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Shavuot:
Torah
and Rebirth
by Rabbi
Haim Lifshitz
footnote:
* a reference to the
Almighty –“Ha’Makom”
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The festival
of Shavuot is concerned with the emergence of a qualitative
reality from the ground of freedom – freedom acquired
via the festival of Pesach. The experience of time
works to negate this emergence. Indeed, we serve Time
rather than serving the Space.*
Why? Because time cancels
our notion of being in control of our own existence.
We are carried along by time; we can neither stop its
inexorable advance nor turn it back. The ambition to
realize human potential, when it does not include
control over the dimension of time, must be considered
a failure. The Torah does not intend that the
dimension of time – which escorts man through life
willy nilly – should be ignored. To the contrary, the
Torah places a great deal of emphasis on methodology
for engaging the dimension of time. The range of such
methodologies is comprehensive and covers the gamut of
Tora life: from the manner of one’s relating to the
practical commandments (Mitzvot) – wherein the element
of time plays a key role, to the devices described in
the Torah for integrating time into one’s personal
reality – a reality which is meant to control time,
infusing it with its own quality, values and content.
In respect of Time, its unique
constructions and its exclusive class of influence,
the Torah has allocated a complete Mitzva – the
Counting of the Omer. This Mitzva is meant to
penetrate to the specific component elements of which
Time is constructed – the countable days and weeks,
infuse them with the qualitative significance of Man
and thereby incorporate them into an existential
system that is meaningfully under his control. This
parallels the general principle established by the
Creator, that, so long as Man is properly engaged in
generating such qualitative significance, the elements
of mechanistic force in Creation may be controlled and
indeed stand only to serve that quality. In a similar
vein we have elsewhere explained the promise of
longevity found in the Gemara Berachot to one who
regularly completes the weekly parsha – “Twice the
Scriptural text and once the Targum” – as an
imperative to introduce Torah content into the
dimension of time structured as weekly units. Thus
does Man bestow the qualitative value of Torah on the
dimension of time, thereby incorporating it into the
Service of the Almighty; Time is not left to the
imposition of the merely physical – the mundane and
the arbitrary.
Mastery of time is an essential
pre-requisite for the achievement of a goal even more
significant – the commandment to renew, to be born
afresh, to be altogether unsatisfied with the mere
fact of one’s biological birth – a birth that can
remain thoroughly bereft of the redemption of free
choice. The status of one’s personal reality,
the standing one has as a citizen of the universe, is
not fixed. It is neither a datum of one’s birth, nor
is it necessarily acquired as a function of
environmental influence. We have been taught, “Take
care with the sons of the poor, for it is from them
that Torah will emanate,” viz. the acquisition of
Torah standing is not determined by the environmental
or the hereditary. To the contrary, it is
fundamentally rooted in the obligation to exercise
free choice. Torah is both the essential ingredient
and the primary catalyzer in the birthing of one’s
personal reality, an ongoing birth that constantly
renews – in quality, originality and scope of
achievement.
This view is rather different
from common, everyday assumptions. Conventionally, a
person develops a sense of self, based on career as
well as national, ethnic and religious associations.
Little, if any, attention is given to the changing quality
that is being continuously created along the course of
one’s existential path. It is this essence of
accumulated experience, precipitating as it does to
the base layers of one’s personality, which branches
forth to color one’s views, relationships and indeed
one’s response to all that transpires in the
surrounding reality. A person’s views are not
determined as a direct function of stimuli in the
environment. Rather, they are fundamentally mediated
by the qualitative existential essence that is created
within. This essence is the fruit of an ongoing
creative process that is willfully enacted via the
exercise of choice.
The above-described
quintessential humanness constitutes an
original point of departure for processing the
information of one’s environment; in its crucible the
perceived facts of practical, theoretical and
spiritual reality become plastic and are uniquely
imprinted by that humanness – effectively governing
their effect on one’s beliefs, behavior and even
physical health. Thus, people will process the food
they ingest with an individual qualitative response,
with differing responses resulting in benefit to one,
yet harm to another. Likewise will each individual
respond to the same surgical procedure in a unique
way. More obviously, each student will absorb
different meanings and benefit in different ways from
the same academic material.
The qualitative human essence
we have been describing develops and is renewed
primarily through the study of Torah.
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tRanslated by
Rabbi Y. Gottlieb
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