Shavuot

A D’var Torah for Shavuot
By Rabbi Heidi Hoover (’11)

Most of us experience moments of transcendence in our lives. A moment of transcendence could be the first moment you realized you were in love with your partner. Or the way you felt at the birth of a child, or the first time you brought home a child you adopted. Perhaps it is a moment of communing with nature—realizing the power and beauty of the ocean, or climbing a mountain, or realizing the vastness of the universe while looking at the moon and the stars. Perhaps it is a religious moment—finding a new truth in the Torah, or suddenly realizing that a prayer speaks directly to you. It could be a big life moment or a small one, but you remember it because it impacted your soul, your spiritual self. It was a connection to something. I would call it a connection to God; Read More >

by Rabbi Isaac Mann

The Rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud refer to the holiday of Shavuot not by its usual Biblical name — Hag ha-Shavuot — but by the term Atzeret (see e.g. Rosh Hashanah 16a and Pesahim 68b), which is used in the Torah to refer to Shemini Atzeret and to the seventh day of Pesah (Num. 29:35 and Deut. 16:8, resp.). While there are several interpretations among Jewish commentators as to why the Rabbis eschewed the Biblical and more common name and instead used a new designation for the Holiday of Weeks, my favorite is one that I heard from my revered teacher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik z”l, affectionately called “the Rav” by his students and followers.

On several occasions the Rav suggested that the Rabbis were eager to show a strong nexus between the holidays of Pesah and Shavuot in order to emphasize the notion that the physical freedom achieved by Read More >

Shavuot-Meditation on the Mountain

Rabbi Jill Hammer

Shavuot: A Voice that Does Not Cease

By Rabbi Len Levin

“The Lord came down upon Mount Sinai” (Exodus 19:20)

I love blintzes and cheesecake. The rabbis based the custom of eating dairy foods on Shavuot on the verse: “Honey and milk are under your tongue” (Song of Songs 4:11). But what are we celebrating? What really happened? Did God really speak to the Israelites, as it describes in the Bible? And how?

“Moses and Elijah did not ascend to heaven, nor did the Glory descend to earth.” Is this a modern skeptic speaking? No, this is the dictum of the second-century Rabbi Yose, recorded in the rabbinic midrash Mekhilta on Exodus (Bahodesh 4), and cited in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s major work Heavenly Torah As Refracted through the Generations (page 350).

It was Heschel’s amazing achievement to show how much flexibility the Talmudic rabbis exercised in interpreting the Biblical narratives of revelation, and the whole concept of Read More >

Standing at Sinai
By Rabbi Michael G. Kohn

For me, the festival of Shavuot is a riddle shrouded in mystery, wrapped in an enigma. Although it is fixed in our modern calendars as the sixth day of Sivan, no such date appears anywhere in the Torah. In parashat Pinhas, where the additional sacrifices for each of the special days – Shabbat, the Yamin Nora’im (Days of Awe) and the Shalosh Regalim (Three Pilgrimage Festivals) – are specified (Num. 28-29), it is the only one of the holidays and festivals which does not begin with (or even mention) the date of its observance.

In parashat Emor, where each of the special days of the calendar is described (Lev. 23), there is no similar description for Shavuot as we have come to know it. On Pesa Read More >

Shavuot
By Rabbi S. Robert Waxman, AJR ’79

During these weeks since the Festival of Passover we have been moving toward Shavuot ‘ Pentecost, the Festival of Weeks, the time of the giving and receiving of Torah.

What is Torah? That is a basic question. As we look into possible answers to this question we will have to begin by asking additional basic questions.

What is our goal in life as modern Americans? It is to have a life in community and a life of meaning. As we pause in our journey at Mount Sinai, let us consider how the Torah may be understood in terms of community and meaning.

Let us consider where each of us is with regard to our own personal religious life. The first question is not what each of us believes. No, our beliefs are likely to change with time. It is where we stand in relation to our tradition, what Read More >

By Jonathan Zimet

On Shavuot we recall, and re-enact, the revelation
event of our history. There, in the desert, we see a
large group of ex-slaves, traveling by foot. Then,
on just three days notice, they experience something
so awesome that it had to transcend our usual
physical senses. Dark clouds, blinding flashes of
light; deafening voices and silent voices.

The account relates: “V’khol ha-`am ro-im et ha-
kolot v?et ha-lapidim“, the entire people saw the
thunder (and fires) (Ex. 20:14). Such an experience
is so overwhelming and transcendent that we cannot
make complete sense of it or translate it with our
usual senses. Similar descriptions have been
reported in prophetic visions and in near-death
experiences, where activity in our physical organs is
largely suspended.

Clearly, our people directly encountered God in what
became the transcendent and defining experience in
our history. God engraved a covenant Read More >