June 8, 2022|ט' סיון ה' אלפים תשפ"ב Shavuot in the Desert and Shavuot at the Kotel
Print ArticleI was recently reading about the account of the first Shavuot in 1967 at the Kotel. In 1948, a month after the establishment of the Jewish state, Jews could no longer continue to make the pilgrimage to the Kotel. Jordanians occupied the eastern half of Jerusalem and they did not allow Jews the right of passage. This happened year after year for nineteen years until 1967.
On the morning of Shavuot, June 15, 1967, six days after the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem in the Six Day War, the Old City was officially opened to the Israeli public. For the first time in almost 2,000 years, masses of Jews could visit the Kotel as members of the sovereign Jewish nation. From the late hours of the night, thousands of Jerusalem residents streamed toward Shaar Zion, eagerly awaiting entry into the Old City. Finally, at 4 a.m., the crowds were allowed to enter the area of the Kotel.
Here is how the Jerusalem Post described the scene:
"Every section of the population was represented. Kibbutz members and soldiers rubbing shoulders with Neturei Karta. Mothers came with children in prams, and old men trudged steeply up Mount Zion, supported by youngsters on either side, to see the wall of the Temple before the end of their days. Some wept, but most faces were wreathed in smiles. For 13 continuous hours, a colorful variety of all peoples trudged along in perfect order, stepping patiently when told to do so at each of six successive barriers set up by the police to regulate the flow. In total, 200,000 visited the Western Wall that day. It was the first pilgrimage, en masse, of Jews to Jewish-controlled Jerusalem on a Jewish festival in 2,000 years, since the pilgrimages for the festivals in Temple times."
An eyewitness described the moment:
"I've never known so electric an atmosphere before or since. Wherever we stopped, we began to dance. Holding aloft Torah scrolls we swayed and danced and sang at the tops of our voices. So many of the Psalms and songs are about Jerusalem and Zion, and the words reached into us a new life. As the sky lightened, we reached the Zion gate. Still singing and dancing, we poured into the narrow alleyways beyond."
There was something so magical about celebrating Shavuot, the holiday when we received the Torah, in the holy city of Jerusalem in the holiest site of the Kotel. And yet, it was given in the desert, in the barren wasteland, outside any semblance of civilization. Why, indeed, did we receive our greatest gift, the Torah, in such a place?
I would to learn the following midrash with you. The Midrash in Bamidbar Rabbah (1:7) gives two reasons as to why the Torah was given in the desert. First, the Midrash explains why the Torah was given in the context of fire, water and the desert and it states:
מה אלו חנם לכל באי העולם כך דברי תורה חנם הם
Just as these things can be obtained for free by anyone in the world, so too the words of Torah are free. Then the midrash provides another interpretation:
כל מי שאינו עושה עצמו כמדבר הפקר אינו יכול לקנות את החכמה והתורה לכך
Anyone who doesn’t make himself ownerless, like the desert, cannot acquire the Torah. Now the first interpretation is about accessibility. The Torah is accessible to all and it’s not just relegated to the intellectual elite or to someone who has reached a certain level of moral perfection or to someone who is wealthy. Everyone has access to Torah. The first explanation expresses opportunity, but the second explanation expresses obligation, that we must make ourselves ownerless to acquire the Torah, and this is a very strange formulation. What does this mean? An object that is ownerless is of little value to the owner. If we make ourselves ownerless, then we do not place much value on ourselves, on our personal needs. In order to connect to God, we have to get rid of the distractions that seem to be important and are really not so important and that really hold us back from getting to know Him. The best place to do that is in the desert. There is no wifi in the desert and no smartphone reception in the desert. There’s not much of anything in the desert. There’s just God and His Torah, and imagine we truly felt that way.
In fact, the location of the giving of the Torah is not so surprising, considering other unusual aspects of this story of matan Torah. The Torah never tells us the date when we received the Torah. This event which is so central to our very essence is not explicitly connected to the holiday of Shavuot in the Torah. The Torah never states that we received the Torah today so that’s why we celebrate Shavuot. It’s almost as if this momentous event is intentionally hidden. It took place in some desert in the middle of nowhere on some unknown date and it is not officially connected to a particular holiday. And there’s one more unique feature about Shavuot for our purposes. Normally our holidays are described in the Torah as a holiday and then the Torah says you bring a sacrifice on the holiday. Not so for Shavuot. The Torah tells us that we count seven weeks starting from the second day of Pesach, we bring a sacrifice and then it’s a holy day. Again, the holiness of the day is minimized. Rather, the seven weeks journey and the sacrifice are emphasized. And the reason for all this is that matan Torah was a momentous event, but it’s only a singular spiritual event at the end of the day. The key to religious growth is not the one-time event, that I feel so spiritual when I davened for the amud, or layned the megillah or got an aliya. Those can be wonderful meaningful spiritual events, but they are insufficient to bring about real meaningful growth. The key to real meaningful growth, religious growth, growth in Torah study, is belief in ourselves, that Torah is for everyone, together with commitment, discipline, sacrifice and focus without distractions.
About a month ago there was a Wall Street Journal article entitled, “Does Religion Make People More Ethical?” The study found that even though 65% of Americans think so, it’s not really true. A study in the journal Science that examined the behavior of 1,200 adults found that when it comes to morality, the power of religion is more in the doing than in the believing. Saying you believe in God or going to worship once a year means very little. Rather, people who live their faith, regularly going to services and engaging in their religion’s rituals tend to live longer, healthier, happier and more meaningful lives. It’s not about having faith in religion. It’s about doing religion on a consistent basis.
We now find ourselves at one of these special days of the year, celebrating matan Torah. There’s a famous question as to whether the Jews willingly chose to accept the Torah. There is a Rabbinic tradition that we willingly said, “naaseh v’nishma,” we will do and will listen to the dictates of the Torah. There is also a Rabbinic tradition that God placed a mountain over our heads and in a sense forced us to accept the Torah. Rabbi Lamm deals with this apparent contradiction with the following explanation. He says, yes, we were chosen. We say in birkat hatorah every morning, “asher bachar banu mikol ha’amim” – God chose us to be a mamlekhet kohanim v’goi kadosh,” to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. God chose us once at Sinai by placing a mountain over our heads. However, the choice then devolved upon every Jew in any place and at any time. We must choose anew in every generation. To be chosen by God means that at birth we inherit all of the agonies of bearing God’s word to an unrepentant and unredeemed world. However, if we choose God, if we truly believe in ourselves and are willing to put in the time and effort and sacrifice and focus, we appreciate this tremendous gift and we emerge transformed.
Shavuot of 1967 at the Kotel must have been the most profoundly spiritual moment in the lives of hundreds of thousands of our Jewish brethren. Similarly, Shavuot of 2448 of the Jewish calendar at Sinai must have been the most profoundly spiritual moment in the lives of millions of our ancestors. But the question is what do we do these moments? Let us choose not just to believe, but to do religion, to add regular rituals and practices starting from now, whether it means coming to shul to daven each and every Shabbat even if you are tired or to keep to your regular chavruta learning and really only cancel for emergencies. Experience Torah like the desert, make the sacrifice whatever it is, choose Torah, and you will truly be transformed.