During Matan Torah, the receiving of the Torah, Klal Yisrael reached an unparalleled spiritual level – the level of Adam Ha’rishon before he sinned by eating of the Eitz Ha’daas. This level, however, was short lived. The sin of the Golden Calf mitigated Bnei Yisrael‘s spiritual stature. After Adam sinned, Hashem asked him, “Ayeca?” , literally translated as, “Where are you?” but interpreted by Chazal as “How were you?” This infers that Adam was constantly to reinforce his original persona in his psyche. He was never to forget what he was, how high he had reached, his spiritual level of refinement and his closeness to Hashem, as well as his presence in Gan Eden. Horav Yitzchak Hirshovitz, zl, posits that this is the underlying meaning of our pasuk. We are cautioned to remember what it was like, who we were, the spiritual zenith to which we had climbed, and the awesome revelation we had experienced at Har Sinai.
The Torah does not admonish us to remember the words that we heard, but rather, the things that we saw. We are to etch the epoch experience of that day into our minds and hearts. While we did not merit to remain on that level, we must not permit ourselves to forget it. It should serve as an impetus for us, a goal to achieve, an objective to realize. As long as our past stands before us, our future is hopeful. Alas, many of us have relegated the past to antiquity and integrated what we might have become in the future into the culmination of a vacuous present.
