In my line of work I am frequently asked why G-d does not speak to us directly. If, for example, eating Kosher is so important, why do we not receive direct divine communication with all the detailed laws?
If G-d could speak to Moses why doesn’t He speak to me? True. G-d could speak to us directly. But the last time it happened, we begged G-d to stop and never do it again! Fifty days after the wondrous exodus from Egypt the Jewish nation experienced “Matan Torah” - the Giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. G-d communicated the first two of the Ten Commandments to the millions of people gathered at the mountain - an experience so intense and transcendent that they clamored for the spectacle to end. Here is how it is recorded in this week’s parsha (Exodus 20:15-16): And all the people saw the voices and the torches, the sound of the shofar, and the smoking mountain, and the people saw and trembled; so they stood from afar. They said to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear, but let G-d not speak with us lest we die." G-d approved of this arrangement and from then on all divine communication happened through Moses and the subsequent prophets. While the revelation at Mt. Sinai was necessary to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Moses and his spiritual heirs were the legitimate transmitters of G-d’s will, it was meant to be a one-time event - never to happen again. Why did G-d not make us all Moses-like, save us the trauma and continue to communicate with us directly? Because Moses and the prophets are not regular people and our life experience is not meant to replicate theirs. Most mortals are created with an affinity to materialism while prophets get over that stuff from the get-go. See how Maimonides defines a prophet here. But we are not all expected to live as prophets. In fact the Torah was given specifically to mortals susceptible to theft, murder, promiscuity, falsehood, jealousy and much more. Judaism is not an intense spiritual experience reserved for holy places and holy times. It is the very premise of life, integrated in every level of our consciousness, down the nitty gritty details of our eating habits and our most shameful impulses. Applying Torah laws and ideals in the most mundane elements of life is the whole reason we were created in the first place and if we were all prophets, that experience would be moot. So embrace your regularness and the opportunity to make our regular world a bit more divine. All it takes is learning some more Torah and doing another Mitzvah.