Reply To: Short & Sweet

Shavous: Seeing the Sounds

Rashi famously quotes the Medrash tha at Har Sinai, we all saw the sounds of the Aseres HaDibros. What message was this seemingly unnecessary miracle trying to convey?

R’ Moshe Shapiro explains that seeing and hearing are fundamentally different. Hearing words is a process of stringing together different sounds. You cannot hear and comprehend an entire sentence in the same second. You need to hear each syllable separately to make sense of it.

Seeing is the exact opposite. When one sees a scene, they see everything at once.

Explains R’ Moshe Shapiro, seeing and hearing represent two different facets of the Torah. We need to see the big picture, to understand what the Torah is trying to do to us, who the Torah wants us to be. But we also cannot lose sight of the fact that the Mitzvos are like sounds, with each and every small detail being crucial to getting the message across.

We cannot lose sight of the forest for the trees, nor can we skip or brush aside even the most minute detail of halachic observance. True adherence to the Torah requires that we see both.

לע״נ דוד חיים בן ישראל דוב הכהן
לע״נ ר׳ חיים דוב בן ר׳ בןציון שלום