Shavuos
Why the Aseres Hadibros address the Yidden in the singular — 'Anochi Hashem Elokecha' — despite speaking to nearly three million people at once, and what that reveals about how every Yid is bound to Hashem both as an individual and as part of the klal.
Part of Shavuot
Two seemingly opposite explanations exist in Chazal for the singular phrasing at Matan Torah: that Hashem spoke to each individual personally, and that He addressed the nation as a single unified group. The two are reconciled by showing that a Yid's connection to Hashem runs on both tracks at once, through Klal Yisrael and through his own particular neshama. That duality plays out concretely in the mitzvos: keeping mitzvos is uniform across the klal, since everyone wears the same tefillin, while learning Torah is necessarily individual, since each person learns on his own level.
Audio Transcript
A vort of the Rebbe concerning Matan Torah, the giving of the Torah, which is on Shavuos. עשרת הדברות started with the words אנכי השם אלקיך אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים, I am Hashem, your God, that took you out of Mitzrayim. The word אלקיך, your God, is written לשון יחיד, singular. אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים, that I took you out, singular, not plural. And the question is, why did Hashem speak to the Yidden in a singular form when He was speaking to a רבים, to many? He was speaking to close to 3 million people. If you count the males that were there from 60 to 4- from 20 to 60 was 600,000, the same amount probably as women, and then you have people younger than 20, people older than 60, should be back around two and a half million to 3 million people. So why did He say לשון יחיד, אלקיך, your God, singular?
And there are two opposite explanations in the Chazal. One is because Hashem spoke to every single individual separately. When He was speaking, everyone felt He was speaking to him specifically. The לשון is that every Yid said, עמי הדיבור מדבר. Everyone felt that the Oibershter is speaking to him, so He said לשון יחיד because He was speaking to every יחיד and individual. Then there's another pshat Chazal say, that when you speak to a big group as one group, as one unit, you could speak לשון יחיד. We find many times where it says that. That it's speaking about a lot, but it's if it's one group, we could use לשון יחיד, it could be singular. So because He was speaking to everybody together, He could use לשון יחיד. They seem to be opposite פשטים. The first one says the opposite, that He was speaking to every individual as an individual, and the second pshat is He was speaking to everybody together. And the answer is that they're both true, it's not opposites. The connection of the Oibershter to Yidden, and Yidden to the Oibershter, are in both ways. A Yid is connected to the Oibershter as part of Klal Yisrael. Klal Yisrael is the Oibershter's nation, and every Yid is part of Klal Yisrael, part of the group of Yidden, so he is connected to the Oibershter as part of the group. On the other hand, every Yid is connected to the Oibershter also as an individual, as a person because who he is as a יחיד. In other words, every Yid is connected to the Oibershter because he is connected to the Oibershter. Which means when the Oibershter gave the Torah and He said the Yidden have to do the mitzvot, etc., etc., every Yid has to do it because the Oibershter gave it to klal Yisrael, and he's part of the klal, so he also is obligated to do it. On the other hand, he's not only obligated to do it because he's part of the klal and the klal has this obligation, but every Yid has to do it because he individually is obligated to do it. So he has to do it because of both inyanim. And that's why עשרת הדברות, which is the beginning of the Oibershter giving the Torah to the Yidden, He said it בלשון יחיד for two reasons: because He was speaking to everybody as part of the group, of the klal, and He was speaking to everybody as an individual.
But then the Rebbe also says that when we look into the details, you could also say that these two expressions, that it's given to everybody as an individual and also to everybody as part of the klal, applies to two parts: there's doing the mitzvot and learning Torah. Doing the mitzvot, everyone is the same. Everyone has to put on the same tefillin. So, by mitzvot, they're all the same, so the whole klal is like one. When it comes to learning, so even though the mitzvah of learning is on everybody, but everybody learns on a different level. So everybody is an individual in that. And since by מתן תורה, the Oibershter gave the obligation to keep the mitzvot and the obligation to learn Torah, that's why He used both לשונות. For the kiyum of the mitzvot, keeping the mitzvot, He said it in לשון יחיד because He's speaking to the klal, because all the Yidden have the same obligation to do the mitzvot, because they all do the same mitzvot. And He also said it בלשון יחיד because He's speaking to every individual, that's for Torah. So that's specifically when we talk about these two, but generally speaking, every Yid is obligated to do the mitzvot because he's part of klal Yisrael and because he is himself as an individual obligated to do the mitzvot. And the connection a Yid has to Hashem, and Hashem has to a Yid, is also for both ways. He's connected to every Yid because every Yid is a member of Klal Yisrael, and He's connected to every Yid as an individual, that the Eibershter loves every Yid for these two reasons also, and Yidden love the Eibershter and keep what the Eibershter says for both of these reasons.