The importance of gathering


Most of the communication between God and human beings in the Torah happens one on one.  God speaks to individual humans, and those individuals then sometimes convey God’s words to others.  But when God speaks the words of the 10 Commandments in this week’s Torah reading, it is to all the people at once; they all hear God’s words thundering forth from Mt. Sinai together, and it seems like they had to be gathered at the foot of the mountain before the revelation of these bits of the divine will could proceed.  Why?  The Torah is teaching us two things here.  First, understanding what the divine will could be in the world is something we mostly need to pursue together, building on each other’s knowledge and challenging each other when we go astray, when we start to confuse the divine will with our own.  Second, doing divine work in the world, acting in ways that bring the world closer to the high vision of equality, justice, and love inscribed in Torah, is also something we mostly need to do together.  We need each other to accomplish good, from the smallest act of kindness between two people to the largest scale, the redemption of the world.