In the parashah, in the portion of the Torah of this week, we learn about Matan Torah, giving of the Torah, when the Jews went to Har Sinai, and they stood around the mountain and God came down and gave them the Torah. So there are many, many things to discuss concerning Matan Torah. Many, I mean, after all, this is the basis of our whole religion, the fact that God gave us the Torah. He gave us the religion, so to speak. So there's a lot to say, but tonight I'm just going to mention touch upon a few one point, or maybe a few points, of what Matan Torah meant based on a certain pasuk, on a certain phrase in the Torah, where the Torah tells us one aspect of what happened when God gave the Torah. It said Hashem, God came down to Har Sinai, and He spoke. He spoke Aseret Hadibrot, which means He spoke the Ten Commandments, or as the real translation of the words Aseret Hadibrot is the Ten Sayings, not the Ten Commandments, but that's what it's called in English, people call it that way. So we'll refer to it also as the Ten Commandments. So it said God spoke to us the Ten Commandments, starting from אנכי השם אלקיך, I am God your God who took you out of Mitzrayim, then the next one saying to not have any other gods besides me, and the rest as we know, all the Ten Commandments. So there's one verse in the Chumash that tells us that the voice of God when He spoke was a קול גדול ולא יסף. Actually it's not in this week's parashah. The Torah tells us this in the time in the in that portion where the Torah repeats, that is later on, many, many portions of the Chumash later, Moshe Rabbeinu repeated what happened. So there, when he goes back, refers back to Matan Torah, he says that the voice of God was a קול גדול ולא יסף. And what does that mean? It means it was a big voice, literal translation is big voice, meaning a strong voice, ולא יסף, ולא יסף means it didn't stop. A voice that had no end. And what does that mean, it had no end? So we find in the Midrash three explanations what that meant. And that's really what I'm going to discuss tonight, the three explanations behind that concept that the voice didn't end, it was a strong voice, and it didn't end. One explanation the Midrash gives is that it didn't it wasn't limited only to the time when the Torah was given. When God spoke, everyone saw that it was God, everyone heard God's voice. But these are only the Ten Commandments, only Aseret Hadibrot. We don't only have Ten Commandments in the Torah, we have a complete Torah, we have the whole Bible, which is the Written Law, and then we have the Oral Law, which are really is the explanation of what it says in the Written Law. And as I explained I think last time, that they both come together. It's impossible to have a Written Law without an Oral Law, because if you look into the Written Law, you don't exactly know what the Torah means, because most of the commandments the way they are expressed in the Chumash are not clear. As example I think I gave was with tefillin, it just says you should put on tefillin on your hand, so it doesn't even use the term tefillin. Now what does that mean? What is tefillin? How do you put on tefillin? What's supposed to be in the tefillin, what is it made out of? The Torah doesn't say. Or it says do not do any work on Shabbos. And what does work mean? There's hundreds of ways you can interpret work. So therefore there was an Oral Law that God gave to Moshe Rabbeinu, to Moses, along with the Written Law, and He said to him that I am giving you rules of how to learn this Written Law, and based on these rules, you will come out with an exact translation, explanation of what I meant in the Torah. So it turns out that in addition to the Ten Commandments that we actually heard from Hashem by Matan Torah, the time when He gave the Torah, we have the rest of the Written Law, plus all of the other volumes and books of the Oral Law that later on were written down. Originally they were orally handed down from generation to generation, and later on when people started forgetting, it was written down. So we have all that. So we might have thought that when God spoke the Ten Commandments, those commandments were the words of God, the rest of the commandments are already not the words of God. Those are the words of Moses, or those are later generations, the words of the other rabbis that came later. That's what the pasuk is really telling us, that the voice of God was so strong it didn't stop. Meaning to say it didn't stop, or wasn't limited to the Ten Commandments. Everything else that we have in the Torah, and all the interpretations given to us by the rabbis based on the law on the rules set up by God Himself, given to Moshe Rabbeinu, they are all the words of God. In other words, if we take out a Talmud from the bookcase, and we study the Talmud, and the Talmud was written by rabbis about 1,000, 1,500 years after עשרת הדברות, the Ten Commandments was said, every word of the Talmud is really the words of God. Every word is the word of God because really this was told to Moshe Rabbeinu by God orally, and handed down to the rabbis through generation and generation, till it was written down by a certain generation when they felt it was time to write it down. So that's what the pasuk means. That's one interpretation that the Midrash says of the words, that the voice of Matan Torah was not limited, did not have an end.

Another interpretation is that the voice of God by Matan Torah was not limited to Hebrew, was not limited to לשון הקודש, which means the Holy Tongue, but it also came down, as it says in the Midrash, to all 70 languages, which means that the Torah was given also in other languages. And as we find later on in the Chumash, that Moshe Rabbeinu spoke to the Jews, and he wrote down the Torah in all 70 languages, which means that the words of God are not limited to Hebrew. Some might think that if you learn the words of the Torah in English, or in another language, because you don't understand the Hebrew, the original text, then you're missing out on the Torah. Well, you might be missing out on the language, but as long as it's a true translation, not misleading as sometimes people when they translate, they try to put in their own ideas, but as long as it's a true translation, true to its original text, so then, you are learning the same Torah, and it's not even worth, I may say, might say, it's not worth to waste the time to study the language if at the same time you might you could learn Torah. For instance, if someone knows that he has to give up six months to learn Hebrew, and in the meantime, he won't have the time to study what the Torah has to say, because he'll be studying the language, it's not worth it. He might as well continue studying it in English, because the language is not the big difference, it doesn't really count. The main thing, what it says in the words, the contents of the words. So that's what the Torah meant. The voice of God did not stop, was not limited to the original language it was said in, but the voice of God continued into other languages. That's the second interpretation the Midrash says.

Then there's a third interpretation the Midrash says, that the voice did not have an end, meaning that the voice did not have an echo. The voice of God, when He spoke, and it was a very, very loud voice, did not have an echo. Normally, when you have a loud voice, louder it is, the stronger the echo will be. The voice of God, when He spoke the עשרת הדיברות, did not have an echo. That's what it means, it did not end. Didn't have It wasn't limited like all other voices, it had something special, so it did not have an echo. And this is what I'm really going to try to explain a little bit, the meaning behind these three explanations, interpretations of what the Torah meant, that the voice of Matan Torah was not limited. And the main one that is not so understood is the third one. The third explanation, that the voice, the words, did not have an echo, is not really understood, because how does that show the strength of the voice? It shows the weakness of the voice, because if it would be strong voice, it should have had an echo. Second question that we may ask is: What was the reason that God performed this miracle of making the voice not having an echo? Every miracle that God performed must have a reason. One of the rules that we have set up in the Torah is that God says, \"I do not perform miracles for no reason.\" Even though it's easy for God to perform a miracle, for Him to perform a miracle and to continue the running of the world in a natural form is just as hard, just as easy, it's the same. Why is it easier, can we think, for God to make the sun rise in the east and set in the west? Says rise in the in the in the east and set in the west, right? Why would we think that's easier than for Him to make the sun stop for a moment? Because to Him it's all the same. It's just for us, we think of nature as something easier because we're so used to it, it's something that happens constantly. I think I explained once that really nature, all of it, is a constant miracle. The best example is, there is one thing that scientists and doctors and nobody has found out yet how it works, and that is the creation of a human being. The creation, the first cell of a human being, that no one could do and no one understands how that happens. So why is that less of a miracle, and to us it's nature, you know, a child is born, conceived and born, and that's how things go. Why is that less of a miracle than for Him than the water to split? The water to split is not such a big thing. The nature of water is to flow, so it split, it turned out there was a wind blowing. I mean, it is a miracle, but that's a miracle within the framework of the world, of nature, but to make something new, a new creation, that's something that's out of the world. And nevertheless, to us, we look at that, well, that's a natural happening, it happens constantly. And that's something that's new. So the difference in a miracle and nature is only as far as we're concerned, this is something that we're used to, this is something that we're not used to, but in essence it's all the same. So the truth is, for God to perform a miracle is just as easy as to continue the nature, but Nevertheless, God said, \"I have set up a rule that since I created nature, I will not change the laws of nature unless I have to.\" When there is a must for God to do it, must meaning that He wants to, like He wanted to save the Jews, or whatever reason He has, when Yehoshua, famous miracle, when he stopped the sun, was time of war, when they were going to capture the land of Canaan, and they were it was getting night and they were afraid to lose the war, so Yehoshua, who was the leader, the one the successor of Moshe Rabbeinu, got up and he said, \"Let the sun stop,\" and it stopped in one place for 24 hours. That's what the Bible tells us. Maybe some people might not believe in it, but the Bible tells tells us it's true. As a matter of fact, I heard from somebody that there was an article just last year or two years ago in the newspaper that they started making calculations of the dates and things like that going back in years, and one day is messed up there somehow or other in their calculations. It seemed like even science has to agree that it was true, that there was one day that the sun didn't move and it stood in the same place. But whatever it is, when there was a must for it because of the war, there was a miracle, but otherwise there is no miracle. So the question is, in this case, why was there a must for God to perform this miracle for the voice not to have an echo? If naturally it should have had an echo, what was the reason, what was the must that He should have performed this miracle, it shouldn't have an echo? There are some, just to go in a few details, there are some commentaries that want to explain that if the voice would have had an echo, then people would have thought that there are two, so to speak, gods. Yeah? One God saying once, \"I am God your God,\" and then they would hear it all over again, \"I am God your God.\" But some of the commentaries say that this is not a good enough answer, because they would have heard it's the same voice, they could have understood it was an echo. It was just a repeat of every word that would have been said. You could tell if it's an echo. Especially when the voice was so strong, it says in the Talmud, that it came from all four sides. You could imagine we would have thought that the mountain, let's say, was in front, that they would hear the voice come from the mountain, but in truth, they heard the voice come from all four sides of the world. The whole world, so to speak, screamed out, \"אנכי ה' אלקיך.\" And if that wasn't a reason for them to think that there are four gods, chas v'shalom, definitely the echo would not have made them think so. So why was there no echo? So we're back to the question.

But before we get to answer this question, let's go through, one by one, to try to go through more detail of the three interpretations the Midrash gives. The first interpretation is that the laws of the Torah, the words of the God when He said the עשרת הדברות, were not limited to the time when He said it, but it continued on to the rest of the Torah, and also to what the rabbis later on had explained, again, I always stress this, based on the rules that they were told. Why do I stress this? Just bringing in a point, an outside point, because some people who hear such a concept, they misinterpret and think that, well, if the rabbis are the ones that are going to set up the rules, they interpret, so why can't another rabbi come and say and interpret it differently? And actually, some of the rabbis nowadays say, \"Well, the rabbis in the Talmud interpreted Shabbos is not to light fire and not to write and different things, we'll interpret it differently and say, well, something else means don't do work.\" That's why I'm stressing that they did not make up their own rules, they just interpreted based on the rules given to Moshe Rabbeinu by God. Many, many rules were given. And as long as they use these rules, then they are trying to interpret the will of God, explaining the words of God. If someone will come and try to interpret it not based on these rules, then this is not the will of God. And that's why if some a rabbi will come up and say, \"Well, it says in the Torah, 'Do not do any work on Shabbos,' that means that I'm allowed to put a switch on because in the olden times, to make a fire was a hard job, to strike sticks and the stones and things was a hard job, but nowadays, all it is is to strike a match. That's very easy. So I interpret the Torah differently,\" he might say, \"and I interpret hard labor, this is not hard.\" But they don't understand that this we can't interpret it based on our own understanding, because how can we interpret with our human, limited, finite mind, how can we interpret the infinite words of God? The only way we can interpret it if we take the rules that God gave us how to interpret, and those rules themselves are the wisdom of God, which are the wisdom of the infinite. And based on that, God said, \"I want you to interpret it.\" And they interpreted that the doing of work means creative work. And they figured out, based on the the rules, that there are 39 types of creative work. To strike a match might be easy, but that's creative work, you're creating something new. The reason we have Shabbos is because God created the world in six days, rested on the seventh. For God to create the world was easier than for us to strike a match. And nevertheless, He rested even from that on Shabbos. So we have to rest From that type of work too, even though it's easy. What we have to rest from is from creative work. So we can't say, come up and say, \"Well, I'll interpret the Torah different.\" We have no right to interpret the Torah unless we interpret it based on the rules. Now getting back here, so what the Torah is telling us, that the voice was so strong that it continued into the other words of the Torah, into the interpretations of the rabbis. This is something when the Torah tells us this, it's something very deep. What it's really telling us is that the same Godliness and the same holiness that we have in the Ten Commandments, and everyone knows that the Ten Commandments are holy, the Ten Commandments the holiest things, even the non-Jews respect the Ten Commandments. Someone gave me a stamp from Costa Rica, postage stamp with the Ten Commandments on it. I happen to have it on me if you're interested in seeing it. It's of the Ten Commandments. And this is not ארץ ישראל, not Israel, not even the United States, and they have it. So the Ten Commandments everyone knows is the holiest. These are words that were said by God Himself. So what the what the Torah is trying to tell us, that the same holiness and the same qualities that we have in the Ten Commandments, we have in the rest of the Torah. What are the special qualities of the Ten Commandments? Let me explain it in short. There are two special qualities in the Ten Commandments, and those qualities are expressed in the first three words of the Ten Commandments. The words are אנכי ה׳ אלקיך, \"I am God, your God.\" First of all, when God spoke and He said, \"I am God, your God,\" He did not say it in plural. He spoke to many people. He had a crowd, big audience, much bigger than we have here. He had an audience of close to three million people, because there were 600,000 men between 20 and 40 that left Egypt. Now if we count the same amount of women, and people under 20 and people over 60, it adds up on average about close to between two and a half to three million people. So when He spoke to close to three million people, you don't speak to them the לשון יחיד means in singular, you speak to them in plural. So in Hebrew it should have said אנכי ה׳ אלקיכם, \"I am God, your God.\" But He did not say, \"I am God, your God\" in plural, but He said אנכי ה׳ אלקיך, \"I am yours\" in singular. So the Talmud explains that why did He do that? To teach us something very important. People, some people might think, if He wouldn't have said it, some people might have thought, that the Torah was given or the Ten Commandments were said to the nation as a whole. And each individual, being that he is part of the nation, is obligated to keep it. The truth is not so. God spoke to every individual Jew as an individual person. He spoke to the nation as a whole, but He also spoke to every individual Jew. And He told every individual Jew, \"I am your God, you as an individual.\" That's a special quality that the עשרת הדברות has, that God had said clearly that, \"The words I'm going to speak are said not to all of you together only, but also to every single individual person.\" That's one thing, that's the third word. The first word, אנכי, means \"I\". Now it says in the Talmud that the word אנכי is an abbreviation of four words, four Aramaic words. אנכי means \"I\", but the the the meaning behind this \"I\" is brought out in that in that abbreviation: אלף, letter the word is made up of four letters, אלף, נון, כף, יוד, four Hebrew letters. So the the Talmud says that that's an abbreviation of the words אנא נפשי כתבית יהבית, which means, \"I Myself wrote it, and and I Myself gave it.\" Meaning also, \"I wrote Myself in, and I gave Myself over.\" Meaning to say that God put Himself, so to speak, into the Torah, into the עשרת הדברות, into those Ten Commandments. So when someone heard the Ten Commandments, or when someone keeps the Ten Commandments, or learns, studies the Ten Commandments, has God. He doesn't only have God's ideas, but he has God Himself. We even find that concept in the secular world. If someone writes a book, you put some of yourself into the book, and if you don't, the book doesn't come out so good. You If you write about something, you have to put your feeling, you have to actually live what you write, otherwise you're not a good author. Especially by Hashem, by God, that when He wrote the Torah, He put Himself in, He said, in the words, into the עשרת הדברות, in the Ten Commandments. He put Himself in it. So when we learn, when we study about the Ten Commandments, we take God. Well, that's something special, a special quality that the עשרת הדברות has because Hashem said so. The Rambam writes, the Maimonides, that God, God and His wisdom are one. And he says that this is something that we can't understand how it is. Normally, a person who has an idea in his mind, there are three things there automatically, three different parts. There is the person, the brain that the person uses to understand, and then you have the idea that you understand. Let's say, just to use an example, simple thing, one and one is two. A person in his mind thinks and understands the fact that one and one is two. You have three things here: you have the person, you have the brain, and then you have the concept of one and one is two. By God, Maimonides says, the Rambam says, it's not so. He and His wisdom are one. It's really Him. How that how could that be? If it's His wisdom, it's automatically not Him. So the Rambam says it's something we can't understand, but he says that's one fact that we must say and it's definitely true and he proves it that it's so. So God and His wisdom are one. That's what he meant when he said, אנכי, and as the Talmud explains the abbreviation, \"I put Myself in the Torah,\" that means that the עשרת הדברות, when we keep the Ten Commandments, we study the Ten Commandments, since this is the wisdom of God, He and the His wisdom are one, we actually have Him. This is said in the Torah specifically concerning the Ten Commandments. One may think that only the Ten Commandments are that way, but when it comes to the rest of the Torah, the other parts or the interpretations by the rabbis based on the laws and rules given by God, they are not to the same quality. They may be important, maybe great, maybe obligatory, you might have to keep it, but you'll have to keep it as an individual, as a a part of the nation, but not not as an individual. In other words, maybe they were not said to every individual, maybe in those words God did not put Himself in. So the פסוק says, no, it's not so, that the words of God, the voice of God when He spoke the Ten Commandments did not stop there. The qualities of the Ten Commandments continued into the rest, which means that these two main qualities of the Ten Commandments, that it's said to every individual and it's actually God Himself, so to speak, the whole Torah is the same and every mitzvah is the same. Every mitzvah that that we do, every commandment we fulfill, not necessarily one of the Ten Commandments, we fulfill an obligation that was given to me as an individual, plus we have God there. So when we put on tefillin in the morning, we have God here. We don't see it, but the reason we don't see it, like I mentioned many times, is because we look with eyes of flesh. We are physical, so we can't see the true spirit that's there. But in truth, the spirit of God is there when we fulfill His commandment, when we do a mitzvah. Now, bring out I'll mention something I always mention and I'll mention it again. I'm not trying to prove any of the points I'm I'm saying here because everything can be proved, but I'm not trying to prove it because, again, we are here in this class in a point of second stage. After we accept and we know that the words of the Torah are true, so then we can continue in trying to know more of it. If someone would try to say, \"Well, how do you know that God gave us the Torah? How do you know that the words of Torah are the words of God and all what you're saying are true?\" Well, that's a topic in itself and that we do have, from time to time, such discussions, but that's not the point tonight. The point tonight is if we do accept that the Torah was given, and we do, and we do understand that the words of God, the Torah are the words of God, so this is what the Torah is telling us, that the words, the qualities of עשרת הדברות do not are not limited to the Ten Commandments, but they continue. That's the first point it brings out. The second point is that it's not limited to Hebrew. It went passed on into other languages. What this really means is not only other languages, which is true, too, but what it means is what other languages represent. לשון קודש, the holy tongue, the holy language, represents the Jews, the Jewish nation, that's our language. The seventy languages, the other languages, represent other nations. So what the פסוק is telling us, that the Ten Commandments, the voice of God in the Ten Commandments was not limited to the Jews, but it also was passed on to the non-Jews. Not that the non-Jews have to keep the Torah, but there is a quality of the Torah that was given to us that is passed on to them, and that is that they are obligated to keep the seven mitzvot. Why are they obligated to keep their seven mitzvot? Not because it makes sense, that because God commanded by Har Sinai when He gave us the Torah, commanded us that we have 613 mitzvot and they have seven. It is part of the revelation of God on Har Sinai, part of what He had brought into the world was the fact that they have to keep the seven mitzvot. In other words, it's not limited to the Jews, it also is passed on to them. That is the second point, and I don't want to elaborate on it because of the time.

The third point, that it did not have an echo, the question what I asked before: Why did it not have an echo? What does it It should not It doesn't show the the strength of the voice, it might seems like it shows the weakness of the voice, and what was the reason for the miracle? The answer is very simple: What is the reason for an echo? When you speak and the voice bounces off the wall, it comes to a place where there is something that blocks it and bounces off, then there is an echo. Similar to a ball, when you throw a ball, it'll bounce back because there is something that's blocking it. If the thing that is blocking would have absorbed the ball, the ball would not have bounced back. The same here: if you would speak, and for some reason the place where the voice would reach would have absorbed the voice, then there is no reason for an echo. And the Midrash is telling us, the Torah is telling us here, that the voice was so strong, so great, that it actually penetrated into the world. And therefore there was no echo. It wasn't a miracle, it was a natural happening, because the voice was so holy, and the whole purpose of God giving us the Torah was for us to bring into the world godliness, as I explained many times. So when He gave us the Torah and said the words of the Ten Commandments, what happened was that those words, the voice entered into the world, and there was no reason for an echo. And therefore, ולא היה לו בת קול, it didn't have an echo, because the whole purpose of the Torah, of giving the Torah, was that the world should become a holier place. Why God wanted this we don't know, but this is what He wanted. He wanted to have a world as it is in a low level, a world that does not reveal godliness, and He wants us with the Torah, by us keeping the commandments, to bring godliness into the world. And therefore, when He gave us that first boost by coming down and giving us the Torah, this is exactly what He did: He spoke words, His words, they entered into the world, they penetrated the world, and therefore there was no reason for an echo. In truth, not only by God this happens, but by us too, but by God it was obvious, and here we don't see it. When we learn Torah, what happens really, the words of Torah that we study, that we speak, enters into the physical object that's in front of us. We just don't see it, and there it will seen. Whatever we do is absorbed in the walls, even. It says that when Mashiach will come, and they will have this great Day of Judgment, and they will take every person, put him into for trial, so certain things that they will accuse him of, and he'll deny it for instance, and there will be no witnesses, it says the walls will testify. The walls will testify whether he studied Torah or he did something that you're not allowed. People think you lock yourself in the room and you do things that is forbidden and no one sees and no one knows. Well, first of all, God sees, but even without that, the walls see, and everything is absorbed. There are no ways the walls can give it out, but when Mashiach will come, the walls will give it out. At the time of the giving of the Torah, that's exactly what happened: the walls absorbed it, but then it was felt. Now if you speak words of Torah, it bounces off the walls. We don't feel. It's only in a spiritual way that it's absorbed in the walls, but at that time it was in a physical way too. And why was that? Because this was the boost of what was expected of us. We're expected to bring godliness into the world, so when He gave us the Torah, God came down on Har Sinai, exactly that happened in a very open way, in a very clear way, that it was absorbed in the walls. And these are the three points that are brought out in this one פסוק. The one פסוק says that the voice was so strong it didn't end. It wasn't limited. Not limited to all these three points: wasn't limited to time, wasn't limited to space, and it also was absorbed into the world.