[Avodah] Sinai - Rambam - heard all or nothing?

[Zvi Lampel]

R. David Guttmann" <david.guttman at verizon.net> wrote on Sun, 03 Dec 2006:
 
> ... The Rambam's lashon is "Vehakol medaber eilav, Veanu shome'im, "Moshe, Moshe, lech emor lahem kach vekach" . In MN ...the medaber ... means that they apprehended that Moshe was telling them what he got from God, not necessarily the thing that he told them.
 
> The problem that we have is with the "kach vekach," and I believe it
refers to what they heard from Moshe. In other words, when Moshe said to them
"Kach vekach," they understood that it was coming from hashem.
 
> This is further supported by MN 1:33 where he says" vehu hakol asher hissig
moshe vechol ysrael mimenu anochi velo yehyeh lecha, ve'hishmiam Moshe et
zeh bemilim bechituch otyot hanishmaot" in other words they apprehended that
God told Moshe to tell them something but the content was given by Moshe. <
 
Another suggestion: Evidently, we are forced to say that even when Rambam in Mishneh Torah states they heard Hashem telling Moshe [to] tell them kach ve’kach, the Rambam must mean not that they were able to distinguish clear words from Hashem, but only that they apprehended His awesome Voice. Once we assume this, the "kach ve-kach" can be referring to Hashem’s instructions as the people actually perceived them: When witnessing the Voice, they did not distinctly discern what specifics Hashem was telling Moshe to convey to them. This is what the Rambam means when he says they perceived that Hashem was telling Moshe to tell them ‘‘something’’--"kach ve-kach."
 
(By the way, the Sefer HaIkarrim (3:19) says that the people heard Hashem telling Moshe, ‘‘Tell them to go return to their tents...’’ This corresponds to his own shita--not the Rambam’s--that the first two dibros the people heard Hashem saying clearly, the rest of the dibros they heard only the His Voice and needed Moshe to delineate the words, and the rest of the 613 mitzvos they heard only from Moshe.)
 
R. Daniel Eidensohn (Sun, 03 Dec 2006) objected: 
> Your approach has one major problem. The Rambam in Yesodei HaTorah is 
asserting that Moshe was validated - not by miracles - but because they 
all heard Gd speaking to him. This point is also made by the Rashba and 
the Ohr HaChaim. If Moshe merely reported what he had heard - there is 
no basis for validation. Similarly the position expressed in Moreh 
Nevuchim that the people did not hear Gd speaking is criticized by the 
Avodas HaKodesh and the Shaloh for not providing any basis of validiation. <
 
The Moreh Nevuchim does not say that the people did not hear G-d speaking, only that although they heard his Voice, they were not at the prophetic level to make out the words. I share the objections other rishonim to the Rambam’s shita (the Abarbanel can be added to the list). But I think RDG would point out that a careful reading of the Mishneh Torah tolerates the Moreh Nevuchim’s shita:
 
The Rambam is explaining why Yisrael believed in the fact that Hashem speaks to Mosheh, and the invalidity of his miracles for this purpose. The proof that Hashem communicated with Moshe is not the fact that we saw Moshe performing miracles, but our witnessing the awesome sights and sounds at Mt. Sinai. The symmetry indicates that what one might have thought the miracles verified--the authenticity of Moshe as a prophet, the fact that Hashem speaks to Moshe--was really verified by the Sinai experience. The verification was not dependent upon our hearing distinct words, only knowing that the Voice did indeed speak to Moshe. Therefore, even though the words spoken were indistinguishable, we definitely "overheard" a conversation going on between Hashem and Moshe (‘‘Moshe y’daber, va-Hashem ya’anennu b’Kol’’), and that is all that was needed for us to know that Hashem spoke with him.
 
Granted, this is not the sense I would have gotten from the Mishneh Torah without seeing the Moreh Nevuchim. But as I said, it’s tolerable. I would also like to call attention to how the Moreh Nevuchim, particularly in the passage under discussion, bases every statement on Chazal.
 
Zvi Lampel
 
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