Shavuot Reflections

On Sunday night begins the holiday of Shavuoth, the holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. Stories about that mythical time on the mountain surprisingly include an ambivalence on the part of the Israelites about whether they wanted to accept Torah. Some stories imagine Israel eagerly receiving the Torah. Other stories imagine that God had to hold the mountain over their heads as a way of not so subtly forcing them to accept it!

Why would the Israelites be ambivalent about accepting Torah? The Torah has beautiful rituals, holidays, and narratives that enrich and shape our shared spiritual life. Who wouldn’t want that? And yet, the Torah has something else. It has stories and prophets and ethical demands that challenge us to hear what we don’t want to hear, sometimes to the point of making us uncomfortable or angry.

We can understand, therefore, the ambivalence. Who would want to accept a document that told us bluntly what we do wrong? And yet, who would want to subscribe to a religion that only tells us what we want to hear?

This Shavuoth, as we renew the covenant with God through our Torah, it is time to hear what we don’t want to hear, and face what we don’t want to face. Israel’s war against Hamas, which began as a defensive war in response to Hamas’s horrific war crimes of October 7th, 600 days later is no longer defensive, no longer a war to free the hostages, and no longer morally justified.  Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz entitled “Enough is Enough,” wrote: “What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians.”

These are harsh words. They are difficult to hear.  What do we do when we hear something so difficult? We could malign the messenger, as many do. Or we could raise our voices as Jews, out of a responsibility to the ethical obligations of Torah, and call for the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu, to stop. We could call for the Israeli government to bring the hostages home, to make sure the people of Gaza have food and water, and to work for a secure future for all. This is what I hear Torah calling us to do. How could it be supportive of Israel to do anything less? And personally speaking, how could I as a rabbi say anything less?

In the meantime, I believe we need to follow the Torah’s principles of feeding the hungry, and call for an end to the blockade of food, so that enough food, not a trickle but an influx, reaches the starving population of Gaza. If you want to add your name to a Jewish call for food aid to Gaza, you can do so here. They are close to their goal of 18,000 Jewish signers and have close to 600 rabbis and many Jewish organizations.

If you would like to give tzedakah that goes to this food aid, you can contribute to the New Israel Fund food campaign here.

This Shavuoth, may we celebrate by honoring the Torah, each in our own way. May we seek to hear not only what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. And may we heed its deepest call, its divine call, to our shared humanity.