Part I
(א) משֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי, וּמְסָרָהּ לִיהוֹשֻׁעַ, וִיהוֹשֻׁעַ לִזְקֵנִים, וּזְקֵנִים לִנְבִיאִים, וּנְבִיאִים מְסָרוּהָ לְאַנְשֵׁי כְנֶסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה.
(1) Moses received Torah/torah from Sinai (miSinai) and transmitted (mesorah) it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets (mesorah) to the Men of the Great Assembly.
Rabbi Benay Lappe teaches (adapted):
"Et HaTorah" vs. "torah": it's a sleight of hand. “We mean torah, not The Torah.” If it meant The Torah it would have said "et haTorah (definitive article.)" Just "torah" is a much expanded view of what was/is transmitted. It’s all of wisdom that has and will come from and through all eternity.
Pirkei Avot is not just "stories," but the origin story for the rabbinic project, socializing the idea of a dual Torah, written and oral, both miSinai, both aspects of revelation.
The sentence doesn’t say "from God", God is not in the picture, or "at Sinai," but "from Sinai." It's a metaphor about being rooted, being from the earth, a mountain, from a place of humility.
It’s setting out a paradigm for how we receive and create Torah. These "guys" both received and created (mesorah), and then the next set of guys both received and created and passed on, and on and on. This is a new paradigm for providing a way to grow the tradition and make it more applicable and important over time. Revelation from Sinai is continuous.
The statement of transmission says nothing about kings and judges and priests, little about prophets. This is a very specific chain of tradition and transmission; the rabbis see themselves as the lineage. This was important to this early generation of rabbis in their struggle with priests for recognition and primacy. It's important to note that there were no women or Jews of color in this chain of tradition.
Who passed torah on to you, who are you passing torah to?
וְאָמַר רַבִּי לֵוִי בַּר חָמָא, אָמַר רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן לָקִישׁ, מַאי דִּכְתִיב ״וְאֶתְּנָה לְךָ אֶת לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן וְהַתּוֹרָה וְהַמִּצְוָה אֲשֶׁר כָּתַבְתִּי לְהוֹרֹתָם״. ״לֻחֹת״ — אֵלּוּ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת, ״תּוֹרָה״ — זֶה מִקְרָא, ״וְהַמִּצְוָה״ — זוֹ מִשְׁנָה, ״אֲשֶׁר כָּתַבְתִּי״ — אֵלּוּ נְבִיאִים וּכְתוּבִים, ״לְהוֹרוֹתָם״ — זֶה תַּלְמוּד, מְלַמֵּד שֶׁכּוּלָּם נִתְּנוּ לְמֹשֶׁה מִסִּינַי.
And Rabbi Levi bar Ḥama said that Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said: God said to Moses, “Ascend to me on the mountain and be there, and I will give you the stone tablets and the Torah and the mitzva that I have written that you may teach them” (Exodus 24:12), meaning that God revealed to Moses not only the Written Torah, but all of Torah, as it would be transmitted through the generations.The “tablets” are the ten commandments that were written on the tablets of the Covenant,the “Torah” is the five books of Moses.The “mitzva” is the Mishna, which includes explanations for the mitzvot and how they are to be performed.“That I have written” refers to the Prophets and Writings, written with divine inspiration.“That you may teach them” refers to the Talmud, which explains the Mishna.These explanations are the foundation for the rulings of practical halakha. This verse teaches that all aspects of Torah were given to Moses from Sinai.
Leah Vincent teaches:
The Mesorah is “a plot of land passed down from generation to generation, a kind of cultural Garden of Eden for us to tend, that is rich and ever-changing with an ecology of ancient wisdom, new ideas, noxious weeds, and life-giving fruit.”
Rabbi Art Green teaches (adapted):
If we keep the process of revelation as open as it was meant to be, “Oral Torah” can be seen in its most expansive sense, including that which you and I are creating in this moment. All of it is included in revelation.
God speaks in all of our voices and commentaries, joins our voices into endless streams, in personally meaningful and expansive forms, acknowledging that our story and our message are deeply interwoven, not just in the written set of ancient words transmitted by the few but in our own words transmitted in the now.
We enter into the text as a conversation among generations, we wade into the stream of tradition.
Part II
(א) וַיְדַבֵּ֣ר אֱלֹהִ֔ים אֵ֛ת כָּל־הַדְּבָרִ֥ים הָאֵ֖לֶּה לֵאמֹֽר׃ (ס) (ב) אָֽנֹכִ֖י֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֧ר הוֹצֵאתִ֛יךָ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם מִבֵּ֣֥ית עֲבָדִֽ֑ים׃ (ג) לֹֽ֣א יִהְיֶֽה־לְךָ֛֩ אֱלֹהִ֥֨ים אֲחֵרִ֖֜ים עַל־פָּנָֽ֗יַ
(1) God spoke all these words, saying: (2) I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage: (3) You shall have no other gods besides Me.
(שמות כ, א): וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים אֵת כָּל הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה לֵאמֹר, מְלַמֵּד שֶׁכָּל עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת אָמַר בְּדִבּוּר אֶחָד
"And God spoke all these words saying" in order to teach that God spoke all the Ten Commandments with one utterance.
Rabbi Art Green teaches (adapted):
Rabbi Mendel Torum of Rymanov: Only the first letter of the commandments, the aleph of anokhi, “I am,” was spoken by the divine voice. Aleph signifies the number One, referring to the unity of all in YHWH. That sufficed for the message. All the rest is humanly transmitted commentary. All they (who?) heard (and will hear) was the aleph of anochi.
...
But the letter aleph is itself utterly silent, nothing more than an intake of breath. Is this all God has to say? Or does the divine voice in fact make room, through an act of tsimtsum, self-limitation, to allow the human voice to speak and articulate the teaching in human language?
All of Torah contained within the letter aleph means that all the many words that will come to exist, both within the Torah, and in the flowing stream of conversation (about it) in all generations, constituting the Oral Torah, are present in the divine silence that precedes and underlies them.
Gershon Scholem writes, "what sound is in the letter aleph? Just silence, at Sinai, just silence. To hear the aleph is to hear the silence, the preparation for all audible language, but which in itself conveys no specific meaning." In this way, Rabbi Mendel transformed the revelation on Sinai into a mystical revelation, pregnant with infinite meaning, but without specific meaning. The Zohar teaches that aleph is a seed in which is enwrapped the entire Torah, and our deployment is to nurture that seed into our life's being.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner teaches (adapted):
We learn that the Shem haMeforash, the awesome Name of God, the four-letter name YHVH (yud (10), heh (5), vav (6), heh (5),) actually hints at the letter aleph. Aleph is constructed of two letter yuds (20), with the letter vav (6) joining them in the middle. This makes a total of 26. The four letter name of God is also 26.
This in turn hints at the face of a human being. The 2 eyes resemble two letter yuds, and the nose between them looks like a letter vav. Every human face is a letter aleph. This is the meaning of Genesis 1:27, “in the image of God, God created them." And this facial aleph, engraved on every person, has the same numerical equivalent, 26, as God’s most awesome name, YHVH (just vowels, just the breath). We also know that there is a kind of divine light surrounding every person, just as in holiness we are radiant. And this is the reason we are bidden to continually keep the image of God ever before our faces (shiviti), for indeed, the seal of the Holy One is literally on our faces, is our face, evoking the shape (of the name) of the creator.
Everything is rolled within the seed of the first utterance, I (anochi), the "is-ness" of God, and the essence of our own being.
Sources:
Rabbi Benay Lappe, adapted from Shavuot 2020, https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=3262063263845887&ref=watch_permalink
Rabbi Art Green, "Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and tradition"
Chapter: “Torah: Word Out of Silence “ begins on page 77
Gershon Scholem, “On the Kabbalah And Its Symbolism” page 30
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, “The Way Into Jewish Mystical Tradition”, page 67
Leah Vincent quoted: https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/between-text-and-culture-a-definition-of-mesorah/. Also see https://leahvincent.wordpress.com