When I had been a rabbi for all of two months, a student knocked on my office door and told me that she had just noticed that the Ellul moon was waning in the sky and it would be Rosh Hashanah in mere days. She didn’t feel prepared and was hoping I could offer her some sources to read and contemplate before the new year arrived. We had a conversation, I made some recommendations to her, and then, once she had left my office, I thought to myself, “I am the luckiest rabbi in the United States!” I just sat in my office, did nothing, and someone knocked on my door asking for a profound conversation about Judaism.
Since then, I’ve had several occasions to reflect on just how lucky I am as a rabbi and I had that feeling last night at the shul dinner when we heard from several members of the community who are involved in refugee resettlement along with the director of HIAS Chicago and a member of the Syrian community here. It was so moving and inspiring to hear so many first-hand accounts of people in this community who are actualizing their values in the real-world and in a few minutes I want to return to that theme of how we take our values and bring them down into the world and actualize them in concrete ways.
When Thomas Moore wrote his 1516 book about an imaginary island with a unique and unusual form of government he called this island “utopia” from the Greek for “no place.” Moore’s Utopia was a vision of a place that was “no place” it did not exist in the physical world, only in the world of ideas.
In a similar way, this confluence of Parashat Bamidbar and Shavuot represent a celebration of no-time, in no-place and a vision of influence, power, and community that is itself fully utopian.
Shavuot represents one of the greatest discoveries ever uncovered by the rabbis and that discovery generates an enduring question which we return to each year. Shavuot is known to us as “zman matan torateinu” the time when the Torah was given, and yet that detail of Shavuot is not mentioned explicitly anywhere in the Torah. Shavuot is described along with Pesach and Sukkot a a pilgrimage festival connected to the agricultural cycle of Eretz Yisrael. The Torah also emphasizes an obligation to include the poor and marginalized in the celebration of Shavuot – just like every other Jewish holiday. But the Torah mentions no historic event that is commemorated on Shavuot. Instead, Shavuot is described as an “atzeret” a culmination that follows after seven weeks of counting sefirat ha’omer in a way that is akin to Shimini Atzeret following seven days of Sukkot.
And yet, the rabbis discovered through a careful reading of the Torah and, perhaps, based on an ancient oral tradition as well, that Shavuot occurs on the same day that the Torah was given at Har Sinai. This discovery raises as many questions as it answers. If Shavuot is the anniversary of the Giving of the Torah, why is that detail not mentioned in the Torah’s account of revelation at Sinai? Isn’t it odd that the anniversary of the most important day in human history happens to coincide with a Biblical holiday and that coinciding is obscured in the Torah!
Furthermore, before we had a fixed calendar, Shavuot is a holiday with no fixed date. Before we had a fixed calendar, when the Jewish months were determined by witnesses testifying in Yerushalayim that the new moon had been seen the night before, there was the possibility that Iyar or Sivan could have one or two days of Rosh Hodesh and therefore Shavuot, which is always 50 days after Pesach could have a different calendar date in different years depending on how the moon was observed.
Shavuot is a holiday without a date because receiving the Torah is something that happened at one time in history, but is also something that has to happen to each one of us each day. Every time we perform a mitzvah that is a form of Kabbalat HaTorah – “accepting the Torah.” Each time we study Torah and discover a new insight or perspective that is a form of Kabbalat HaTorah “receiving the Torah.” If the giving and receiving of the Torah was something that happened at a fixed date in history only, then the Torah could not come with us through all of our own travels through time.
Sefer BaMidbar, the Book of Numbers opens this week with a great census with is followed by a description of the organization of the Israelite camp in the desert. In Sefer Bamidbar we finally turn away from Har Sinai and begin the journey to Eretz Yisrael. As that journey progresses, the entire nation becomes a traveling entourage for the mishkan, the portable sanctuary that was always kept in the center of the camp. The portability of the mishkan was not an accidental feature that was added on for greater convenience. The portability of the mishkan and its component parts was part and parcel of the construction of the mishkan itself.
The aron ha-brit, the ark of the covenant had wooden carrying staves permanently attached as if to say that the repository for the luchot, the home for God’s word, is perpetually in motion or capable of motion. The Talmud asks (Menachot 95a) if the lehem ha-panim, the shew bread, became invalid when the mishkan was disassembled for transit. Under normal circumstances if sacred items that are meant to remain in the Mikdash are brought outside their appropriate environs, they are immediately disqualified. The Talmud answers that the mishkan was different. It retained its sanctity even while in transit. The lehem ha-panim, the show bread was never brought outside the mishkan because the sanctity of the mishkan was a portable sanctity that could maintain itself while on a journey.
Sefer Bamidbar tells of a community organized around a sacred space. But the sacred space was not defined by a spot of earth. The sacred space was whichever location happened to be the central focal point of the community. As we left Har Sinai behind, the mishkan became our own portable Har Sinai. Har Sinai is a mountain somewhere in the wilderness. But Jewish tradition never attached any enduring significance to the location of Har Sinai. Once we left it behind, we never went back or sought to do so. Har Sinai is the location where Torah is received and that location must be portable. Wherever Torah was received is Har Sinai. (cf Darosh Darash Yosef p. 287).
The Book of Numbers is a book about a transition that is enveloped by two great censuses. At the beginning of the book, the Israelites are comprised of freed slaves who cannot stand on their own two feet. The end of the book, forty years later, describes a people prepared to conquer their homeland with their own hands and ready for a natural life without God’s constant miraculous intervention. The tension that is inherent in that maturation process, just as any process of adolescence and maturation entails tension, is the hidden dynamic underneath all of the drama in this book.
One interesting example of the shift in consciousness that occurs during the forty year span of Sefer Bamidbar can be seen in the absence of any mention of the Ten Plagues in Sefer Devarim. When Moshe tells the story of the exodus to a new generation, he does not see a need to include the story of the plagues that occupy so much attention in Sefer Shemot. We mature in the desert. Sefer Bamidbar is a story of people growing up and developing a faith that is not dependent on constant miraculous interventions.
But, despite this transition, we do not become a normal nation like all others and we are not meant to become one. Because we are bound to one another through our common connection to the Torah, we are a nation by virtue of our law, but it is a law that is shared and imposed by teachers instructing students and parents instructing their children, rather than a law imposed by force.
In a lecture from 1951 that was only published a few months ago for the first time, Rabbi Joseph Solvoeitchik explains the difference between laws that are transmitted through education and laws that are promulgated through political power:
“The political community operates with externals, symbols formal legislative acts which introduce certain laws. There is kind of ceremonial of almost magical quality attached to the political community. People acquire power not because of personal excellence or intrinsic qualities, but via a symbolic medium – election or inheritance. This acquisition of power is consummated through a formal act – induction into office, the taking of an oath, etc. The laws are strictly delineated and the contours are discernible… Hence the Oral Law is incommensurate with a political community, for the very trait of the Oral Law is its formlessness, its streamlined movement, its creativity, its ceremoniallessness and its aversion to anything of magical origin.
“The Torah is transmitted through concrete experiences, through situations, events, and existence itself. There is no fossilization or stagnation. Power is rejected. If authority is conceded to the master-teacher, it is based on … love and reverence. The recipient of the masorah integrates himself with his teacher, the giver, and accepts his authority.”
Shavuot is a holiday of law without politics or power. It is celebrated on a day that has no date, and commemorates the promulgation of Torah from a place that is no place. It is the ultimate utopian holiday. That openness, rather than leaving us with no content., allows us to fill the day with content of utmost relevance to us and to our community. It is an opportunity for us to actualize our values. To select from the values and ideals that characterize how we think of ourselves, and to make them real in the world. The content and meaning of this season can be filled by our most cherished values and the ideals that are most relevant for our current circumstances.
Shabbat Shalom and Hag Same’ah!
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 