Rabbi's Message

On the sixth and seventh of Sivan we celebrate the Festival of Shavuos, zman matan Torasainu, the celebration of the Giving of the Law In North America, Shavuos is the Lost Holiday, the one that is all but forgotten. Yet for traditional Jews it holds incredibly deep significance and relevance. Without the few moments of The Revelation at Mount Sinai Judaism would not exist today. And without those who embrace and live the Tradition of Sinai through observance of Halachah and Mussar the Nation of Israel would cease to be. Why, then, does this all-important holiday suffer from obscurity?

One possible reason is that unlike the other Holidays that mark our calendar, Shavu=os is bereft of symbolic practices. Pesach has its Matza and other Seder rites. Succos has the Succah and the Lulav and Esrog to focus our minds. Each day has its symbolic practice that calls to our attention the particular theme of the day. Shavu=os - lasting only two days rather than a week like the others - has no such symbolic practices which demand weeks of preparation, which decorate our homes, which occupy our children in school. Why this brevity and quiet, why this lack of pomp, this paucity of symbols?

This question was addressed by the brilliant 19th-Century scholar Rav Shimshon Raphael Hisrch. He writes, AOne day only? One quiet day? Only one quiet day for the Torah? Unfortunately, one cannot say that celebrations and festivals have brought only blessing into the sphere of the Torah. Celebrations not properly understood have often been misused in times of religious decadence. The weaker a generation is the less willing is it to serve those ideals, the greatness and truth of which it cannot, after all, entirely deny. The less a generation is inclined to pay homage to these ideals by dedicating to them its life and to build an altar to their honor by sacrificing its possessions and enjoyments, the more eagerly does it grasp at easier substitutes in order to bedeck itself with lip-service to these ideals. And thus it builds monuments, institutes festivals and holds banquets, intoxicating itself with the fragrance of such symbolical veneration, in order to soothe its conscience for the obvious betrayal and negation of these ideals in its everyday life.

The same applies to the great ideals, aims and truths of the Torah, if we betray and deny them in our lives, if we have not the will to devote our lives to them, if we do not want to realize the truths of the Torah in our daily existence, refusing to use the symbolism of the festivals for their realization. If we celebrate these festivals in order to give a mere symbolical recognition to the existence of these truths while refusing to them the power to mold our lives, and sneering at them in practice by living without thought of the Torah, then the spirit of the Torah frowns at us too - >I cannot tolerate iniquity combined with festival. My soul hates your new moons and your appointed feasts.= (Isaiah I 13-14).

This, then, is [a powerful] reason why the Torah rejects any symbolic expression and even any designation of Shavuos as the Festival of Revelation. From the very beginning it should clearly be conveyed to us that the Torah, the quintessence of all that is good and precious, is not satisfied that we devote a Festival - be it a day, a week or even a month - to it. The Torah demands of us the dedication of every hour and every moment throughout the year.

Gd has designated the Torah to be the soul of our whole life - Aish Das - the invisible gentle flame of our whole being which permeates our homes and animates and molds our being. And just as you can find organs for tall sensual functions of life, and yet will look in vain for an organ which is the bearer of the soul - because the whole human organism is its bearer and no part of it can be without the soul - so also the Torah, the soul of Israel as a national entity, is not limited to a special day or week or month, because the whole of Israel=s life belongs to it and is to be regulated by it. Any localization within this life would but limit the realm of the Torah.

Why not a whole week or a month, and why not a symbolical celebration for the Torah? Because it is not the week nor the month but the whole year that belongs to the Torah, and this is so because the Torah does not demand a symbol only, but life and conduct.@

Rabbi Efraim Davidson