Everything that Hashem spoke we will do and listen to. (Shemos 24:7)
Kisses from Hashem
In the Kedushah of the Musaf prayer on Shabbos, we pray for the Geulah Sheleimah to come soon. We say והוא ישמיענו ברחמיו שנית לעיני כל חי – “May Hashem let us hear again, in His mercy, in view of all living beings....”
Note that it says “again.” In other words, we are asking that the coming Geulah should be like the one that was.
The first time Hakadosh Baruch Hu revealed His tremendous love to us was at Har Sinai. We ask and pray that He show us that love again.
This request is found also in Shir Hashirim: “May He kiss me with the kisses of His mouth, because Your love is better than wine.”
Rashi explains that this is a prayer said in galus. It is Kenesses Yisrael speaking to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
We pray that Hakadosh Baruch Hu should, so to speak, kiss us on the mouth again, as He did at Har Sinai, when we stood face-to-face with the Shechinah, and Hashem spoke to us.
The Giving of the Torah at Sinai was a “kiss on the mouth” that Hashem gave to the Jewish people. This is also the type of kiss that we will receive from Hashem in the future, when the Geulah comes.
But why does the verse say נשיקות פיהו, “the kisses of His mouth”? The word "kisses" is in the plural. And a plural refers to a minimum of two. So we say it means two kisses. Why two kisses?
The Vilna Gaon explains that when a person gives a kiss on the shoulder, as was often done in former times, it is only one kiss. The kisser gives a kiss but does not get one in return. However, when it is a kiss on the mouth, the kisser gives a kiss and also receives one.
At Har Sinai we gave a kiss to Hashem and received a kiss in return from Hashem. The Jewish people gave a kiss when they said כל אשר דיבר ה' נעשה ונשמע – “Everything that Hashem spoke we will do and listen to.” And Hashem gave us a kiss. He said אנכי ה' אלקיך – “I am Hashem your G-d.”
When a person gives someone, for instance, a Torah sage, a kiss on the hand, he is expressing his love for the Torah sage whose hand he kissed. But the love and devotion he is thus expressing to the Torah sage is limited. It involves the hand, which is only one part. However, a kiss on the mouth means mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, ears to ears. It lines up all of one’s limbs and organs with all the other’s limbs and organs. This is love without limit.
All of Shas
As we said, the kiss we gave to Hakadosh Baruch Hu at Har Sinai was when we said, “Everything that Hashem spoke we will do and listen to.” Now let's understand what this verse means. It expresses a certain promise that we made to Hakadosh Baruch Hu prior to receiving the Torah at Har Sinai.
Chazal say that “do” refers to keeping mitzvos and “listen” refers to learning Torah.
But what is the meaning of the word כל, “everything”?
Rabbeinu Yonah wrote in Shaarei Teshuvah as follows:
Let’s say a person doesn’t exercise care to avoid a certain matter known to be a sin. He doesn’t commit himself to avoiding it. Even if it is a light sin, and even if he is careful not to commit all other sins forbidden by the Torah, the Sages of Yisrael call him a mumar l’davar echad, “an apostate as regards one matter.” He is among the transgressors, and his iniquity is unbearably great. Because if a servant says to his master, “Everything you tell me, I will do, except for one thing,” he is thereby breaking off himself the yoke of subservience to his master. He does what he sees fit.
A person might love keeping Shabbos. “What a beautiful mitzvah!” he says. Or he might be lovingly devoted to putting on tefillin every day. He has his mitzvos that are meaningful to him, for whatever reason, and he keeps them.
But he has one "little" problem with his religious observance: he doesn’t like keeping kosher. “He is thereby breaking off himself the yoke of subservience to his master.”
This is נעשה, “We will do.” We promised the Creator that we will do everything He spoke. This includes tefillin, keeping kosher, Shabbos, mezuzah and everything else. We will not break the yoke of Hakadosh Baruch Hu off ourselves even in one matter.
But it isn’t just about doing mitzvos that we said we will fulfill everything. We said it also about נשמע, “We will listen.” This is Torah learning. We took upon ourselves to fulfill “Everything that Hashem spoke we will... listen to.”
So it’s not enough to just learn a perek of Mishnayos or one daf Gemara. We are going to learn the whole Torah! And when we see nowadays that, baruch Hashem, not just outstanding talmidei chachamim but also ordinary Jews sit and learn Shas, one daf after another, thus learning the whole Torah, this is keeping the promise we made to the Borei Olam!
This is the kiss we gave Hashem at Har Sinai. And we are giving the same kiss today, when we come and learn “Everything that Hashem spoke.”
What does it mean to learn "everything"? Can a person really exhaust the entire Torah and say he learned "everything"? How does this make sense?
The Torah is endless. It is “longer than the earth and wider than the sea.” Nevertheless, it has a certain framework. This is the concept of Talmud Bavli. Regarding its quality, it’s not just that it contains divrei Torah with the quality of Tannaim and Amoraim, it’s the fact that it is a complete work, it is the very tradition of the Oral Torah that was given at Sinai.
R. Zundel Salant writes like this:
I heard myself from the holy mouth of the leader of the entire Jewish people, R. Chayim [of Volozhin] z”l, that if one word of the Gemara were to be taken away, the whole world would have to be destroyed.
Let’s understand what this means. As we know, the Chumash from the first word through to the last, and the books of the Tanach, form a complete whole, which is the Written Torah that was given to Moshe at Sinai.
The same is true with Shas. It is a whole, it is a complete and self-contained work, and every word in it is part of this complete whole. If a word would be missing, the Torah would not be complete, and the world would be destroyed!
We see the special virtue of learning all of Shas in the story that when Rav Ashi, who, together with Ravina, put together the collection of teachings we have in the Gemara today, finished arranging the Talmud Bavli, fire came down from heaven and surrounded the beis midrash. This was a kiss of כל אשר דיבר ה' נעשה ונשמע, of “Everything that Hashem spoke, we will do and listen to.” This is why fire came down from heaven for Rav Ashi, like it did at Har Sinai.
Three Thousand Years of Listening
We have been keeping this promise of learning the entire Torah, of “Everything that Hashem spoke, we will... listen to,” for over three thousand years, since Har Sinai. In all the generations, Jews learned the whole Torah.
The Chofetz Chayim recounted that in his youth, he remembered a case when someone made a shidduch for his daughter with a fourteen-year-old bachur about whom he was told that the boy knows all of Shas. Accordingly, he promised a big dowry. But in the end, it turned out that the bachur was actually fifteen. So the father cancelled the shidduch. He broke it off because for a fifteen-year-old, knowing all of Shas is not such a big deal. So it was in those times.
In prewar Europe, up until the Holocaust, there were still working men, people who held down a job to support their family, but they would get up at 4:00 AM and learn for four or five hours. They would keep on learning and learning that way until they finished all of Shas. However, in the last sixty years, knowing all of Shas has not been such a common thing among us. There are even many big talmidei chachamim who didn’t finish Shas yet.
So when we see Jews who sit and learn Daf Hayomi, blat after blat, going through all of Shas, this is the light of Mashiach.
The promise we made of learning the entire Torah, of “Everything that Hashem spoke, we will... listen to,” is not just for Gedolei Yisrael. It is for every Jew, wherever he is holding. And in our generation, Hakadosh Baruch Hu sent us a special siyata d’Shmaya. He sent us the concept of Daf Hayomi. Everywhere in the world, people are learning Shas. And every Jew can keep this promise.
Let’s say a person learns on a one-off basis. He learns, for instance, even an entire chapter of Mishnayos. However great a thing this may be, it doesn’t reach the level of someone who keeps up the learning day after day with mesirus nefesh. And it isn’t just his personal mesirus nefesh; it is the mesirus nefesh of the whole family. It’s not just the husband, the father, who is sitting and learning, it is the mesirus nefesh of the whole family. He goes on night after night, sitting and learning another daf and another daf, and it is something that belongs to the whole Jewish people.
When Jews come and give Hashem the kiss of כל אשר דיבר ה' נעשה ונשמע, of learning the whole Torah, this is the light of Mashiach that is emerging. We can already see on the horizon the reciprocal kiss of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
