The "Voice"

 I unintentionally - but happily - repeated the fifth aliyah of V'etchanan while finishing the parasha this afternoon and became quite sad but then happy regarding the first verse in this aliyah, Devarim 5:19:

"These words spoke H' to your entire congregation on [Mount Sinai] from the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick cloud - a voice, that was great, never to be repeated, and G-d inscribed them upon two Tablets of stone and H' gave them to me."

I got very sad for a second reading that translation of lo yasaf - "never to be repeated."  Then I read the Hebrew and this translation just didn't check out - lo yasaf, to me, has no implication of "never" but rather of "not."  And I recognize the word the word yasaf in relation to Tosefot - meaning "addition."  So, I think much more fairly, this verse refers to a Voice which is neither "added to" nor "repeated."

Sure, that could be translated or interpreted as never repeated, and, yes, I have to admit, I've never heard, even in the very deepest of meditations, what I perceive to be a loud, audible, and penetrating voice, much less one appearing from a fire, a cloud, and a thick cloud.

But I'm not foreclosing on the opportunity.

And perhaps more accurately, the Voice could not be added to or subtracted to - we have that mitzvah at least once in the Torah.  The Voice that spoke is the voice of complete and utter truth - of reality - of an unbroken reality which, by its very nature and definition, cannot be increased or decreased.  It is the completeness.  It's obvious why, then, the holy shema prayer appears just a few verses later: it - creation, the heavens, the earth, reality, H' - it is One.  There is nothing outside of the unity or inside of it or separate from it.  The Voice, therefore, is the totality of this Oneness, too big to grasp but still worth a shot understanding.

As I close out my hundredth blog post, I realize that G-d really is speaking to us, constantly, and always, and in this way, we cannot increase or decrease the Voice either.  It is unity and it is the entire and only thing.  And while it seems daunting, perhaps we should be thinking and talking about and doing it literally every single moment of every single day - as the shema continues in the v'ahavta.

May we all hear H's Voice, always and constantly, and may it bring is closer to the holy truth of eternal Oneness.