Our Torah, Our Purpose




Next week on the 15th and 16th we celebrate Shavuot, the holiday the rabbis called Zeman Matan Toratanu. Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai but the rabbinic phrase actually means “the time of the giving of our Torah. There is much to learn in this little phrase, after all wasn’t it God’s Torah that he gave to Israel. Why should the sages go out of their way to emphasis that it is our Torah?

Today one of the buzz words we often hear is about giving someone a reason to “own” an idea or a cause. It means giving someone a reason to commit fully- to give them “ownership.” While this may make a lot of sense in the corporate world, it also reveals what Judaism is all about. When we, as a people, accepted the Torah at Mt. Sinai it did becomes ours. The Torah is a code of holiness, a code of conduct, and a code to “unlock” the secrets of human life. The Torah is also a blueprint for creating a better world. If Israel was not ready to turn abstract ideas into the daily workings of human society then the Torah was really God’s book not Israel’s Book.

In the Torah the loftiest spiritual messages sit side by side with some of the seemingly most mundane details of human life. This often confuses people. What would God care about the way in which people harvest their crops or make their clothes or anything else that is so pitifully human. God does care about these “little details” because they reflect much larger ideas. You live what you believe. If you perceive the world as a sacred place you will treat it as such. If you treat it as something that rests beyond God’s concern then it is beyond your concern also.

Shavuot celebrates the giving of our Torah because it is we who bring Torah into the world of everyday life. Consider the recent factory tragedy in India. An eight story factory was constructed without permits or supervision of any kind. The building was used as a clothing factory to turn out clothes that would be sold in America. This labor force worked for ten cents a day to create the clothes that we wear. When the building literally fell in on itself hundreds of people died. They are still searching for bodies. Is it any wonder that the Torah includes laws on how to treat workers?

That is but one example. If you search the pages of the Torah you will see why our “ownership” is critical. Only by each of us making the effort to address the world as it is, and longing to make it what it could be , does God’s Torah become ours. There is an old saying that “the devil is in the details.” In reality it is God who is in the details.

Shavuot is something to celebrate- no people has ever had the opportunity to share in re-creating the world in the way we have. The only question is if we will make the Torah ours or, through our inaction, let God keep it to Himself.

This article appeared in the South Florida Jewish Journal.