Rabbi Locketz

May 24, 2006

Shavuot

As some of you know, I am not the world’s greatest sports fan.  But there are few sporting events that I find fascinating.  One of them is the relay race.  You know the one with several runners and they pass the baton on as they run around the track.  When Debbie and I lived in Cincinnati, our backyard butted up again the track of our local high school.  I used to love to sit and watch the kids practice the relay.  This is an intense race.  I had never really paid attention to it before, but wow does it require skill, concentration, and faith that the person behind you is going to pass the baton properly.
 

Next Thursday night, we at Bet Shalom, and Jews all over the world, will celebrate the Festival of Shavuot…or as some prefer…Shavous.  This holiday traditionally marks the quintessential moment in the history of our people…the Sinai Moment…that moment when Torah came into the world.  The Sinai experience permeates so much of our Prayerbook, our Torah, and our Tradition.  But, for so many of us, we tend to think of that experience as singular and locked in history.  It is neither.  It is not just something that happened a long time ago…Don't we each experience the awe of receiving Torah from time to time?  Torah doesn't just mean the words in the scrolls stored in the ark behind me.  That may be where Torah begins, but it takes on a life of its own once it enters our hearts, our minds, and our community.   Sinai Moments occur all the time...they are ongoing.
 

Our tradition teaches us in the Mishnah that there is a chain of transmission, shalshelet shel Kabalah, for the Torah.  It began with God giving the Torah to Moses:
 

"Moses Received the Torah from Sinai and handed it down to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets handed it down to the men of the Great Assembly"    
 

This chain has continued throughout the entire history of Judaism.  All one has to do is enter a Jewish library to see the books that simply attempt to describe the Torah, the Mishnah, and the Talmud.  All these are literary attempts to describe that Sinai Moment and to continue the chain of tradition and transmission.  Ours is a prophetic tradition that continues to be revealed from the edge of the city walls to the innermost places in our hearts and minds.  If you think about it, the passage of Torah from one generation to the next, from spiritual guide to student, it is sort of like the relay race…as we run through life…we put faith in others to be there with Torah and tradition to pass off to us, and then we take on the responsibility of passing it on the next person waiting. 
 

Our life cycle is defined by the passage of Torah.  From the first days of life, we celebrate the newborn's entrance into the Covenant, guaranteeing another generation in this chain of transmission.  Each family passes down its own Torah through the generations.  This can easily be seen through the variations of traditions in Passover Seders, in our family recipes, in our jokes, in our pictures.  Each family receives and transmits Torah in its own way.  My grandmother has her idiosyncrasies that have become our family Torah…so does yours I am sure.  Rabbi Larry Kushner writes: 
 

"Each person has a Torah, unique to that person, his or her innermost teaching.  Some seem to know their Torah's very early in life and speak and sing them in a myriad of ways.  Others spend their whole lives stammering, shaping, and rehearsing them.  Some are long, some short.  Some are intricate and poetic, others are only a few words, and others can only be spoken through gesture and example.  But every soul has a Torah."
 

Another way we receive, and transmit, Torah is through prayer.  I frequently joke with the Bar and Bat Mitzvah students about the Eilu D'varim prayer from our morning liturgy.  It says, “These are the things whose obligations are without measure."  It lists our various religious obligations as Adult Jews, from Honoring our fathers and mothers to visiting the sick.  But the English translation of the last line in the prayer reads, "And the study of Torah leads to them all.”  Now if you say this with intention, it reads very prayerfully…The study of Torah leads to them all….But, if you don't pay attention to what you are being to taught, or you don't take Torah and prayer seriously…it begins to melt together…and the line is read to quickly, "The study of Torah leads to the Mall.”  I have often asked the Bar and Bat Mitzvah students to which end their study will lead them...to them all…gimilut chessed, or to the mall…assimilation.  Why do we pray?  Because the act of prayer is another way in which we bring Torah into the world even if we can’t rationally explain it.
 

            In Cannery Row, the famous book by John Steinbeck, The characters Doc and Hazel have an interesting conversation about why stink bugs stick their tails up in the air. 
 

Doc told Hazel, "I think they're praying." 

"What!" Hazel was shocked.

"The remarkable thing," said Doc, "isn't that they put their tails up in the air - the really incredibly remarkable thing is that we find it remarkable.  We can only use ourselves as yardsticks.  If we did something as inexplicable and strange, we'd probably be praying - so maybe they're praying".
 

Praying is pretty inexplicable isn't it?  Why do we pray if not to bring Torah into the world?  All over the United States, at a dozen different camps that belong to our moment…the Union for Reform Judaism Batei T’filah…outdoor chapels…will be cleaned out over the next few weeks.  Branches from trees will be trimmed, the benches will be fixed up and weeds growing through gravel-covered floors will be pulled.  It is in these chapels that thousands of children will learn to explore what praying means throughout the summer.  When we put ourselves into different environments, we create new Sinai moments for ourselves.  Similarly, when we look at the prayerbook in new ways, trying to read the Hebrew….or reading the English with a different emphasis…or taking time to meditate during silent prayer….We bring Torah into our lives and we open ourselves up to those Ah Hah moments…those Sinai moments. 
 

            Just a few weeks ago, a member of our congregation asked me during Oneg Shabbat if I knew why he comes to services.  I looked at him and thought to myself…I have no idea!  He told me that all week he is forced to view the world through the lens of the newspaper, and the radio and other people.  By Friday he told me, he almost cannot bring himself to leave the house.  But on Friday nights, he comes here to look at the world through the words of the prayerbook…through the lens of Torah.  Talk about a Sinai moment!
 

            A third way we bring Torah into the world is through learning itself.  On most days in Bet Shalom, we can see Torah being brought into this world.  Whether it is the adult Hebrew group learning more Hebrew to help them in our worship service, or the students in our Religious school rigorously learning about their faith and Jewish culture.  Some days you might see the youth group studying about, and performing, a Havdallah service.  As the Eilu Divarim prayer reminds us, the Study of Torah leads to them all.  Torah happens during our Thursday and Sunday morning text study and when we just stand around shmoozing during Oneg Shabbat.  We bring Torah into the world when we take the time to learn from each other and from each other’s experiences.  All the greatness of Jewish learning, and relating, is Torah, as another passage from Pirke Avot teaches us,
 

"Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it.  Pour over it, grow old and gray over it.  Do not budge from it.  You can have no better guide for living than it."

Everything is there.  We experience more Sinai Moments when we stop to contemplate that we are thinking the same thoughts as those who came dozens of generations before our time.  Those Sinai Moments occur when we realize that the words on the page of the text we are discussing, links us back to the time of the bible's origin.  It isn't perfect.  We might not even agree on its origin……the origins of our customs or the Torah.  But Sinai links you to me and both of us to the person sitting next to you.  That link keeps our community going from generation to generation passing the greatness of Torah from one to the next in every act of love and kindness, devotion, worship, and scholarship.
 

Shavous will come and go next week.  The holy day when we celebrate the receiving of Torah on Mt. Sinai.  So what is the common link between all of this?  It is the Torah.  Torah comes from, and through, each of us, but sometimes it is hard to realize it.  You have to be present.  You have to stop and look around and see the Torah being passed…your torah…my torah…our torah…May each of our days be filled with Torah…

Ken Yehi Razon.  May this be God’s Will.