Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, is approaching (2 and 3 June), but… for some it will pass almost
unnoticed.
That is a great pity, because it is the festival on which we commemorate that 3337 years ago,
the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai, 49 days after the Exodus from Egypt, and there they
saw and heard the presence of God with their own eyes. Moreover, there they received the Torah,
consisting of the Written Law (the Old Testament) and the Oral Law (the
Talmud), which made the Jewish people a true nation. Nothing less than a new beginning,
a birth, and therefore this festival is an extremely important date on our Jewish calendar.
Yet we see something strange. Something is missing, apart from familiarity. The Jewish year is
full of symbols. Passover has matzos, Sukkot has the sukkah and the lulav, Hanukkah
has the menorah, Rosh Hashanah has the shofar, and Shavuot has nothing!
There is something else unusual: there is no date mentioned in the Torah that indicates when
Shavuot is. We only know the date indirectly: fifty days after Passover.
We must also ask ourselves why Simchat Torah (Rejoicing of the Law), the day on which we
rejoice that we received the Torah, is celebrated on the last day of Sukkot and
not on Shavuot itself, when the Jewish people, and with them the whole world, received the Torah!
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the author of the Zohar, wondered why man has two
ears and two eyes, but only one mouth. If we had two mouths, we could have used one to speak sacred language and the other mouth for profane purposes: something like maintaining the separation between Church (for us Jews, the Synagogue) and State!
However, God gave us only one mouth to clearly indicate that it is not right
to be half pious and half free, sometimes believing and sometimes not believing
(Jew and non-Jew) through life. The profane and the religious must form a unity.
Shavuot is, as it were, that one mouth. That is why there is no specific symbol, no dancing
with the Torah on the day of Shavuot itself, and no clear date: Judaism must be present everywhere
be present in our lives; it has an umbrella function. ‘Know that the Lord is in all your ways’
(Mishlei 3:6).
Does this mean that we should be preoccupied with spirituality day and night?
Avoid materialism? Separate ourselves from the world?
When God spoke to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, the sound of the shofar resounded: ‘and
the sound of the shofar grew louder and louder’ (Shemot-Exodus 19:19). In our Jewish philosophy,
it is indicated that these divine shofar sounds not only grew louder and louder,
but that they also had no echo. The sound was, as it were, absorbed into the walls
of the mountains against which they would normally have reverberated to produce an echo.
The absorption of the Divine sounds into the walls and into matter teaches us that we
should remain standing in the middle of the world, with both feet on the ground, but that
everything we do must be imbued with the values and norms that God gives us in the totality of the Torah, the Written and Oral Teachings.
Everything we do must be imbued with the values and norms that God
has given us in the totality of the Torah, the Written and Oral Teachings.
In a hospital, there are doctors, nursing staff, financial staff,
social workers, the rehabilitation team, the kitchen staff and facility staff….
But ethics, which also makes its specific contribution to the healing of the patient,
should not form a separate department. Ethics is overarching. There is no such thing as Jewish
surgery, Jewish physiotherapy or a Jewish cleaning team. However, in every field,
work must be carried out in a manner consistent with the Divine laws and
insights of the Torah, which set boundaries, values and standards and protect every area
from an unexpected, unethical approach.
This example of the hospital, of course, does not, only apply to a hospital, but to
society as a whole. In business or associations, in the family or in the classroom: every
aspect of daily human life must be overarching and imbued with
God’s Word and must be ethically acceptable.
And that is the message of Shavuot. A balance between life and the way we live.
Judaism is not only experienced on high Holidays or only in synagogue.
We must constantly keep our Jewish heritage, Shavuot, in mind.
Hence, only one mouth.
Many more years and gut Yom Tov,
Binyomin Jacobs, Chief Rabbi
