May 25, 2026|ט' סיון ה' אלפים תשפ"ו From Cheesecake to Geulah: The Hidden Redemption of Shavuot
Print ArticleI still remember my first year at my law firm, Fried Frank, almost 30 years ago. I would tell my boss that I would be out of the office for various Jewish holidays.
Before Rosh Hashanah, I explained about the shofar and what it represents, and he seemed interested. Before Yom Kippur, I told him about the fasting and spending the day in shul, and he was impressed. Before Sukkot, I described sitting in a sukkah for seven days, and he found that fascinating. Before Pesach, I told him about matzah and not eating chametz, and again he was engaged and curious.
But when I told him I would be out for Shavuot, he asked me a simple question: “What is that holiday about?”
And I froze.
What do we actually do on Shavuot? What is the defining practice of the day?
And I said, almost instinctively: “Cheesecake. It’s all about the cheesecake.”
Hopefully there is more to Shavuot than cheesecake.
And that brings me to the real question I want to ask this morning: is there geulah on Shavuot?
Pesach is clearly a holiday of geulah. We speak about Yetziat Mitzrayim, about slavery and freedom, about God redeeming us from Egypt. Every morning, right before Shemoneh Esrei, we recite a bracha that recalls this: Ga’al Yisrael.
Sukkot is also a holiday of geulah. The Navi Zechariah describes a future time of war, when the nations of the world will ascend to Yerushalayim to celebrate Sukkot together, when humanity itself will recognize God, when “וְהָיָה ה׳ לְמֶלֶךְ עַל כָּל הָאָרֶץ.” We read this haftorah on the first day of Sukkot because Sukkot is not only a holiday of harvest, but of ultimate redemption — the ingathering not merely of crops, but of humanity itself back toward God and its ideal state.
But what about Shavuot? Is there geulah on Shavuot?
At first glance, it seems almost disconnected from redemption altogether. There is no dramatic salvation story. No Exodus. No clouds of glory. No final battle. Just Torah.
And then there is the strange choice of Megillah that Chazal gave us to read on Shavuot: Megillat Ruth.
Why Ruth?
Why do we read a quiet story about fields, poverty, loneliness, and family continuity?
At the center of the story is one recurring word: geulah.
Boaz is called a goel, a redeemer. The entire drama revolves around whether someone will perform geulah for the family of Elimelech. Elimelech, Machlon, and Chilyon have died, leaving behind widows, broken continuity, and the possibility that an entire family line could disappear.
In common usage, geulah often means rescue — getting out of danger, suffering, or exile. But the Hebrew term for that is more properly hatzalah or pidyon. Geulah in the Torah is something deeper.
Geulah is about restoring connection.
A goel is a family redeemer — someone who refuses to let a relative disappear.
If a family member falls into poverty, “וּבָא גֹאֲלוֹ הַקָּרוֹב אֵלָיו וְגָאַל אֶת מִמְכַּר אָחִיו” — the goel redeems his land.
If someone is sold into servitude, “אֶחָד מֵאֶחָיו יִגְאָלֶנּוּ” — the goel restores him.
If a relative dies without continuity, the family acts so that his name and legacy do not vanish.
That is what Boaz does in Sefer Ruth.
Here the Ramban’s insight becomes crucial. He asks why we see Ruth in the conceptual orbit of yibum at all. Boaz was not Machlon’s brother, and the formal mitzvah of yibum applies specifically to brothers. Yet the Megillah describes the goal as “לְהָקִים שֵׁם הַמֵּת עַל נַחֲלָתוֹ” — establishing the name of the deceased on his inheritance — language strikingly similar to yibum.
The Ramban explains that Ruth reflects something older and deeper than formal yibum. Before the Torah narrowed yibum to brothers, there was a broader moral intuition: that family members bear responsibility for preserving one another’s continuity. The deceased should not simply vanish. Their memory, inheritance, identity, and place in the world must be carried forward by those closest to them.
That is why Chazal call what happens in Ruth not yibum, but geulah.
Because the point is not only legal obligation.
It is familial responsibility — the refusal to let rupture become disappearance.
Boaz therefore acts not as a technical yavam, but as a redeemer of broken continuity itself.
He redeems land.
He restores dignity.
He preserves memory.
He rebuilds a future.
And that is geulah.
Suddenly, geulah becomes far richer than political freedom.
Geulah means that relationships are not disposable.
That people are not forgotten.
That identity is not severed from its past.
That bonds continue across generations.
This helps explain Chazal’s statement about why Megillat Ruth was written (Ruth Rabbah 2:14):
מגילה זו אין בה לא טומאה ולא טהרה ולא איסור ולא היתר… ולמה נכתבה? ללמדך כמה שכר טוב לגומלי חסדים.
This scroll contains neither laws of ritual impurity nor ritual purity, neither prohibitions nor permissions… So why was it written? To teach you how great is the reward for those who perform acts of kindness.
Because geulah itself is an act of chesed.
Boaz does not have to step forward. Ploni Almoni chooses not to. Boaz chooses responsibility. He chooses connection. He chooses to preserve the legacy of Machlon and Elimelech so that they do not disappear from history.
The opposite of geulah is not only exile.
It is disappearance — when people, memories, values, or possibilities vanish because no one carries them forward.
And this is where chesed becomes the very essence of geulah.
I heard a story at the RCA convention last week that captures this with unusual power.
There was a boy who struggled in yeshiva around age fifteen. The institution tried different approaches — different classes, different teachers — but eventually concluded they could no longer help him, and he needed to move on to another school. He drifted for a while, and that seemed to be the end of his story.
Years later, one of his rebbeim happened to be visiting a yeshiva in Israel and saw this same young man learning in the Beit Medrash. He was deeply engaged, learning well, clearly in a very different place. The rebbe was moved, and went over to him to apologize for the fact that the yeshiva had not been able to support him. He then asked him: how did you find your way back?
The young man said that for years he struggled, but there was one thing that kept him going — one person who made him feel he still mattered. That was his last rebbe in the yeshiva. Even after he had been asked to leave, that rebbe called him every Erev Shabbat for six or seven years, just to check in and wish him well.
When the rebbe later heard this, he was stunned. He had never told anyone. No one had asked him to do it. He simply felt he could not let the connection disappear.
With tears in his eyes, the rebbe said: “He thinks I saved him?” He explained that he did call every week — but the boy never answered. So every week, for years, he simply left a message, telling himself: I’ll try again next week.
That is geulah.
The refusal to let someone become forgotten — even when there is no response, no recognition, and no guarantee of impact.
Ruth and Naomi stand at that same edge of disappearance. Boaz steps in not because he must, but because he cannot let that rupture remain unresolved. That is geulah.
And now Megillat Ruth becomes the perfect book for Shavuot.
Because Shavuot is absolutely a holiday of geulah.
Not the geulah of Pesach.
Not yet the geulah of Sukkot.
But the bridge between them.
Pesach is the moment God reconnects with Am Yisrael — not only as podeh, but as goel, restoring covenantal relationship: “וְלָקַחְתִּי אֶתְכֶם לִי לְעָם.”
Sukkot represents the final stage of geulah — when all humanity will reconnect with God and the world as it was meant to be.
But how do we move from Pesach to Sukkot? From redemption begun to redemption completed?
The answer is Shavuot.
Torah and chesed.
Matan Torah gives us the framework of connection with God — language, mitzvot, covenant. It turns encounter into enduring relationship.
But even with Torah, connection can fracture. People fall through the cracks. Memory fades. Lives unravel. Someone can slip toward disappearance.
And that is where chesed enters.
Chesed is the refusal to let that disappearance be final.
That is also why, in the middle of the Torah’s section on the holiday of Shavuot in Parshat Emor, we suddenly read about leaving the corners of the field for the poor:
“וּבְקֻצְרְכֶם אֶת קְצִיר אַרְצְכֶם לֹא תְכַלֶּה פְּאַת שָׂדְךָ… לֶעָנִי וְלַגֵּר תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָם.”
Because you cannot speak about geulah without making space for those most at risk of being left out of the story — the vulnerable, the forgotten, those on the edge of disappearance.
That is Ruth. That is Boaz. That is geulah.
And now we return to Shavuot.
Shavuot is Zman Matan Torateinu — the moment of covenant — where geulah is expressed not as escape from the world, but as sanctifying responsibility within it.
Not withdrawal from human bonds, but their deepening.
That is why Ruth belongs on Shavuot.
Because redemption is not only miraculous moments in history.
It is whenever someone refuses to let another person disappear. Whenever someone carries forward a legacy. Whenever someone rebuilds connection where there is fracture. Whenever someone restores dignity, memory, or belonging.
And that brings us to Yizkor.
People sometimes think Yizkor is about memory alone. But Yizkor is also about geulah.
We give tzedakah and perform mitzvot לעילוי נשמתם, in memory of the deceased. But this is not a magical formula. It is an act of continuity. It declares that the values, teachings, and impact of our loved ones continue through us.
Their lives do not disappear. Their Torah continues. Their kindness continues. Their influence continues.
Yizkor asks not only what our loved ones meant to us, but what of them will continue through us.
Because geulah is not only something God does at the end of history.
It is something we participate in every day:
Every act of Torah.
Every act of chesed.
Every effort to preserve dignity, memory, or future.
Every attempt to reconnect what has become fractured.
That is how we move from the geulah of Pesach to the geulah of Sukkot.
Through the Torah and chesed of Shavuot.