Mount Sinai הר סיני
The desert mountain where the people received the Torah and became a nation of covenant.
Sinai is the most important place in Jewish history with no city, no monument and no certain address. The sages say the Torah was given in an ownerless desert so that no one could claim it, and that a modest mountain was chosen because it did not boast.
Here Moshe is called at the burning bush. Here, in the third month after the Exodus, the people encamp "as one man with one heart". On 6 Sivan 2448 the mountain smokes, a shofar sounds, and the whole nation hears the Ten Utterances—the one case in history of revelation received by an entire people at once. Moshe ascends for forty days, descends with the tablets, finds the golden calf and shatters them; he ascends again and receives the second set on Yom Kippur.
The Mishkan is built at its foot, and for nearly a year the camp remains, receiving law.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Shemot 3 — the bush that is not consumed
- Shemot 19–20 — the giving of the Torah
- Shemot 32–34 — the calf and the second tablets
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bamidbar Rabbah 1 — the Torah was given in the wilderness — a place belonging to no one and open to all
- Shabbat 88a–89b — the mountain held over their heads; the names of Sinai
- Seder Olam Rabbah 5 — the dates of the standing at the mountain
Basis: tradition.