Living Torah Archives

Historically, Jews treated their wisdom in a vastly different way from other nations. In Egypt, for example, knowledge and scientific progress were the exclusive domain of an intellectual elite. The masses obeyed them with blind action. By contrast, immediately when the Jewish people became a nation, G-d’s first action was to give the Torah to all the Jews, of all generations, equally.

In ancient Egypt, the study of wisdom was limited to an intellectual elite – the sorcerers and astrologers. Ordinary people had no independent access to wisdom. When the Jews left Egypt, however, G-d commanded them to journey to Sinai and receive the Torah. G-d revealed the Ten Commandments, which included the entire Torah, directly to three million Jewish men, women and children together.