, people of Jacob,
your sanctuaries, descendants of Israel.
As for me, O God,
Your great love inspires me to enter Your house,
to worship in Your holy sanctuary,
filled with awe for You.
Adonai, I love Your house, the place of Your glory.
Before my Maker, I humbly bow in worship.
May this be an auspicious time, Adonai, for my prayers.
Your love, O God, is great;
answer me with Your true deliverance.       

 Then, also a parallel moment, when the Torah scroll is removed from the “holy ark” (aron kodesh). This is a reminder of Moses encountering God and the Torah being presented to the people. In these moments, and during the reading of the Torah, I experience a deep awareness of the gathering of our forebears with those of us who are physically present. Our souls, or spirits if you prefer, stand together to hear the unalterd Words again and to acknowledge their importance in shaping our lives as we interpret and apply the Torah to our historical period.

I have lectured a few times on the Torah. On each occasion, I was asked about the belief that all the souls of future generations of Jews who accepted the Torah were present at Mount Sinai. Do I believe this to be true? My response was yes. The Sabbath, Heschel observes, “… is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to creation of the world.” And to my thinking, creation was brought into being by the breath of God. This breath, which each person has within them, is eternal. However, it is also a mystery that I am unable to explain.

My inability to explain this mystery leads me to another parallel. The Sinai account tells us that the people were asked if they accepted the terms of the covenant. Their response was affirmative. We are asked the same, and acknowledge this, for example, in the Aleinu: “We rise to our duty to praise the Master of all…. In truth, God alone is our Ruler….” There are, of course, other prayers that articulate our acceptance of the covenant. And our acceptance carries with it responsibility.

I am not merely responsible for myself. There is no virtue in that in Jewish theology. I am compelled to do more than observe. I am compelled to act ethically, to confront injustice, to respond to the summons of the Torah, to take ownership of it to bring healing to a broken world. To be mindful of those in need. This is not an academic exercise, but one of service. Judaism asks nothing less of us, but it asks more, that our service be rendered in love.

“Participating in any dialogue requires at times that one stop talking so that one can listen,” as Benjamin Sommer, a professor of Biblical and Semitic languages writes, “how much the more so in a dialogue in which we are mere vassals! Part of our job in the Sinaitic Dialogue is to be silent in God’s presence in order to be open to God’s voice.”

To hear the Divine voice is to be transformed. This transformation requires an understanding that is summarized in the understanding that giving of the Torah is not limited to either a historical moment or the seasonal event of Shvuot, but rather a daily acceptance, as if each day the Torah had just been given.    

Image: Red Rock Canyon ©2026 Charles van Heck