Mount Sinai הר סיני
The desert mountain where the people received the Torah and became a nation of covenant.
Sinai is the most important place in Jewish history with no city, no monument and no certain address. The sages say the Torah was given in an ownerless desert so that no one could claim it, and that a modest mountain was chosen because it did not boast.
Here Moshe is called at the burning bush. Here, in the third month after the Exodus, the people encamp «as one man with one heart». On 6 Sivan 2448 the mountain smokes, a shofar sounds, and the whole nation hears the Ten Utterances — the one case in history of revelation received by an entire people at once. Moshe ascends for forty days, descends with the tablets, finds the golden calf and shatters them; he ascends again and receives the second set on Yom Kippur.
The Mishkan is built at its foot, and for nearly a year the camp remains, receiving law.