By Rabbi Jennifer Rudin / Congregation Ahavath Shalom

Three months to the day after fleeing Egypt, we arrived in the wilderness of Sinai on the first day of the month of Sivan. God instructed Moses to remind us of all that we witnessed God doing for us in Egypt, how God carried us out of slavery on eagle’s wings. Our very presence in Sinai, the fact that we successfully journeyed to this place, indicates our unique and powerful connection to God.

God’s instruction to Moses to remind us of God’s pivotal role in our journey seems intended to strengthen our commitment and draw us closer to God. Yet in the Torah, we read, at a critical moment in our collective history, when we affirm our covenant, God instructs Moses to set a boundary. God says: Though you will wish to scale the mountain to come as close to Me as possible, do not do so, for your love must be constrained. It may be as intense as you wish, but you may never lose sight of Whom you love and why you love. For on the day that you do, your heart will wander elsewhere, and you will abandon Me altogether.

Remarkable. At the same time that God draws us close to experience God’s presence, God also sets a boundary that we may not cross, a physical and spiritual boundary that creates purposeful space between us and God.

The Kabbalists speak of the act of contracting oneself to make space for spiritual or physical creation. They call this act tzimtzum. Isaac Luria explains that “God began the process of creation by ‘contracting’ God’s infinite light to allow for a ‘conceptual space’ in which a finite and seemingly independent world could exist. This contraction, forming an ‘empty space’ in which creation could begin, is known as the tzimtzum.” The act of creating a boundary line that we could not cross at the moment of revelation is, in fact, another act of tzimtzum.

The experience at Sinai is immensely powerful. It includes hearing the blast of the shofar, experiencing intense thunder and lightning, and seeing a cloud of smoke enveloping the mountain. How could this compelling scene do anything other than draw us closer to God’s presence? Even today, when we hear loud noises, when we see smoke rising, and great flashes of light, we stop if only to look. Oftentimes, it is more than a quick glance. Curiosity gets the best of us and we feel compelled to fully investigate the source of these events. Without God’s deliberate act of creating a space between us and Sinai, we can only imagine that we would have been drawn to the mountain, we would naturally desired to find the source of the events and we would have and drawn closer to God’s presence.

So, what would have been wrong with each of us intimately experiencing God’s presence? We heard God’s voice with our own ears. We experienced God’s presence through the sights and sounds of the scene. Why was it so important that a boundary be drawn to prevent us from personally encountering God?

I would suggest that this space served not to distance us from God but to allow a personal relationship between each of us and God to form. At the moment of creation, Isaac Luria suggests, through the act of tzimtzum, contraction, and the creation of seemingly empty space, God enabled us to expand. Because of that expansion, we were able to develop free will, and to exist in relation to God and to one another. The scene at Sinai is the same. Here, God is not creating the world but rather is creating our peoplehood. Through the giving and receiving of the Ten Commandments, our relationship to God is recreated in a covenantal context, and we obtain the structure necessary for building successful relationships with one another. The boundary that Moses drew at God’s request was not meant to keep us from God, it was meant to create a space where we could develop in relation to God and to one another.

So what is the lesson of the boundary line set around Mount Sinai? Why is the space created by this boundary declared holy? What does it mean that those who enter into the space will die? Rashi suggests that the boundary was created not to separate us from the Divine but to encourage all of us assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai to remain together in our formation. Rashi’s commentary implies that God’s intent in having the boundary created was to ensure that at a moment when we would have naturally felt compelled to focus all of our attention towards the Divine, that we instead were encouraged to engage relationally with others. The words that were revealed to us at Sinai are only relevant if we are in relationship with God and with humanity. If we are focused only on our relationship with God, the power of the Ten Commandments is diminished. Likewise, if we ignore our relationship with the Divine and focus only on our relationship with humanity, the power of the Ten Commandments is also diminished. Boundaries are meant to create space and time that will allow us to engage more fully with God and with each other.

In our current moment, when political and social tensions often drive individuals into isolation or ideological camps, the lesson of the boundary at Sinai remains deeply relevant. The sacred space created there was not meant to separate, but to unite – a communal pause that allowed us to become a people, rooted not only in Divine connection but in mutual responsibility. Today, we too must resist the pull to retreat inward or to seek only private revelation. The holiness of that ancient boundary reminds us that transformation happens not in solitary closeness to the Divine alone, but in the shared space between us – in community, in dialogue, and in holding fast to one another even when the world tempts us to divide. To live fully in covenant, we must remain in relationship, not just with God, but with each other.

Rabbi Jennifer Rudin began serving as the interim rabbi of Congregation Ahavath Sholom in 2024. She is the founding rabbi of Simcha-Services, Congregation Derech HaShalom, a Progressive Jewish community without walls in Metro West Boston. She believes in a Judaism that is authentic and meaningful, one that honors each person’s unique religious practices, and is supportive of each individual's personal Jewish journey.