Where were you on 9/11?
(For those who were around) – Where were you standing when you heard JFK was shot?
What were you doing when the news broke out that the IDF had rescued the hostages at Entebbe Airport, or as we celebrated this week, when they liberated Jerusalem in 1973?
All of these events, whether tragic or miraculous, each played a role in defining the history of the world thereafter.
And it's just human nature to associate world events with our own personal connection.
But obviously, for those who were there, whether witnessing downtown Manhattan on 9/11 (as myself) or on the Air France flight that was hijacked to Entebbe, their memory of the moment is incomparable to any of ours.
In the broader history of the Jewish people as well, the defining moments are also seen in a similar sense; As the Medrash Tanchuma writes that at the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai every single soul of the Jewish people that would ever be created in the future was there.
In fact, the Talmud writes that had one soul been missing the Torah would not have been able to be given.
So, where were you in the summer of 1312 B.C.E. when the Torah was given on Mount Sinai?
You were right there!
Well, before your cynical side writes it off as a "figurative" thought, it's just like the genetic and hereditary elements of our psyche that are undisputed scientific realities that predate our birth by thousands of years.
So take it a step further. Embedded in our Souls DNA is its pre-birth participation in perhaps the most defining moment of the world's documented history;
No event in the history of the world has been published, debated, or studied as many times as the Torah.
Nothing has impacted the world as largely and broadly as the Bible and no people has survived and sustained under the harshest of conditions as much as the Guardian Nation of the Torah.
So the good news is that you were around when it all started.
But it doesn't end there.
Just like your inherent and genetic ability to be a great doctor didn't come to life till you went to Medical School, your participation at Sinai can remain hidden unless you are conscious of it.
So this coming Wednesday we'll all be going back to Mount Sinai to relive and recreate the most defining moment in the history of the world
Make sure you (and your whole family) are all there.
We need you.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Chaim
ChabadTexas.org Editor