WHEN WILL REDEMPTION COME?
SHAVUOT 2017
Ahad Ha’am, the founder of spiritual Zionism once observed, More than the Jewish people have kept the Sabbath has the Sabbath kept the Jewish people. Indeed, we embody a tradition of observance regardless of whether we ourselves are observant. Perhaps nothing constitutes our relationship with God more than the image we see in our minds’ eye of standing at Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments. It is what we recall, imagine and honor during the holiday of Shavuot.
But God’s delivery of us from the Egyptian house of bondage was fraught with so many obstacles, even today it is hard to believe we actually made it to that tiny mountain alive and willing to enter into a covenantal relationship with God. After all, God conveyed a message of redemption but it was blocked by all 3 parties—by the reluctant Moses, by the dispirited Israelites and by the incapable Pharaoh. It is a moment of radical gridlock. Everyone was stuck, in a state of utter paralysis and completely blocked which is what the word for Egypt, Mitzraim, means. Within this context, Mitzraim is not only a literal place of physical geography but of spiritual geography as well; it is a state of mind. And everyone in our Biblical tale is incapable of becoming unstuck.
So as we observe Shavuot and ponder its meaning for us today we ask given the incapacity of the three pivotal players, how to find a passage, an opening through an impasse, a question examined by Biblical scholar, Avivah Zornberg? What ruptures the impasse? We might argue it is God who creates the opening albeit through a forced forceps delivery. As we read every year during Passover in our Haggadot, “From a narrow place I call to God and God answered with a wide expanse.” But not for naught, because once delivered from Egypt, Moses at Sinai indeed finds himself capable of potent speaking because the words of Torah open him. And as he is opened, the people standing at Sinai become capable of receiving those words.
What took place at Mt. Sinai is more than a story of redemption and hope, though, Dayenu, those would certainly be enough. It is also a mystical tale, so experiential that if we can imagine standing there ourselves, we can almost feel its awesomeness. This is the call of Shavuot, re-connecting us in a fundamental way with our Judaism, our Jewishness, with one another and most directly with God.
So may we all imagine ourselves standing at Mt. Sinai this Shavuot not only fully capable of receiving God’s words but as a people whose call is to model those words enabling us to become a light unto all the nations.
But God’s delivery of us from the Egyptian house of bondage was fraught with so many obstacles, even today it is hard to believe we actually made it to that tiny mountain alive and willing to enter into a covenantal relationship with God. After all, God conveyed a message of redemption but it was blocked by all 3 parties—by the reluctant Moses, by the dispirited Israelites and by the incapable Pharaoh. It is a moment of radical gridlock. Everyone was stuck, in a state of utter paralysis and completely blocked which is what the word for Egypt, Mitzraim, means. Within this context, Mitzraim is not only a literal place of physical geography but of spiritual geography as well; it is a state of mind. And everyone in our Biblical tale is incapable of becoming unstuck.
So as we observe Shavuot and ponder its meaning for us today we ask given the incapacity of the three pivotal players, how to find a passage, an opening through an impasse, a question examined by Biblical scholar, Avivah Zornberg? What ruptures the impasse? We might argue it is God who creates the opening albeit through a forced forceps delivery. As we read every year during Passover in our Haggadot, “From a narrow place I call to God and God answered with a wide expanse.” But not for naught, because once delivered from Egypt, Moses at Sinai indeed finds himself capable of potent speaking because the words of Torah open him. And as he is opened, the people standing at Sinai become capable of receiving those words.
What took place at Mt. Sinai is more than a story of redemption and hope, though, Dayenu, those would certainly be enough. It is also a mystical tale, so experiential that if we can imagine standing there ourselves, we can almost feel its awesomeness. This is the call of Shavuot, re-connecting us in a fundamental way with our Judaism, our Jewishness, with one another and most directly with God.
So may we all imagine ourselves standing at Mt. Sinai this Shavuot not only fully capable of receiving God’s words but as a people whose call is to model those words enabling us to become a light unto all the nations.
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Keyn Yehi Ratzon. So may it be God’s will.
Amen. Chag Sameach! Warmly, Rabbi Debra Nesselson Shavuot, 5777, 2017 |
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