Shavuos

Freedom and Belonging

There is a certain magical formula (one of many) that is firmly embedded in the infrastructure of avodas Hashem: ’’You will be a kingdom of priests and a sacred people for Me.’’

Do we catch a whiff of collectivism from the Torah’s statement here? The kingdom of Yisroel? And what about Reb Yisroel? the individualist asks.

The individualist is championing the individual’s right to self-expression. He believes in expressing quality, which expresses the uniqueness of one’s soul, which has descended to this lowly world from a world of infinite quality.

His soul has come down into a world built out of restrictive frameworks, in forms that are devoid of content. These frameworks are limited by space and time. The soul’s destiny is to endow these empty frameworks with content, to make the world into a container holding blessing, a container for meaningful content, a container that expresses values, that expresses ideals. The soul’s destiny is to grant meaning to the material, which is mere quantity devoid of the meaning of quality.

Individual quality differs from person to person. Despite this differentness, it requires a container, a framework. A framework belongs to a formula. Its task is to merge and to allocate and to assign individual assignments, each individual is given one assignment out of many others, making all of them into components of the larger framework. ’’As a part of the whole,’’ to use the Ibn Ezra’s terminology.

Out of this very framework, the uniqueness of the content is preserved. Out of this very framework, the formula merges the partial framework, the one that preserves individual uniqueness, into a container comprised of many unique frameworks.

The Torah is designed to protect both opposites, to protect the individual uniqueness that attaches itself to a belonging framework. Individual expression, free of shackles, uniqueness within a framework not designed to suffocate and obstruct this uniqueness but rather on the contrary: To protect its freedom of expression within a belonging to a framework that only protects and supports the perfection of its self-expression, without imposing upon it any of those frameworks that only protect their own existence.

Any framework, be it national, social, or political, that is designed only and solely to perpetuate its own framework-ism, by blurring and obscuring meaningful content, may be called a Fascist or dictator framework. Its existence possesses none of the justification of a framework designed to serve as a container to protect and express content. The moment a framework allows itself to forget its destiny it undermines the justice of its own existence.

This is the rule for every public and national framework. These frameworks tend to make use of their own historic roots in order to justify their existence. This attempt is no more than a smokescreen to blur the vision of anyone who would examine them too carefully.

A person searches for meaning within content and within ideals: When it becomes evident to that person that he is unlikely to find what he seeks in any of the existing frameworks, he will then tend to ignore the existing frameworks and to withdraw into himself. He will cast off all those indicators that he mistakenly associates with frameworks devoid of content that can serve him as self-expression. He will avoid joining a minyan. He will cast off the garb that characterizes his ethnic group. He may even reach the point of casting everything off in the name of freedom of expression and freedom of ritual. Chazal express their view of such a person: ’’"Fence-breakers get bitten by snakes.’’ This teaches us that content cannot be preserved without a container, as in Chazal’s well-known metaphor: ’’Can you break the barrel and still keep its wine?’’

Thus two tendencies were created in man. Each tendency possesses a character that is opposite yet complementary to the other. For the belonging need, the capacity to adjust was created. For the freedom need, man was given the ability to digest whatever external factors he requires in order to build his own personality, to make it grow and flourish.

When a person lacks a freedom/belonging formula that is cut to his own size and measure, then an alien formula is forced upon him that coerces him into a suffocating framework and a uniqueness that is alien to his abilities, talents, and character. At this point a reaction sets in, a rebellious rejection of all frameworks, and an attraction to any framework indicated by wanton abandon. This is the anarchist who is repelled by behavior that is values-free and that does not target the unique private needs of the individual.

As an expression of his discontent, he will experience feelings of bitterness and depression and various sicknesses, if he has a soft, weak character. Anarchists with strong, stubborn characters, on the other hand, will feel anger and aggression.

It is needless to point out that a ’’stiff-necked people’’ such as Ahm Yisroel would be unable to endure a framework that was just a framework for very long. This is why ’’their religion is different from every nation.’’ The Jew cannot thrive for any length of time in an alien framework.

’’The Holy One wanted to grant Yisroel merit. Therefore he gave them an abundance of Torah and commandments.’’ Torah as the unique and independent self-expression for every individual who toils in Torah, and mitzvos as self-expression as well, and also to fulfill the need for a minimal public framework.

The mitzvos thus divide into those that shape the public and those that are designed to express the personality, talents, and creativity of the individual. From this we see that it is possible to classify the three major festivals of the yearly cycle into mitzvos that shape the public and mitzvos that are private.

It is a simple matter to attach Pesach to the public-shaping mitzvos, designed to mold and to consolidate a society. ’’According to the count of souls shall you budget the lamb.’’ The Korban Pesach is offered as a group sacrifice. Seder night is celebrated family by family.

Nevertheless, a special role is reserved for the private individual. He may, indeed he must delve deeply, and penetrating and investigate the details of the Yom Tov and its meanings. The four questions command every individual to ask, and the Hagadah is arranged for the specific purpose of addressing the meaningful content of the holiday.

Similarly with Sukkos, filled with public celebration, yet designed to deepen our awareness of meanings and content, and to liberate the individual Jew from external frameworks that create dependency: The permanent house, the seasons of the year.

Instead, precisely during the fall season, as summer’s heat is fading and chill shadows are spreading through the world, the Jew is commanded to dwell, and even to sleep under the open dome of heaven. Only the lightest layer of s’chach protects him, yet it does not even fully protect from the rays of the daytime sun, and surely not from the chill of the cooling nights.

Up to this point, everything is clear. The matter becomes a bit foggier when we attempt to examine the holiday of Shavuos. It is true that the holiday is tied to a season of the year, the harvest season. ’’Until the seventh morrow of the Sabbath, count fifty days.’’ On the morrow of the holiday of Pesach. The Torah does not fix a definite day. You, know, whenever you finish counting the omer, celebrate the holiday of Shavuos. The Gemara in maseches Shabbos, from dahf 86 to dahf 89, deals with the issue of the actual date of the Yom Tov. A dispute arises among the Tana’im regarding the guidelines for determining the day of the holiday.

The Chachomim disagree with Rabi Yossi as to whether simply concluding the sefira, the actual counting, should be the sole criterion for establishing when Shavuos falls, or should one employ a more well defined criterion.

The sefira itself depends on determining when ’’the month of spring’’ begins (on which Pesach falls). This depends on the testimony of witnesses who testify to having witnessed the monthly renewal of the moon. Furthermore the month of Nisan is itself sometimes ’’full’’ and sometimes ’’lacking’’ meaning that from year to year it can be a day longer or a day shorter.

Neither is the meaningful content of the holiday entirely clear. ’’The holiday of the barley harvest.’’ ’’The day of the giving of the Torah.’’ There is even obscurity as to which day it actually was. Was the Torah given on the sixth or on the seventh day of Sivan?

Holiday accessories are conspicuously lacking. No matza, no sukkah, no four species. The Torah does not trouble to fill this holiday with specific content. It is upon the oved Hashem to draft his own personal meanings to the task of filling this Yom Tov with content that will adequately express the importance and centrality of this day: The day on which the Torah was given.

Pesachim 68: ’’Rabi Yossi said: ’If not for that day [when I learned and rose higher in Torah. (Rashi)] I would be just another Joe in the marketplace.’’’ And he commanded his household to prepare a third-born calf [the greatest delicacy] in honor of the festival. The Tosfos adds at the bottom of the page that there is no need to bring scriptural support for this minhag of Rabi Yossi’s because svara he, ’’it is plain reasoning.’’

This teaches us that the expression of the meaningful content of this chag is reserved for Hashem’s servant’s personal sense of things. No framework of group or community, no ceremony. There is no mention as on Pesach of the astounding miracles of yetzias mitzrayim or kriyas yam suf. We can assume that one of the many intentions behind Hashem’s revealing these wonders and miracles was to consolidate a nation out of a rabble, an asafsuf and an erev rav. Therefore, ’’a maidservant on the [Red] Sea saw things that even Yechezkel ben Buzi did not see in his vision of the merkava.’’

It is not for naught that Yechezkel’s prophecy attaches to the haftorah reading of Shavuos.

To teach you that the holiday of Shavuos bears the personal meaning and the personal content born of the initiative taken by the osek baTorah.

All of isuk baTorah, involvement with Torah, is indicated by belonging: You may only learn if you follow the rules of learning. If you ignore them, you are not permitted to learn Torah. You are not permitted to ignore the fundamental assumptions, the foundation stones laid by those who preceded you.

Nevertheless, according to your ability, you are permitted and even commanded to create your own views and meanings and interpretations based on the intuitive resources (libi omair li) available to every individual who toils in Torah to the point of mesirus nefesh.

’’Anything that any elder student would ever innovate’’ is a principle that even Moshe Rabeinu found difficult to accept Ð until he heard the good news that it was included in ’’the law given by Moshe at Sinai,’’ and was reassured about the central place that tradition holds in any psak halacha. And about: ’’Take heed of the children of the poor, because from them, Torah will go forth.’’ Torah is not built upon a privileged elite. Rather, it is built upon the one who gives his life for it.

Every student is permitted to innovate, under certain conditions, and then his view will be accepted. In this way, the Torah encourages us to make use of svara, ’’simple reasoning’’ and not to be posaik mitoch mishnoso, someone who makes halachic decisions out of a book.

We must recall that on the first Shavuos, every single Jew was privileged to receive two crowns, the crown of ’’we will do,’’ collectively, and the crown of ’’we will hear,’’ every individual in his own way. A slave nation thus had the privilege of rising higher than any other nation on the face of the earth, to become ’’a kingdom of priests and a sacred people.’’

The moment this privilege was revealed and made public, it also was ’’privileged’’ to a show of admiration, and also feelings of envy and hatred by all the negative and vile elements of the world’s population. The nation of ’’You have chosen us’’ discovered that there was a cynical overtone to this title, steeped in envy.

So we have individualism on the one hand and the mutual accountability of kol yisroel areivim zeh lazeh on the other hand. Belonging out of freedom. This is content at both ends, with no pits and no peels. ’’A kingdom of priests (individual servants of Hashem) and a sacred people [as a group].’’ The Jew never sanctifies any of the elements of his selfhood or of the world around him as separate autonomous sacred objects. Rather, he attaches to each element in utter belonging, whether as the result of an organic and inborn attachment or of a consciously adopted attachment: Both are equally worthy.

Adjustment is no better than withdrawal. Adaptation is not preferable to assimilation. There is only a) externality that is made sacred, by being made to express meaningful content, and b) the peel-like externality that must be eliminated in order to reach the flesh of the fruit.

Similarly, there are hard pits that are solid, and serve as the heart of the fruit, and there are fruits that you long to sink your teeth into, but then you encounter a pit that holds you back, and it must be thrown away before you can enjoy the fruit.

The holiday of Pesach seeks to free you from the pit, which is the slave that has penetrated into your personality as a result of Egypt’s enslavement, and also to free you from the peel that has clung to you. This is the meaning of, ’’they had not changed their dress, their language and their names and in merit of this they were redeemed.’’

The kernel that forms in you as a result of your accumulated experiences, you need to purify of waste matter (for kernels can hold pits) in order to reach the unique self, the kernel of the G-dly soul whose source is in heaven. In the same way you must change your external garments, which have been designed to assimilate you into the environment, and you must choose instead garments that express the content of the unique self, which is not the extracted essence of your accumulated experiences and the sum of your attempts to confront your fight for survival. Rather, its source is in heaven, from beneath the kisei hakovod.

Therefore, the self is not given preference for being individual, just as the self is not given preference for being collective, which means nothing more than assimilating into whatever framework is at hand. The ’’kingdom of priests and the sacred people’’ are consolidated out of heavenly qualities that have crystallized into one solid unit that is an expression of many and varied qualities whose origins lie in heaven’s kingdom of quality. The qualities found in this kingdom are not asked to assimilate into their environment even when the environment is one of avodas Hashem, only inadequate to express the individuality that makes you unique.

Accordingly, one person may guard his own uniqueness and create sanctity from within himself, even bitoch hagolah, ’’in the midst of the exile’’ like Yechezkel the prophet, while another may lose his own uniqueness to the point of assimilation, while his body sinks further and further (though not his soul) into the forty-nine gates of impurity, so that even if he exists in the Land of Israel he exists bitoch hagolah, in the midst of the exile. Though supposedly in a state of ge’ulah, this redemption is only an outward appearance.

The bris kodesh, the sacred covenant of Torah is expressed in the covenant between Ahm Yisroel and their G-d, and it is expressed in the covenant of marriage between husband and wife. Perhaps this could be the meaningful content one finds in Chag HaShavuos, the holiday that serves as a cause and an inducement for intensifying the bris kodesh between Ahm Yisroel and the Torah: Torah tziva lanu Moshe, morasha. ’’Moshe commanded the Torah to us, a heritage.’’ ’’Do not read it as morasha, ’a heritage’, but rather as m’orsa, ’a betrothal...’’’

The festival of Shavuos constitutes the gateway through which a convert enters who has joined the Jewish people, and has undergone bris mila as his bris kodesh, his entry into Judaism. This bris kodesh is expressed in RuthÕs entry into Judaism, which became a binding covenant. Ruth ’’clings’’ to her mother-in-law, Naomi, without ulterior motive, with no notion of personal gain, only because she has chosen to covet the heavenly treasures contained in Judaism. ’’Your people are my people, and your G-d is my G-d.’’ A covenant of blood and a covenant of marriage for the sake of heaven, because her mother-in-law has commanded her to marry Boaz.

This covenant in triplicate creates a doubled and tripled root of initiated free choice, and this root is perpetuated in the figure of Dovid HaMelech. A process that has been all and entirely indicated by subjectivity and the inner choices that unfold in the intimate spaces of the human heart, becomes an objectivity so absolute as to attain netzach Yisroel, the eternity of the Jewish people.