From Freedom to Free

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.

Heart vs Head

 Lev means “heart.”  It has the numerical value of 32 (each Hebrew letter corresponds to a number).    The word yachid also has the numerical value of 32.  Yachid means “alone.”  A powerful lesson inheres in those words and the connective tissue between them. 

What happens in the heart, how we feel, takes place only within us.  It is not an alone event.  It does not impact the world in any meaningful way.

Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote that, “one can always find warms hearts who in the glow of emotion would like to make the whole world happy, but who have never attempted the sober experiment of bringing a real blessing to a single human being.”

Do you like to being around positive people?  I do.  Being with people who grumble and grouse continually makes us feel sour.  Those who speak sprightly of sunshine and hope, on the other hand, makes us feel buoyant and light.  Yet there are times when it is preferable to have the sour than the sweet.  What good is it to have a person buzz happily around the room and turn away from someone or something that needs help?  Perhaps they represent a danger to their joy?  A downer?

As Jews, we are commanded and blessed because God trusts us enough to levy responsibilities.  That is why we say when we perform a mitzvah ….”asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav…”  “….Who has made us holy by acting on His commands…”.  God’s brit, covenant, with us is the task of putting order to an incomplete universe.  More, our religion holds that when we act in accord with God we become holy vessels.

Good intentions are good but they are, after all, only intentions.  They are not actualized until it brings about a physical response.  Talmud states, “Matters of the heart are not matters.”  They do not count until we are moved to action.

Sometimes we feel energized to do the right thing and other times our heart is hard.  For the Jew, it is not irrelevant how we feel but ultimately what matters is what we do.   This is mitzvah.

Perhaps that is why the word mitzvah is equivalent (gematria again) to the word, emunim, faith.  When we enact a mitzvah it is an act of faith.  A mitzvah is a movement of faith because we acknowledge that we are not final word on anything: there is a God beyond us who knows that the heart is not enough to change the world, to perfect that which is incomplete.

Our Gift and Purpose

We did not arrive alone.  That would have been impossible.  No one person could have made this trek.  The journey was made conceivable because of a spirit that set their souls on fire.  Once aflame nothing would stand in their way.

They came through the cauldron of the Holocaust.  They pushed past the pogroms that decimated Asia.  They persevered through the ghettos of Europe and the Inquisition of Iberia.  These same souls witnessed the snaking vile course of the Crusades and the Destruction of the Temples.

Throughout the epochs they carried Shabbat candles, tallit, tefillin, siddur and a Godly vision that kept them inspired. 

Samuel Beckett wrote, “We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment.  How many people can boast as much?” 

The same can be said for us.  We have not forgotten our destiny.  Otherwise, we would not be.

We are here because our ancestors refused to give up.  They maintained their fidelity, their allegiance to the God of Abraham and Sarah.  From one generation to the next the covenant has been passed down.   In our hands it now rests.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, visionary, scholar, theologian, wrote, “ Every seventh day a miracle comes to pass, the resurrection of the soul, of the soul of man and the soul of all things.  A medieval sage declared: The world which was created in six days was a world without a soul.  This is why it is said: ‘and on the seventh day He rested, vayinnafash’ (Exodus 31:17): nefesh means a soul.”

Our essential destiny is to infuse the world with a soul, to give an unruly world meaning and purpose.  Without our essence, our nefesh, the world would be chaotic and meaningless.  The purpose of life is not mere survival or conquest, it is much more lofty.  We render meaning because of our actions.

Yet, there is no reason to assume that we have arrived at our destination.  Sure, we have made significant inroads.  The world is largely monotheistic.  Most people realize the values of democracy, equality, and goodness.  These are among a few of the gifts of the Jews.  But our mission is far from complete.

I cannot tell you what our ultimate destiny will look like, or yield.  All I know is that the candlesticks, siddur, tallit, tefillin and vision are still needed.  Our inner core still yearns for completion; the wholeness that comes from living a life of purpose.

All those forbears that pushed through seemingly impenetrable barriers left us a package.  It is our inheritance.  Each week we open the package and read from it.  It is the Torah from Sinai that brings us light, hope, soul, and purpose.  But it is only yours if you claim it.