Parashat Vayikra: The terrorism of Torah
Shlomo Riskin


Why does Mount Moriah have greater sanctity than Mount Sinai?




“An individual who will sacrifice from yourself a sacrificial offering unto the Lord…” (Leviticus 1:2)


My teacher and mentor Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik would often speak of the two great biblical mountains – Mount Moriah where God sent Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, and Mount Sinai, from which God presented the Torah to the Israelites.


Conventional wisdom would maintain that Mount Sinai should have been the more sacred, since there is nothing on Earth more sacred than our divinely given Torah – the very words of God. Nevertheless, the sages of the Talmud endowed eternal sanctity only to Mount Moriah, upon which our first two Holy Temples were built, and which will be the foundation for the third Temple as well.


Mount Sinai, by contrast, sustained its sanctity only during the period when the Divine Voice emanated from its heights; today it is no longer sacred, and could therefore be given up as part of Israel’s peace agreement with Egypt.


Why does Mount Moriah have greater sanctity than Mount Sinai? Rav Soloveitchik explains that whereas on Mount Sinai God presented Israel with His Torah, on Mount Moriah Abraham was willing to sacrifice his beloved son to God.


My teacher insisted that sanctity requires sacrifice, and the greater the sacrifice, the higher the degree of divine sanctity.


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