A few weeks back we celebrated Pesach, a breathing memorial to
enslavement to freedom. We sang, “How is this night different!” in
wonderment as celebrated our first freedom. We declared, “Let all
who are hungry come and eat” as if for the first time we had bread on our
tables and declared that anyone could partake.
Seven weeks later we became a “holy nation” at Sinai as G-d shared
His vision in the revelation. This became Shavuot.
At the first celebration we are bound by history. The shared
past of pain and liberation is a story that continues to unite us. We
recall other seders, people who used to sit at our table, sang songs, and
recounted a story that is part of our collective past. We use the
anniversary of the Exodus to appreciate what has happened to us, to give new
focus to the past year and remember an event that made us a people. We
are bound to each other because of our mutual experiences, our history.
We used to be Ivrim, “others,” then we became am Yisrael,
a people united by common shared experience.
Sinai is a radical shift in thinking. Israel was freed through
water but forged in fire.
Sinai is a vision that begins with a mountain swamped by smoke and
fire and ends with a blueprint, a plan, for the future.
When G-d revealed the Torah at Sinai it was not an event for
posterity; it was an ever-unfolding moment that would reveal itself in stages
through the prophets and holy rabbis. Torah was always about the future,
never the past. And it holds out the vision of a new order, one where equality
reigns paramount; where human dignity is a universal right (and demand); where
every member is a holy priest; where a covenant connects all to the same end.
As if to prove the point, Torah indicates that “all the people” were
present at Sinai and each accepted it. Not the officers, the influential
or the entitled were addressed and responded but “all the people.” In
Judaism there is no privilege. Each person is equal and defined by his or
her actions. Even G-d is subject to covenant, which is why the Torah
later declares, “it [the Torah] is not in heaven.”
Pesach is what G-d did for us, Shavuot is about what we are pledged
to do for ourselves. This sacred time is about our passage from
slaves to visionaries.
“The day is long, the hour is late and the Master is impatient,”
declares the Mishna. We have ideals set before us; we are people of
vision. We remain unified by our shared history while being cognizant
that we are covenanted to construct a better future based on what we can be.
