Compliments of a student - a bit of Torah

Aside from the regular teaching I, on Thursday evenings, teach an extra class. Our school has a "mishmar" program, with mishmar being the Torah learning encouraged after school once a week. The class is unconnected to my daily work and the students can take any of a number of options so there is often no continuity. It is learning for learning's sake. When I started teaching it, I had to find an angle: what would my class be that might attract students to it. So many of the rabbis were confronting the big questions of faith and practice that I decided to specialize in the small questions -- little things that bug me or don't make sense but which should be thought about also. I pointed out to the students that there is still a lot in Judaism that needs to be discussed and uncovered and they have as much right as anyone to come up with novel understandings or explanations. Over the years, I have come with a bunch of little things that don't make sense or that need discussion and we have had a fun time arguing over the trivia that populates out days. Today, something really wonderful happened. I came to the mishmar session ready with a problem which I thought would keep us busy as we worked the problem through, back and forth, arguing and challenging so that even if we ended up with no satisfying answer, we could say that we moved the conversation forward.

I was troubled by how we describe the upcoming holiday of Shavu'ot, the feast of weeks. It is one of the three pilgrimage festivals and is an intense celebration of the Torah and our being defined as a Jewish nation. In our liturgy, when we mention the day, we refer to it as "z'man matan torateinu" -- the time of the giving of our Torah. What troubled me is that in certain complementary stories, the medrash, the holiday is called "Yom Kabbalat hatorah" the day of the receiving of the Torah. This phrasing makes more sense to me. We should be focusing on our receiving the law, not God's giving! I can give anyone anything but if he doesn't take it then my giving is for nothing. Additionally, we make a big deal about how the people, at the foot of Mount Sinai, all said "na'aseh v'nishma" -- we will do then we will hear (an explanation). We pledged ourselves as adherents of the law. We received it as a people and we should be celebrating that. And yet, aside from 30 mentions in these secondary texts, the holiday seems to focus on the giving (I am skipping the possible answer that we didn't really receive the Torah at Sinai, but did so after the Purim story, and the Kotzker rebbe's idea that we actually are still receiving it every day so we don't focus on one day of receiving). I reminded students that the focus in the prayer-references to the other pilgrimage days is on the people, not God (Sukkot, the feast of booths, is "z'man simchateinu" the time of OUR joy, and Pesach/Passover is the "z'man cheiruteinu" the time of OUR freedom). So if the precedent is to frame things in light of US, why refer to the day by invoking God's action?

Then along came Zoe R. She raised her hand and reminded me that the phrase for Shavu'ot prayers is 2 words; yes, the first is "matan" the giving, but the second is "Torateinu" OUR Torah. Maybe, she suggested, the Torah was always and already ours but it hadn't been "released" to us. We had been waiting for it to be our turn to take what was destined for us from the Beginning and on this day, Hashem gave us this gift (matanah). Imagine if you grow up knowing that one day, the fancy piece of jewelry will be yours. It is out of reach even while it already has your name on it. The day that the other decides you are ready for it and hands it to you becomes a momentous occasion. You need not decide to "receive" it -- you decided that ages ago! The day of Shavu'ot is the time of matan Torateinu. OUR Torah was placed in our care so we could become what we were fated to be. This explanation accounted for 2 words, for the consistency of focus and wording among all the festivals and for the stress we place on this perspective. It comports with the Jewish notion that the Torah was written for the Jews. In other words, it is a wonderfully straightforward, efficient and comprehensive answer which I have not seen before! It was new and it was excellent. I told Zoe I'd write it up but will only do so in her name and with her blessing.

Our next generation of Torah scholars can think, formulate and create understanding. For this, I smile.