Sunday evening, we once again reenact the revelation at Mount Sinai. The holiday of Shavuot is called Matan Torateinu. It is often translated as the receiving of Torah, but the accurate translation is the giving of Torah. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes that while Passover is our Exodus and Sukkot is our exile, Shavuot is our homecoming.
While most other nations enter a land and only then are given laws, the Jewish people worked in reverse.
We received the Torah at Mount Sinai and only then entered the land of Israel. Yet, when the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 586 BCE and we lost the land, we knew that we still had the law, the Torah.
Throughout our history, we have had this inverse relationship with law and land. It is no surprise that when we have the land, we focus less on the law, and when we have no land, the law becomes our central focus.
What is so remarkable about today’s Jewry is the fact that we have both. We have a vibrant Torah with great accessibility, and we have the ability within hours from any part of the world to take an airplane to the land, to tastes its bikurim, its first fruits. We can learn Torah anywhere in the world from the best scholars of our generation.
On Shavuot, the custom is to partake in Tukun Leil Shavuot. Tikkun means to repair. That is what Torah does in our lives. Learning repairs our souls in a most broken world.
We would be honored for you to join us this Erev Shavuot on Sunday, June 1, as we study about the power of mitzvah, commandment, in our lives today.
