Shavuos: The Strength to Overcome All Challenge

It is no secret that Jews in both Israel and around the world are facing tremendous challenges at this time. And addressing these challenges demands great strength. “Me’ayin yavo ezri/from where will come my help” (Psalms 121:1) – from where can we draw the necessary fortitude to confront and overcome the hazards and threats that assail us from all sides? The holiday of Shavuos provides a powerful answer.

What is true strength? Is it physical might, willpower, spiritual vigor – perhaps all of these together?

Are you strong? What type of strength do you admire, and to what type of strength do you aspire?

Each of us has strengths and weaknesses. There are those areas in which we excel, and others in which we could use improvement. All of us succeed at times and fail at others. It is simply human nature.

It is also our nature to desire to improve. We are born fragile and vulnerable, and as we develop and mature, we gain strength, and balance, and knowledge. We become more adept and more aware. Life, ideally, is a constant process of learning and growing and progressing from one level to the next.

The impetus and catalyst for this progress is resistance. Without resistance, there can be no strength. For just as physical muscles must be stressed and strained in order to grow, so too we must be pushed, pulled, and tested in order to develop our mental and spiritual faculties. If muscles are not worked, they will atrophy, and if our psyche is not pressed, it will not expand.

“Who is strong,” the Sages ask in Pirkei Avos. And they answer, “one who conquers his inclination” (Avos 4:1). It is only through battling and overcoming one’s baser nature that one can develop fortitude. Strength itself is defined as the ability to master and control oneself. How can we do so?

If it is God Himself who has created us with an “inclination” toward base and animalistic tendencies, then how are we expected to resist and vanquish it? Clearly He has done so in order to offer us the “resistance” we need to train and hone our spiritual muscles. But what if we fail? Is it fair for Him to judge and/or chastise us if we do not have the requisite power and wherewithal to overcome the potent inclinations with which we were born and imbued?

G-d wants us to succeed and to grow. While He challenges us in order to work and develop our faculties, He simultaneously provides us the strength to meet and overcome every obstacle and difficulty. This truth is stated plainly in a frequently cited verse from Psalms, “A-donai oz l’amo yitein, A-donai yivareich es amo bashalom/G-d will give strength to His people, G-d will bless His people with peace” (Psalms 29:11).

This verse is recited on shabbos morning as we open the ark to remove the Torah. The Alter Rebbe explains that the “oz/strength” that Hashem gives to His people is the Torah itself. Torah’s wisdom strengthens our G-dly soul which is imprisoned by our body and animal soul. Every word of Torah we learn “endows the G-dly soul with the power and strength to overcome the physical tendencies of the body and the animal soul and their crass material nature” (Torah Or, Bachodesh Hashlishi).

Not only does Torah strengthen the G-dliness within us, the Alter Rebbe continues, but it also weakens our “inclination,” i.e. the animal soul and the physical body. Torah is therefore referred to as “oz v’tushia” (Job 12:16). “Oz,” as we mentioned, means strength. “Tushia” is simply understood as wisdom, but its root, “תש/tash,” also means weakness. Referring to Torah as “oz v’tushia” therefore means that it is a source of both strength and weakness. It provides strength to the G-dly soul, and it simultaneously weakens the supremacy of the body and the animal soul.

With this, we can revisit the Sages’ statement that strength is the ability to conquer and control one’s inclination. Such self-mastery is not easy, but it is available to all who utilize the strength granted to them by the Torah. Shavuos, then, is a day of tremendous potency. The Torah is accessible to each us every day, but on Shavuos we are given additional power to receive the Torah anew, and thereby to harness its energy to master ourselves, our environment, and all aspects of the creation.

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