It is said in the midrashic work Shemot Rabbah, and elsewhere, that the Torah was revealed to each person uniquely according to their own capacity and understanding. I imagine it sort of like this:
A Thought Experiment: A Poem for Shavuot
by Rabbi Emily Stern
The Torah is nothing if not yours
Because this is how it was when we stood at Sinai
When you heard that booming voice through the hugely porous air
So loud, so clear. The sound is a kind of fruit
Your ears are made of, but you never knew.
You eat it and have no time to wonder,
“Is this true?” because
The voice you hear is familiar, eerily familiar.
It reminds you—oh, that’s it— of being in the womb
Before you entered this world.
These are the same voices you heard muffled around you
For those months while you formed.
This Torah is nothing if not yours.
And the voice morphs into your grandmother’s call
At the bottom of the stairs saying
“Breakfast is ready. Come and get it!”
Your heart’s humming, but it’s too high pitched.
You strain to hear
And slowly come to realize it’s your favorite song.
You anticipate the words as you remember who you are.
You peer at the top of the mountain
And look up at the cloud resting there.
You distinctly remember seeing that shape.
Oh, it’s the butterfly that flew by you
On your fifth birthday. You didn’t even know you remembered.
And in the thunder
As you sit and listen,
You are watching shapes become a very complicated mathematical equation
In front of your face.
And you stretch your mind to solve for “x”
Only to discover the answer, the only possible answer
Is the presence of the deepest part of you.
And the answer to every question was always your own essence.
It’s like a key that unlocks something, and you are woken from this slumbering
By a flash of lightning.
You know so well, too well,
It’s a flash of inspiration in your head
That you once were a sperm colliding with an egg.
You watch yourself meet yourself
And you know it was the first time you ever felt true love.
Your face is shown to you
Like a mirror but not backwards.
It’s the first time you’ve ever really seen your own face
Made of swirling colors too bright to see with your eyes
Or even your mind.
It’s so impossible to contain
That color becomes a smell
The smell of smoke from the mountain.
And heat from the fire burns your face
And you’re suddenly inside that volcano
You saw a picture of in third grade
That you imagined someday you would visit.
And you know… someone knows your language
It’s too much Intimacy to bear.
And you reverberate there
Suspended beyond all worlds.
It almost is embarrassing to be so known
To be so seen
In these words
Called Torah.
And you know… this Torah is nothing if not yours.
