Why does the Torah not begin with the greatest prophet of the Jewish people, the one who revealed the Torah at Sinai – Moshe Rabbeinu? If the essence of Jewish life is the fulfillment of Hashem’s commandments – and it is – then the Torah might have been expected to open with revelation, law, and mitzvot (see Rashi, Bereishit 1:1). If Judaism were like other religions, it would indeed begin there – with a prophet and with revelation.

But it does not. The Torah begins instead with Bereishit – with creation, the first human generations, and ultimately with the story of one family. 

This is foundational, reflecting a critical truth about the nature of Judaism itself. Judaism is not merely a religion. At its core lies a transformative idea: before we were a religion, we were a people – and before we were a people, we were a family.

Before we were a religion, we were a people

To understand the meaning of matan Torah, we must pay careful attention to the Torah’s own narrative structure. The revelation at Sinai appears only midway through Sefer Shemot, in chapters 19 and 20 – after the entire fifty chapters of Bereishit and eighteen chapters of Shemot have already unfolded.

This sequencing is striking. If the giving of the Torah is the crux of Jewish life, why is so much scriptural text devoted to what comes before it?

The Torah is teaching us something essential: the covenant at Sinai was not given to isolated individuals or to an association of believers. It was given to a people already formed through shared experience, memory, and destiny.

The opening chapters of Shemot depict Bnei Yisrael in Egypt – not as a religious community defined by law, but as a growing collective shaped by suffering and survival. They multiply, endure oppression, and begin to develop a sense of shared fate and identity – what Rav Soloveitchik has famously termed “a covenant of fate.”

At the burning bush, Hashem’s first revelation to Moshe is framed in terms of national redemption: “I have surely seen the suffering of My people… and now go, I will send you to Pharaoh, and you shall take My people, the Children of Israel, out of Egypt.” This is a declaration of the fate of a people before it is a declaration of faith.

As the narrative unfolds – from the confrontation with Pharaoh to the plagues, from the Exodus to the splitting of the sea – we witness the emergence of a nation. The Israelites are not first defined by revelation; they are defined by a shared story. Only after this process of national formation do they arrive at Har Sinai. Only then are they given the Torah.

The sequence is deliberate: First, a people with a collective fate – what Rav Soloveitchik termed “the covenant of fate.” Then, receiving the Torah – what he termed “the covenant of destiny.”

A people bound to a land

This peoplehood is not abstract – it is deeply rooted in a specific land. 

From the very beginning of the Jewish story, the Land of Israel is central. The first command given to Avraham – Lech Lecha – is not a theological directive but a journey to a land: “Go forth from your land… to the Land that I will show you.” Here, peoplehood and land are intertwined from the outset. The Jewish mission is not meant to unfold in a vacuum; it is meant to take place within a defined geographical and historical context.

This land-people connection is reinforced at Hashem’s first revelation to Moshe at the burning bush: “I will bring them up from that land… to a Land flowing with milk and honey.”

This feature distinguishes Judaism from other major faith traditions. Religions such as Christianity and Islam are not inherently tied to a specific people or land; they are defined primarily by belief and practice. Judaism, by contrast, is inseparable from the story of a particular people connected to a particular place.

This makes Jewish life unique and difficult to define. Taken together, Judaism is more than a religion or a nation. The best description perhaps is a civilization – one that encompasses nationhood, culture, language, land, religious practice, and spiritual purpose.

Rav Kook: Judaism beyond religion

This broader understanding of Judaism is articulated with remarkable depth by Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, particularly in his essay L’Mahalach Ha’Edeiot B’Yisrael.

In modern Western thought, religion is typically understood as a private domain – a system of beliefs and rituals that exists alongside, but separate from, national and civic life. Rav Kook argues that this definition is foreign to Judaism.

Judaism is not a compartment of life; it is the totality of life. The Jewish people are not merely adherents of a faith; they are a nation whose very existence is shaped by a divine calling. The Torah is not simply a collection of religious doctrines; it is the constitution of a living people. It speaks to every dimension of human existence – ethical, social, economic, political, and spiritual. To reduce Judaism to “religion” is therefore to fragment something that is inherently whole.

Rav Kook explains that the perception of Judaism as a religion emerged during the long centuries of exile. Stripped of land, sovereignty, and national institutions, the Jewish people were forced to sustain their identity in dispersed community structures built around accentuated religious practice.

As a result, Judaism came to resemble other religions: expressed primarily in places of worship and study halls, devoid of land, sovereignty, and national society. The Sages articulated this clearly: “Since the day the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, all that G-d has in His world are the four cubits of halacha” (Berachot 6b).

With the beginning of the collective return to the Land, Rav Kook saw the making of a profound transformation. The revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, the renewal of agriculture and national life in our ancient homeland, the eventual reestablishment of political sovereignty – all these signaled the reemergence of Judaism’s full character. Judaism was expanding once again – from religion and the fragmentations of peoplehood into a renewed civilization.

This process, in Rav Kook’s view, was not merely political. It was spiritual – a manifestation of divine providence unfolding through history, restoring the Jewish people to the fullness of their identity.

Before we were a people, we were a family

And yet, even peoplehood does not reach the deepest layer of Jewish identity. For before we became a nation, we were already a family.

This truth is embedded in the very language of the Torah. The first time the Jewish people are referred to as an am – a nation or people – is in the opening chapter of Shemot. Strikingly, it is Pharaoh who makes this declaration: “Behold, the nation of the Children of Israel has become numerous and strong.” This phrase is telling: not simply a nation, but the nation of the Children of Israel. At the very moment we are recognized as a people, we are defined as a family.

Jewish nationhood is not built solely on shared religious ideology or national fervor. It is rooted in kinship – in the bonds of family that begin with a single household.

To understand this, we must return to Sefer Bereishit. Bereishit is not a book of laws; it is a book of relationships. It tells the story of parents and children, of spouses and siblings. It is, fundamentally, the story of a family. First and foremost, the Jewish story begins with Avraham and Sarah – our founding father and mother.

This is a remarkable departure from the way other nations understand their origins. The American people begin with founding fathers – figures such as Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson – individuals who are the political architects of a nation, not biological ancestors. Their wives, families, and descendants are not the story of the American people.

In contrast, the Jewish narrative begins with a biological father and mother – Avraham Avinu and Sarah Imeinu. This family continues through Yitzchak and Rivka, and then through Ya’akov – renamed Yisrael – and his wives Rachel, Leah, and their maidservants, who together have twelve sons: the Children of Israel.

Here, the distinction becomes unmistakable: they are not only the founders of a nation; they are the founders of a family that becomes a nation. Jewish identity is therefore not merely adopted; it is inherited. It is transmitted through generations, carrying with it the intimacy and complexity of enduring family bonds.

We can now see the structure of Jewishness with clarity: it begins with a family – Avraham and Sarah, who establish the first covenantal home and family. That family becomes an extended family, a people – through descent, struggle, and shared destiny in Egypt. That people receive the Torah at Sinai, where they receive their spiritual and divine mission.

Each stage is essential, and each builds upon the previous one. Without family, there is no people. Without people, there is no Torah.

A message for our time

This idea carries profound implications for us today. As we approach Yom Yerushalayim and matan Torah, we are reminded that unity is not merely an aspiration; it is a prerequisite for our mission.

Yerushalayim was never divided among the tribes; it belongs to all (Rambam, Beit HaBechira 7:14). And at Sinai, the people stood “as one person with one heart” – together as one.

This unity was not uniform. It was the unity of a family. Families are not defined by agreement. They contain differences, tensions, and disagreements. But they are bound by something deeper – a shared identity that cannot be dissolved.

To see another Jew as a family member is both comforting and demanding. It offers belonging, but it also imposes responsibility. It requires us to maintain connection even in the face of disagreement, to resist the temptation to fracture into separate camps. When we succeed in doing so, we affirm the deepest truth of Jewish existence: before we were a religion, we were a people – and before that, a family. And families, for all their imperfections, represent the most enduring form of human belonging.

This is why the Torah begins not with Sinai or Egypt, but with home and family – a spiritual odyssey directed to Avraham and executed together with Sarah as the founding father and mother of the Jewish people.

As I shared in my eulogy for our beloved son at his second funeral: “We may be the smallest people, but we are the largest family.”

Rabbi Doron Perez is the Executive Chairman of World Mizrachi.