The True Value of Torah - Shavuot 5775

A curious news story crossed my computer screen last week. My rabbinic alma mater, the Jewish Theological Seminary, which some of you may know that I truly love, has been in a difficult financial position for some time, and has decided to sell off some assets for the sake of easing their budget deficit. Among the items that they are selling is a treasure from JTS’ vaunted Rare Book Room: a fragment of an original Gutenberg bible.

It’s eight leaves of one of the first books ever printed by Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, in the year 1455. This fragment was donated to JTS in 1922 by the Schiff family, Jewish-American financiers of the early 20th century, who purchased it from a rare-book dealer who broke the original copy into pieces to sell it for more money. This particular fragment is the Latin translation of the Book of Esther, and it’s in excellent condition. Sotheby’s expects that it will fetch between $500,000 and $700,000.

Dr. David Kraemer, the librarian of JTS and a former Talmud professor of mine, says that selling the item is not a real loss to JTS because, since JTS is primarily focused on Jewish studies, these pages from a Christian translation are not of much use in the JTS library, and that this fragment has more or less been sitting on a shelf, “collecting dust” for more than 90 years.

The story is interesting, but I think it opens up a wider question that is entirely appropriate for Shavuot: What is the value of Torah? (And, just to be clear here, I’m not limiting the discussion to merely THE Torah, i.e. the five books of Moses, but all the Tanakh and all the interpretation that flows from it).

When I think of studying Torah, which is, according to the Mishnah, the most important mitzvah of all 613, I don’t think of dusty scholars in rare book rooms handling ancient texts with tweezers. On the contrary: you can go into any Judaica shop in the world and purchase brand-spankin’-new editions of the Tanakh with contemporary commentaries, which will be sitting right alongside the ancient and medieval interpreters, volumes of the Talmud and midrash and halakhic works and bookshelves upon bookshelves of perspectives on Jewish text, all reprinted and reprinted. There are, as the Talmudic maxim goes, shiv’im panim laTorah, 70 faces to the Torah, meaning that there are many ways of reading every word, every verse. But really, we have only yet uncovered maybe 28 of those 70. We have not even found half of the perspectives on Torah.

We continue to interpret for today. The Torah is a living document, both a testament to our historical roots as well as a contemporary perspective on our lives. While we in the Conservative movement have traditionally understood that to mean contemporary approaches to halakhah (e.g. As when the movement permitted driving to synagogue on Shabbat, even though doing so is a clear violation of the long-settled traditional halakhah / laws of Shabbat observance), there are other, less circumscribed ways to read Torah for today. These ways may be far more valuable to the average Jew than academic discussions about the details of halakhic observance.

So let me give you an example of the real value of Torah. Last night at our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, Danny Mishkin and I spoke about an idea that should be obvious when we are talking about Torah: immediate relevance.

Why is this important? Because we are living in a world of limited time, limited focus, and the ubiquitous sentiment that if it’s not relevant and/or beneficial to me, I’m not going to invest my time in it. It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that each of us has only 140 characters in which to make our point, but it’s not too far from the truth. Long form is getting to be a harder and harder sell, particularly to our children. And this is a challenge for Jewish tradition, particularly for tefillah / prayer.

But it is a challenge we must face boldly. Times change, and Torah has never been left behind; it is an eternal tradition. (By the way, Gutenberg and others were printing books for a couple of decades before the Jews decided to accept printed works. The first Jewish printed books were volumes of the Talmud produced in Italy in the 1470s, but we soon got over our skepticism about the new technology. That is happening once again as part of the paradigm shift which we discussed last night. Judaism is catching up with the rest of the world. Ein kol hadash tahat hashemesh, says Qohelet. There is nothing entirely new under the sun.)

Here is an item of immediate relevance, one which we discussed on Saturday evening. We study Torah because it helps us make decisions and guide our lives (Pirqei Avot 1:14):

אם אין אני לי, מי לי; וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני; ואם לא עכשיו, אימתיי.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am for myself alone, what am I?

And if not now, when?

Take a moment to reflect on these words.

What does it mean to us? Is it about the balance of personal commitments vs. communal contributions? Is it about trying to make a living in a dog-eat-dog world? Is it about balancing family and work? Is it about the natural give-and-take of human relationships? Is it about managing one’s anger? Is it about monetary charity, or donating your time?

Each of us might see something different in this mishnah. But I would suggest that this is one of hundreds, or maybe thousands of quotables in Jewish tradition that would be worth keeping on a mental index card, and pulling out whenever you are faced with the challenge of choosing yourself over others, or vice versa. And these decisions come up every day, many times a day for all of us.

Hillel’s words are a mantra of balance, of figuring out where to put our energy and focus in this time-poor, over-stressed, over-stuffed world. This piece of wisdom is immediately relevant. I can use it to improve myself and my life, particularly if I refer back to it in the moment of need.

You cannot put a dollar amount on any word or page of Torah. It is truly priceless. OK, so some pages are worth more than others. But it is possible to glean personal meaning and yes, value from every page of commentary, halakhic analysis, midrash, and so forth.

This is the true value of Torah; it reflects back to us who we are, and compels us to change our behavior for the better.

So, while JTS might be selling off rarities for a few quick bucks, the real worth of those eight leaves, which tell the story of the Jewish woman who challenges authority, maintains her identity in a potentially hostile, non-Jewish environment, and leads her people out of danger, is not to be found at Sotheby’s. The intrinsic value is not the impression of the Latin words by the world’s first printing press. It is in the content, the meaning, and the lessons that we learn from Esther and Mordecai and the Jews of ancient Persia.

What makes Torah valuable is that every word means something different in each person’s mouth, mind, heart and hand, and that it brings those things together to improve our lives and repair this broken world. Furthemore, what makes it truly priceless is that it is completely ours, and every perspective it gives us is true. As we chant after a passage of the Torah is read in the synagogue:

… אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לָנוּ תּורַת אֱמֶת וְחַיֵּי עולָם נָטַע בְּתוכֵנוּ.

… asher natan lanu Torat emet, vehayyei olam nata betokheinu.

… who gave us the Torah of truth, planting within us life eternal.

Our Torah of truth gives us eternity as a people because Torah itself is eternal, and as long as we continue to (in the words of Ben Bag Bag, Pirqei Avot 5:24) “turn it over and over,” we too will continue to reap its benefits forever. It is both immediately relevant and timeless. And that is its true value.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, the first day of Shavuot, May 24, 2015.)

The Desert Still Speaks to Us - Bemidbar 5775

One night in 1999, while I was living in the small Israeli city of Arad, I took a hike in the desert by the light of the full moon with a few friends. We had no flashlights. Maybe one of us had a cell phone. But that was truly one of the most beautiful hikes I have ever taken (and I’m an avid hiker, so that’s saying a lot), over the rolling hills of Judea and through a wadi, a dry riverbed. The moon provided ample light, once our eyes were adjusted, and I had the sense of ancient-ness, the primitive nature of this moonlit walk, in which the desert landscape stood out in bold relief against the dark blue shadows.

Was it dangerous? Maybe. Foolhardy? Probably. We had been given clear directions by our madrikh, a fearless young man from Arad named Yoni, who was skilled in guiding hiking, climbing, and camping trips of all sorts. But Yoni could not join us that night, so we were just a bunch of naive Americans twenty-somethings marching silently through the eerily powerful light, quietly challenging ourselves and hoping that nobody tripped and fell or got stung by a scorpion or ambushed by one of the seven remaining Arabian leopards in Israel.

No such horror occurred. But it was a transformational experience, one which I will probably never be able to repeat.

The desert speaks to me. Really, it speaks to all of us.

We started a new book of the Torah today, the fourth book: Bemidbar Sinai (in English, it is Numbers, which is a very poor title, since the numbers are really only found in the opening chapters. Then it gets much more interesting). Bemidbar is entirely set in the desert, as the Israelites are between the Exodus from Egypt and the arrival in Israel. The story of our wandering in the desert is as essential to who we are as the Exodus. We are a desert people. We received the Torah in the desert. Our patriarchs lived in the desert. Our prophets received their prophecy in the desert.

In the desert, you need stories to connect you to civilization. You need to connect where you have come from to where you are going. This is an essential part of who we are as Jews - we need those connective stories, which bring us together, which keep us committed to who we are.

The Torah is a desert document. Not only did we receive it in the Sinai desert, but we also actually had to leave the fleshpots of Egypt (see Exodus 16:3), the lush green of the Nile delta, and prepare ourselves as a people by purifying our physical and spiritual selves for three days in the desert before receiving it.

The story of Moses concludes in the desert; Moshe Rabbeinu, our Teacher, never enters the Fertile Crescent. And the prophets who follow him are desert-dwellers; Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the whole gang drew all of their prophecy from the power of the wilderness. For example, the haftarah we read on the Shabbat after Tish’ah Be’Av, known as Shabbat Nahamu, the Shabbat of comfort, includes the following (Isaiah 40:3, Etz Hayim p. 1033):

קוֹל קוֹרֵא--בַּמִּדְבָּר, פַּנּוּ דֶּרֶךְ ה'; יַשְּׁרוּ, בָּעֲרָבָה, מְסִלָּה, לֵא-לֹהֵינוּ.

Qol qore bamidbar: panu derekh Adonai; yashru ba’aravah mesillah leloheinu.

A voice rings out: “Clear in the desert / A road for the Lord! / Level in the wilderness / A highway for our God!

And what does this Heavenly voice say? (Is. 40:6-8)

כָּל-הַבָּשָׂר חָצִיר, וְכָל-חַסְדּוֹ כְּצִיץ הַשָּׂדֶה... יָבֵשׁ חָצִיר, נָבֵל צִיץ; וּדְבַר-אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ, יָקוּם לְעוֹלָם.

Kol habasar hatzir, vekhol hasdo ketzitz hasadeh… Yavesh hatzir, naval hatzitz, udvar Eloheinu yaqum le’olam.

“All flesh is grass / All its goodness like flowers of the field… Grass withers, flowers fade - / But the word of our God is always fulfilled.”

What I felt as I was walking through the desert in the moonlight, listening to that quiet wind, was the eternality of that scene. The desert is the same as it always has been, as it always will be. Just as the desert is eternal, so too is God eternal, so too is the Torah eternal, so too is the burning fire of desert heat; the unconsumed, flaming bush that Moses found in the desert is still burning. A hint of it is in that light up above the ark.

You may know that the logo of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the primary rabbinical school and teaching institution of the Conservative movement, is a stylistic rendering (!) of the burning bush.

One idea that this symbol suggests is the eternal nature of God’s revelation, of God’s voice coming through to us. Our movement grew out of a group of 19th-century German-Jewish scholars known as the Positive-Historical school, and among the principles they espoused was the idea that history is an essential player in Judaism, that our traditions, our customs, our law - in short, our Torah - have continued to develop and change throughout the centuries. We have never read our text devoid of its historical context. And we continue to hear God’s voice, in our contemporary context, as we strive to interpret the Torah for today, acknowledging that although the ancient voice still comes from the desert, the rest of the world has changed

As contemporary Jews, with an eye toward history and the continuous unfolding of revelation, we continue to draw on the inspiration of Abraham, who pitched his tent near Be’ersheva, and welcomed in visiting angels in the desert. We continue to learn from the complaints and misbehavior of our ancestors as they trudged across the wilderness for forty years, driving Moses to the point of anger and thereby denying him from ever leaving the desert.

Once again, Isaiah tells us (12:3):

וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם-מַיִם, בְּשָׂשׂוֹן, מִמַּעַיְנֵי, הַיְשׁוּעָה.

Ush’avtem mayim besasson mima’ayanei hayeshu’a.

Draw water in joy from the wells of salvation.

That is, the desert wells, from which spiritual nourishment continues to flow.

And hence the need for those ancient stories. Without our desert connection, we would be rootless. Hence the power of the State of Israel for us today. This is, perhaps, why David Ben Gurion insisted that he be buried in Sde Boqer, south of Be’ersheva, deep into the Negev.

Another brief memory: When I visited Israel for the first time at age 17, I remember being on a tiyyul in the desert south, hiking through Wadi Tzin, just south of Sde Boqer. Our teacher told us that this was the place where Moses struck the rock in anger to placate the Israelites, who were dying of thirst. I was positively blown away. How cool is that?

Did it really happen that way? I cannot say; I wasn’t there. But the very presence of this story, the residual vibrations after thousands of years, crept into my soul and have lodged there since. The desert stories are timeless and powerful.

And here’s another: not far from that location, at the “Bedouin tent” lodging for tour groups called “Khan HaShayarot,” Danny Mishkin and I took our Youth House group outside of the camp under the stars when we were there last year for a ma’ariv service in the desert that blew them all away. The desert is powerful, mystical; it resonates with stories. Its very emptiness enables you to hear yourself in the quiet wind.

The Slonimer Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Noah Berezovsky, a 20th-century Hasidic rabbi, taught that the reason the Torah was given in the desert is because we can only merit the true acquisition of Torah when we have canceled all of our attachment to material things.

That is why we stay up late tomorrow (Saturday) night for our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, a night of dedication to our history, our textual heritage. The first night of Shavuot is a time that we put our physical desires aside to listen for that still, small voice emanating from the desert, calling to us from the wilderness.

Shavuot is not just a celebration of the receiving of the Torah. It is a joyous time, on which we eat sweet, rich dairy foods to recall the sweetness of Torah and its connection to the land flowing with milk and honey. But it is also a sober festival, a reflective stretching of the mind to reconnect with our national tales, to bring us back, in some sense, to Mt. Sinai.

I hope that you will be joining us as we consider new perspectives on the Torah, which will connect our ancient words with who we are today. Come with us as we return, just for an evening, to the moonlit desert, to the burning bush, and to our unfolding tradition.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, May 23, 2015.)

The Torah of Moderation - First Day Shavuot, 5774

Today we celebrate Matan Torah, the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.

Usually, when we mention the “giving of the Torah” or the “receiving,” we are talking about God to Moses, or God to the Jews. But really we should understand this as the gift from the Jews to the world.

Because if there is one thing that we can proudly point to as Jews and say, this is ours, it’s the Torah. Not, of course, the Torah alone, but “Torah” in the wider sense of that word: incorporating the millennia of commentary and interpretation based on and illuminating the Five Books of Moses and the rest of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. We have shared that wider gift of Torah with the world.  

And this distinction, between the written Torah and all of its interpretation is essential. ‘Cause let’s face it: the Torah is a complicated book. Yes, there are many wonderful Jewish values that originate in the Torah: welcoming guests (Genesis 18:1-8), taking care of the poor among us (many places, including Leviticus 19:9-10), treating the strangers among us fairly (many places, including Lev. 19:33-34), business ethics (e.g. Lev. 19:13, 35-36ת Deut. 25:13-16), and so forth. But there are many items in the Torah that challenge us as modern, thinking people. Consider for a moment some of the more extreme positions that the Torah takes:

    A disobedient son should be put to death. (Deut. 21:18-21)

    One who violates the Shabbat in public (e.g. by gathering wood) should be put to death. (Num. 15:32-36)

    The Sotah ritual (Numbers 5)

And so forth. But it is essential to note that the Torah alone is not Judaism! Our tradition is not about the literal application of the words of the Torah. We do not put anybody to death or practice humiliating rituals. The rabbinic tradition, through a process that began in the 2nd century CE and continues to this very day, has studied the words of Torah, interpreted them and codified them according to contemporary norms in every generation.  What we know, understand and practice as Judaism is not the written Torah, but rather, as it is filtered through the rabbinic lens. We are not ancient Israelites; we are rabbinic Jews.

For example, we do not stone disobedient children to death, even though that is clearly commanded in the Torah. The rabbis of the Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 68bff) re-interpreted the very concept of what it means to be disobedient to set the bar so high that it would actually be impossible for a child to meet this qualification, thereby mitigating the severity of the Torah’s imperative.

When I was at the Rabbinical Assembly convention two weeks ago, I participated in an extended learning session with Rabbi Donniel Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, on the subject of the precedence of certain mitzvot over others. For example, the Talmud tells us (Berakhot 19b) that if you discover that you or somebody else is wearing an item of clothing containing a forbidden mixture of fibers (e.g. wool and linen; aka shaatnez), you must tear it off immediately. One page later, the Talmud tells a story about a certain R. Ada bar Ahavah who, upon seeing a woman in the market wearing a headress which he thinks to contain shaatnez, and knocks it off her head, causing the woman much shame and stirring up a major hubbub. As it turns out, she’s not even Jewish! So R. Ada bar Ahavah is in the wrong, and has doubly transgressed.

In some places, our tradition upholds a certain kind of zealotry. But elsewhere, we find that the intricacies and sensibilities of human relationships require more attention than the letter of the law. Elsewhere in the Talmud (Megillah 3b) we find that the rabbis ask about the priority of certain mitzvot. If one is faced with taking care of an unclaimed corpse (known as a met mitzvah) versus reading Megillat Esther on Purim, the met mitzvah takes precedence, due to the principle of kevod haberiyot, the respect for all God’s creatures. Furthermore, the Talmud emphasizes that this latter mitzvah, respect, is of such great importance that it outweighs all negative commandments of the Torah.

Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman, aka Nahmanides or Ramban, who lived in 13th-century Spain, cites a verse in the Torah to extend this logic even further (Deut. 6:18):

וְעָשִׂיתָ הַיָּשָׁר וְהַטּוֹב, בְּעֵינֵי ה' --לְמַעַן יִיטַב לָךְ, וּבָאתָ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה, אֲשֶׁר-נִשְׁבַּע ה' לַאֲבֹתֶיךָ.

Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you and that you may be able to possess the good land that the Lord your God promised on oath to your fathers.

Ramban tells us that this verse is a kind of legal catch-all that covers every detail of human behavior that is not otherwise addressed in the Torah - that is, that we should go beyond the letter of the law. This is a principle known as “lifnim mishurat hadin.” We are not only obligated to fulfill the mitzvot that are explicitly identified, but also to extend the logic of what is right and good to everything else. Ramban tells us that we must refine our behavior so that our reputations are spotless, and that our conversations with others are always pleasant, so that we may be worthy of being known by others as “right and good.”

Returning for a moment to the case of the R. Ada bar Ahavah, who knocks off the woman’s headress in the market, since he has violated kevod haberiyot / respect for all God’s creatures and damaged his reputation, he has therefore transgressed. Sometimes respect trumps the letter of the law.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the moderation for which we stand, for which the greater Torah stands. And this is the gift that we Jews bring to the world, the very gift that we celebrate today. We are not zealots; we are not fanatics. The ancient rabbis, and even some of us today want us to be sensitive to how we behave while fulfilling the law, and make sure that it reflects well upon us. We must not just perform mitzvot, but must do it in a respectful way that maintains our reputations.

The Talmud (Yoma 86a) also identifies for us the label applied to those who claim to act in the name of God but are in fact profaning God’s name. The term for this is hillul haShem:

But if someone studies Scripture and Mishnah, serves Torah scholars, but is dishonest in business, and discourteous in his relations with people, what do people say about him? Woe unto him who studied the Torah; woe unto his father who taught him Torah; woe unto his teacher who taught him Torah! This man studied the Torah; look how corrupt are his deeds, how ugly his ways.

It is certainly possible to follow the letter of the law and still commit hillul haShem. We need not look too deeply into the Jewish world to see plenty of examples.

Last week, when the rabbinic head of the Agudath Israel, an umbrella organization of Haredi Jews, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, was giving a brief devar Torah at a celebratory dinner attended by Mayor Bill DeBlasio. He used his opportunity to slander non-Orthodox Jews (and some Modern Orthodox Jews as well). From the New York Times:

Rabbi Perlow offered a shower of condemnation for Reform and Conservative Jews, who he said were among those who “subvert and destroy the eternal values of our people.” These movements, he said, “have disintegrated themselves, become oblivious, fallen into an abyss of intermarriage and assimilation.”

“They will be relegated,” he added, “to the dustbins of Jewish history.”

It was surely a deliberate choice to deliver these words when the mayor was present, because he knew that there would be media coverage, and the bulk of New York Jewry, who he knows are not Orthodox, would read his words. He also knew that Mayor DeBlasio would likely let the remarks go by without comment, which he did.

Just two days later, the same Rabbi Perlow delivered a speech to 10,000 women in his community about the dangers of the Internet. And what’s more, he spoke to them separated from his audience by a one-way mirror, so he could not see the women. That’s right - he actually spoke while looking at himself in the mirror. The possibilities for commentary here are endless.

The moderate conception of Judaism which we emphasize values women and men equally and does not see women merely as sources of temptation that must be obscured from view. This is not how women are perceived outside the synagogue, and it should not be that way on the inside.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Torah is not black and white, to be fulfilled to its letter at the expense of others. Doing what is right and good in the eyes of God means that we acknowledge not only the ethical norms of the society in which we live and the innovations that human ingenuity has brought, but is also respectful of all. What sort of people would the Jews be if we stuck our heads in the sand? How would we fulfill our mission on Earth of bringing this Torah of moderation to the world if we cannot even look at people?

Our task as Conservative Jews is to live our ideals proudly and boldly, continuing to emphasize the voice of moderation, of kevod haberiyot / respect for God’s creatures, that is evident in the wider Torah, for the Jews and for the world. We must remind the Rabbi Perlows of this world that the Second Temple was destroyed due to sin’at hinam, causeless hatred, and that the only path that we have together into the Jewish future is one of mutual encouragement and honor, one based on maintaining the good reputation and the pleasant conversation that Ramban suggests.

Hag Sameah!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, first day of Shavuot, June 4, 2014.)

The Shavuot Takeaway

One might make the case that Shavuot is really the end of Pesah, just like Simhat Torah is really the end of the High Holidays, on the opposite side of the Jewish calendar. And, curiously enough, they are both about the Torah: Shavuot is when we commemorate the Israelites' receiving of the Torah at Sinai, and Simhat Torah is when we celebrate the completion of a full cycle of Torah reading, and go back to the beginning again.

It's not a coincidence. In reinterpreting the Jewish Festivals, which are essentially agricultural in their unadorned Torah-based origin, the rabbis sought to overlay their new Jewish model: that of learning as the fundamental basis for Judaism. Without a Temple, without a centralized sacrificial cult, they reasoned that prayer and ritual would go only so far to keep Jews connected, and particularly when they were no longer living agrarian lives. Studying and interpreting ancient texts, however, made them instantly relevant.

As such, each of these two major holiday clusters concludes with a celebration of Torah. The message is clear: What will sustain us from spring to fall and from fall to spring, without a major holiday in between? Taking the words of Torah to heart, and dwelling on them constantly. Citing the words of Joshua (1:8):

לֹא-יָמוּשׁ סֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה הַזֶּה מִפִּיךָ, וְהָגִיתָ בּוֹ יוֹמָם וָלַיְלָה

Lo yamush sefer haTorah hazeh mipikha, vehagita bo yomam valaila
Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night...

This verse became a battle-cry for the rabbis, embracing the study of Torah as the life-force of the Jewish people. The Torah and its millennia of interpretive work are not an afterthought, but rather the focal point for day-to-day Jewish existence.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

What is Torah? A Shavuot Postulate

When I applied to the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary in the spring of 2004, I was just completing the cantorial program there, and was eager to find ways to connect my cantorial and soon-to-be rabbinical sides.  In preparation for the dreaded committee interview, I prepared a devar Torah on a musical topic.*

One of the deans of Rabbinical School challenged me.  “Is that Torah?” he asked, implying that addressing an issue within Jewish music was beyond the realm of an acceptable devar Torah.  His tone of voice suggested that I might as well have been discussing the exhaust system of the 1960s-era Israeli-manufactured car, the Susita.

“Why, yes,” I said.  “Whatever connects us to our tradition, to Jewish life and learning, is Torah.”  His head made a dubious motion, but he let it go.  They accepted me to the program, so I suppose that I must not have been that far off.

Literally, the word “Torah” means “instruction,” and is a cousin to the Hebrew word “moreh,” a teacher.  It appears in the Five Books of Moses many times, referring not to those books as the collected body of stories and law, but in the narrower sense of God’s instruction on a particular matter.  Even in the case of the most-invoked of those occurrences, “Torah tzivvah lanu Mosheh, morashah qehillat Yaaqov,” (“Moses charged us with the Teaching / As the heritage of the congregation of Jacob,” Deuteronomy 33:4) it is not clear that “Torah” refers to our Torah or just the book of Deuteronomy.

In rabbinic literature, the word takes on a greater meaning: not just specific instruction, or the Five Books of Moses, but the full body of Jewish learning.  For example, Avot 1:1:

“Moses received Torah from God as Sinai.  He transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, the Prophets to the members of the Great Assembly.  They formulated three precepts: Be cautious in rendering a decision, rear many students, and build a fence to protect Torah.”  (Translation from Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals)

Torah is far more than what is mounted on the two wooden poles, the scroll that we parade around on various occasions and honor by kissing and teaching our children to chant from.  It is, rather, the entire institution of learning that the rabbis of the Mishnah interpolated all the way back to Moses, the building of fences and the teaching of students and the debating of the most esoteric points of language and context.  It is a living tradition, one which we continue to learn and teach and review and embrace and challenge today.  Everything in our tradition can ultimately be traced back to the Torah (although occasionally via convoluted hermeneutic paths); everything that we do that makes us Jewish is Torah.

As such, the festival of Shavuot is far more than just a commemoration of the events at Mt. Sinai.  It is the anniversary of the gift of Judaism in all its forms, from the ritual to the cultural to the political offshoot of Zionism.  This is the birthday of Jewish life; join us as we learn Torah together on Saturday night to celebrate.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, May 25, 2012.)

* The topic was the similarity of the Ashkenazic and western Sephardic melodies of Shirat Hayam, the Song at the Sea of Reeds, and how that this wandering tune tells an appealing historical tale of our people.