In Jewish tradition, Moses is considered the greatest prophet who ever lived. The Bible tells us that as the Israelite's camped below, Moses ascended Mt. Sinai and received the word of G-d. We Jews call the act of G-d revealing the words to his people ‘the act of revelation’.
Now, according to Rabbi Ron Isaacs’s, Ask the Rabbi, with regard to ‘revelation’ (on Shavout) the most commonly asked questions are: What really happened? How do we know for sure that it was G-d who spoke to Moses? (and not his imagination) Even if G-d did in fact speak, how can we be sure that the Israelite's understood (correctly)? And: after these many years (3321 in 2009), how do we know that the words that we have today are the (exact) same words?
Briefly: Orthodox Jews generally believe that G-d revealed His will on the mount in written and verbal form. This (all) being later committed to writing [Talmud] by rabbis who were divinely inspired. How, he says, is still a mystery? But for the Orthodox, it remains fact that we received Torah directly from G-d.
Conservative Judaism, he relates (seemingly ex cathedra [to mix languages]) the ‘nature’ of G-d’s communication is understood in various ways. For some His communications with mortals at Sinai and in the era of the prophets were direct. Humans (then) wrote these down and the writings are included in the Bible reflecting different origins. Another Conservative position posits that Moses and other humans were divinely inspired with a specific message (&) wrote the Torah at various places and times. [This concept, however, originated with a (much) ‘later’ Christian scholar and was then accepted by others as ‘the’ way it happened ed.]
Reconstructionists generally believe that humans wrote the Torah, claiming no divinity for the product. The Reform position also maintains that the torah is G-d’s will as written by human beings! He completes his comments by saying that “we do not know, nor can anyone ever really know, exactly what Moses or the people at Sinai actually heard saw, or felt”. Many of the words (rabbi’s words) used in the Bible’s descriptions of revelation are figurative (duh). The Bible speaks of fire, smoke, the voice of a horn (shofar, perhaps?), and lightning to give us some idea as to what it was like to hear G-d’s voice. In the end, though, Rabbi Isaacs says, they could only refer to having experienced the greatness of the presence of G-d.
Nu?
Where does that leave us?
If we are members of a Conservative synagogue, it appears that we can “pick and choose” as we wish. But without the freedom – or rather: liberty – to do as the Reconstructionists and/or Reform(ed) do. But it ultimately comes back to ‘you’. You, yourself, must, of course, begin with a determination that you (ultimately and forever) believe in HaShem. If, indeed, you do believe that there is (A) G-d, that there always has been and always will be (A) G-d, then I venture to say that it really does not matter what you think about how we received the Torah and how the Prophets were able to write what they wrote. The fact is that we got it. And we have it. And it is immutable. And it matters not what you think – the Torah is there before you – it exists.
The real question is rather: what do you accept? Do you really want to follow the rabbis’ pilpul? If you find it hard – or impossible – to accept that there is a power greater than yourself, then perhaps you should not be going to synagogue at all. If mankind can conquer the universe, or if you think that perhaps on some distant planet that there is a super race of cockroaches that can travel through time and space and control a parallel universe; then maybe you should spend your time as a screen-writer and forget about the Torah and how we got it. For you, man devised all these various laws and was able to make extremely sophisticated connections between numbers and letters and devise a codex that encompassed over 5769 years of human (and only human) thinking, acting, creating, developing… but still cannot find a way for men to live together without wars, famine, and illness. Go on. Go back and think: What do you believe, what do you accept? Then, you can see that these first questions were non-sequitur.
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