Dara Horn, Sefaria Torah Talks: Shavuot 5781
I think that this idea -- that if God had just revealed God's self to everyone at that point, there would be nothing else to talk about -- I think it's Martin Buber who says that revelation had no content; it was just an encounter. And all of the the laws and the text of the Torah is really an attempt to describe an encounter that doesn't have any content, which this reminds me of, because it's saying that if you were to have this intimate encounter with God, you would not need the rest of these descriptions.
Dara Horn, Sefaria Torah Talks: Shavuot 5781
I think so much of the sort of struggle with authenticity in the American Jewish community, where the source of authenticity becomes...how religiously observant you are...it becomes this weighted thing...because of the separation from the language, and what's really interesting to me about this text is that it shows even when you're reading in the [original] language, even for the people who heard this [revelation], there's this separation. There's that "kaf" in there. This is only "ke-ilu." This is only "as if" we did this, as if we heard, as if we saw the light of God, and of course, they did see, but did they see it?