Do We Create Right and Wrong—or Discover It?
Shavuot 5786 (2026), Deuteronomy 4:6
What does it mean to say that right and wrong are not just matters of opinion?
Most of us have felt the tension. One person insists that something is obviously right. Another is just as certain that it is wrong. And in a world filled with competing voices, it can begin to feel as though morality itself is something we each define—rather than something we are meant to discover.
This week, the Jewish calendar marks Shavuot, the festival that commemorates the revelation at Mount Sinai over three thousand years ago.
The Torah describes that moment in a way that reaches beyond a single people:
“Keep them and do them (the Commandments), for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations…” (Deuteronomy 4:6).
From the outset, the Torah’s vision was meant to be visible—clear enough to be recognized, steady enough to be trusted, not only within one community, but in the eyes of the world.
At Sinai, something extraordinary took place. A people stood at the foot of a mountain that trembled with fire and sound. Not one voice, but many. Not one perspective, but an entire people encountering the same reality at once. They were not encountering a philosophy, but a revelation.
At that moment, the Jewish people entered into a covenant—a way of life shaped by Torah, binding and particular, carried across generations. But the Torah presents Sinai not only as covenant, but as revelation, and that claim is not simple.
To say that something was revealed is to suggest that it was always there to be uncovered—that moral truth exists independent of human agreement. A skeptic might reasonably ask: how do we know that Sinai was not itself a human creation, another attempt to give authority to our own instincts?
The Torah does not argue that point philosophically. It makes a different kind of claim. It describes a moment in which moral truth is encountered as given—and asks us to consider what it would mean if that were so.
Jewish tradition has long understood that this revelation carried with it not only a covenant for one people, but a responsibility toward the world. The Torah’s moral vision was not meant to remain enclosed. It was meant to be lived in a way that could be seen, recognized, and, over time, shared—not as something possessed, but as something entrusted.
Consider something simple: the expectation of honesty when no one is watching. Every society values it, yet it often bends under pressure. The Torah does not present honesty as merely useful for maintaining trust. It presents it as something deeper—as an expression of a moral reality that does not depend on convenience.
That is what Sinai introduced into the world: not just guidance for a single people, but the possibility that moral clarity is real—and that it can be encountered, lived, and recognized.
We, too, return to Sinai each year—not at the foot of a mountain, but in the choices we make and the standards we accept.
And perhaps the real question of Shavuot is not only what was given then, but whether we are willing to live as though it were true—even when it would be easier not to.
I wish you a good week and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yonatan Hambourger