“Moshe went up to G-d and G-d called to him from the mountain saying, ‘so shall you say to the house of Yaakov and tell the children of Yisrael.'” Shemos 19:3

Why was the Torah given on a mountain?

To answer this question, I would like to share a story from when I was in 10th grade. During my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I ran on my high school’s cross-country team. Every week, we had a 3.1-mile race against a team from another high school in our county. At the end of each season was our most important race: the Counties, where all of the schools competed against each other at Thompson Park in Jamesburg, NJ. During my sophomore year, I ran in the junior varsity race with about 100 other runners and was hoping to finish in the top 25.

The race began and I started out in the middle of the pack of runners. At the first half-mile mark, my coach was angrily yelling at me from the sidelines that I needed to run faster if I wanted to reach my goal. In front of me was a huge downhill. Luckily, during practice, my coach not only taught me how to properly run uphills, but also taught me how to run a downhill. On that downhill, many of the runners were relaxing and letting gravity do its work. I, on the other hand, leaned forward and ran as hard as I could on that downhill. At the bottom of the hill, I had passed at least 25 runners. At the 1-mile mark, my coach was joyously telling me to keep it up. I continued the race and ran numerous more hills, including a dreadful uphill at the 2.5-mile mark of the course. I was in such good position in the race at that time, that the uphill was not a major problem. In the end, I crossed the finish line in 12th place and got a medal!

In my humble opinion, I think the key to my race was when I ran hard during the downhill near the beginning of the race. And this taught me a great lesson for life. There are many uphills and downhills in life – the uphills are the hard times and the downhills are the easy times. Uphills are difficult for everyone, but if a person pushes himself during the periods of downhill, he will be in a better position to deal with periods of uphill. If a person learns Torah and Mussar during the good times, he will be better prepared to deal with the difficulties and bitterness that comes in his life.

Hashem gave Moshe the Torah on a mountain. Why a mountain? A mountain has two directions: uphill and downhill. Every moment of our lives we are on a mountain and are either going uphill or downhill. No matter which direction we are going, we need to learn Torah!

Good Shabbos!
-yes
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