Everyone has a favorite holiday. It could be because of the food, the season or the rituals. Holiday decorations can add visual depth, and the aromas of special victuals tantalize the often dry text, “On that day, do this.”
In our pantheon of holidays, Shavuot ranks at the top for me. The making of blintzes and cheesecake, eating ice-cream for dessert, staying up all night to study Torah made Shavuot an “upside-down” Yom Tov observance. The lite fare, the warm weather and the long days heralded the end of school and the beginning of summer vacation. It was as if the giving of the Torah marked the emancipation from the academic year. The frenetic Passover season is over, and the march toward the fall festivals is still way beyond the horizon.
But Shavuot is so much more than a culinary curiosity of milchig munchies and a gateway to summer fun. Rather, it is both a beacon and a buoy of God’s presence in the world, and of our task to bear witness.
In Deuteronomy 4:9-10, Moses warns the Israelites that they dare not forget how the Lord spoke to them out of the fire, ostensibly recalling the very first Shavuot and the giving of the Aseret Hadebroat, the Ten Commandments.
“Do not forget the things you saw with your own eyes, so they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And make them known to your children and your children’s children. The day you stood before the Lord, your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to Me that I may let them hear My words, in order that they may learn to revere Me as long as they live on earth, and may so teach their children.’”
If we recite the Shema twice daily as the Torah suggests and the Ashrei three times each day as the rabbis suggest, then how often should we be reciting the Ten Commandments? Surely, the direct word of God should elicit a ritual rendition multiple times each day, or each week on Monday and Thursday, or even once a month on Rosh Chodesh.
No, the public recitation of the Aseret Hadebroat occurs just three times a year: during the Shabbat readings of Yitro and Va’etchanan, and on the first day of Shavuot.
It would seem that these commandments, these utterings of the Lord, are packed tightly away like great-grandma’s seder plate, only to be dusted off for a performative declaration of ritual.
Or are they?
Perhaps, God’s revelation at Sinai is hiding in plain sight.
When looking closely at the text, the first three commandments are identical in both Exodus and Deuteronomy, and mirror certain aspects of the first three brachot, or “blessings,” of the Amidah that we recite multiple times daily.
The third commandment—“Do not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God”—is found beautifully mirrored in the third bracha of every Amidah, the K’dusha. It is the sanctification of God’s holy name, the one we dare not utter or write carelessly. The commandment, as well as the bracha, instructs us to revere God’s name by not flippantly speaking it or swearing to various oaths, to take the four-letter name of God so very seriously that we are forced to think before we speak.
The second bracha of the Amidah talks about God’s power (gevurot), specifically the power to renew and revive. The cycle of life, rebirth and the ultimate power to make the inanimate animate.
The second commandment—“You will have no other gods before Me”—takes it a step further, laying out a specific warning against making the inanimate God-like. Graven images depicting various life forms that are worshiped as gods are unacceptable, as only God has the power of life and death. Inversely, do not make false idols that have no power.
Lastly, or rather firstly, the opening of the Aseret Hadebroat begins with “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt.” Here, the Lord tells us, You are eternally My people.
Similarly, when we say, Elohay Avraham, Elohay Yitzchak v’Elohay Yaakov, we are not only quoting back to God his words to Moses at the burning bush, we are saying, “This is my lineage, these are my ancestors, and we are still here. We haven’t abandoned the heritage or the covenant of the hundreds of previous generations.”
We are eternally the people of the Lord, forever the children of Israel.
On Shavuot, we recall specifically the revelation at Sinai—the moment when heaven and Earth touched. We are reminded explicitly of the mission to be an ohr lagoyim, a “light unto the nations.” It beckons us to be the best representation of God’s message to humanity in a dark and often cruel world.
There is an oft-quoted midrash from the Sifre, where God asks each of the nations of the world if they wanted His Torah. They all asked: “What does Your Torah say?” To which God replied: “Do not steal, do not lie, do not cheat, do not murder, do not commit adultery.” And each nation replied: “No thanks, these are core principles of our national existence.”
The events of the past 19 months in Israel—and its ramifications around the world—and the recent cold-blooded murder of two young Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, D.C., inform us that this midrash is not hyperbole.
We do not have to look far to see that the heritage of our ancestors and our people is not shared by the larger general communities of the world. We remind ourselves daily in the recitation of the Amidah that God’s message at Sinai was not offered once in isolation. Instead, it is a message we carry forward—a torch we hold high even as we are buffeted by an ocean of antisemitism and irrational hatred. We carry this message forward so our children might enjoy the light of a brighter future. Forever and eternally.
Chag sameach!