She'arim College of Jewish
Studies for Women
Jewish Unity
Rebbetzin Holly Pavlov
Jewish unity began at Sinai. When each individual Jew agreed to accept the Torah, he put aside his own desires and agenda for that of Hashem’s. In so doing, every Jew was focused on the same exact thing, the will of God. This unified state created a new entity called Klal Yisroel (the all-inclusive Jewish people).
This single entity meant that each Jew is part of the other, part of the Klal and that it would be impossible to separate or to walk away from the Klal. The Klal, in turn, was part of an unbreakable triangle: “The Holy one Blessed be He and Torah and the Jewish people are one”.
Never again in history did we ever agree on anything! Yet Sinai was the moment in history that mattered, the one in which we chose to accept the Torah. This choice made the Jewish people an inseparable nation, an indestructible people. In forging into a Klal, in becoming completely part of the Torah and Hashem, the Jewish nation became an eternal one.
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Rebbetzin Holly Pavlov is the director of She’arim College of Jewish Studies for Women in Jerusalem. She is the author of Mirrors of Lives: Reflections of Women in Tanach (Targum, 2000), and the forthcoming Water from the Well: Reflections of a Jew At the End of History (Targum, 2005).