Shavuot: Grit and Glory in the Climb

Shavuot has so many beautiful interwoven threads; it is truly inspiring. Sadly, we don’t always see it – it passes in a flash and often plays second or third fiddle to many other holidays.

To me, however, it is the holiday that best represents the battle we all face – the hard graft and work that is life, trying to live good lives, being the best we can be, summoning the strength to fight on. The Ten Commandments that we read standing up and the Torah that many of us learn throughout the night are not statements of love; they have moved a stage beyond this. They are a deep commitment – each to their own level – between us and G-d, and this constant with its ups and downs is what we celebrate.

New things are relatively easy, and we love them – the smell of a new car, a new resolution to keep fit or diet, the first page of a new notebook – it comes with energy, passion, and enthusiasm. How often does it last?

We see a new thing in the perspective of the Jewish People in the form of Pesach. We also see the sense of renewal and rebirth in our personal journeys in the form of the High Holy Days. These are critical events because the way we start something is critical to success.

The end of something can also come with a sense of renewed kinetic energy – we all have a tendency to speed up for the finish line, the last kilometer in a 10k, or the five-minute left bell in an exam where we find a last burst of energy. It is the slog in the middle that we struggle with most, many of us anyway.

Shavuot falls into this category when I look at it. It is where the tires hit the road, and we are tested through the stresses and strains of real life. It is part of the journey of each individual as they make it through the hard slog of the year long after all the other festivals and as we turn the corner towards the Nine Days and then to Elul. It is also a similar part of the journey of our people as we go from a nation miraculously led out of Egypt directly by G-d to a people who enter into a covenant of commitment and responsibility at Mount Sinai.

It goes further – let’s look at two other aspects of Shavuot…

Shavuot is known as Hag Ha’Katzir (The Harvest Festival) and Yom Ha’Bikurim (The Day of the First Fruits). In an annual agrarian cycle, one that so few of us recognize anymore but which used to be the key to survival, literally, Shavuot is the moment when we’d come to Jerusalem to celebrate (hopefully) the first of the fruits – the wheat and barley are now ready/ripe, and the first fruits of the spring are harvestable. It is a reward for the hard graft the farmers engage in each season and their gratitude to God for providing for them.

Secondly, let’s look at the beautiful Megillah read on Shavuot – Ruth. She truly, more than possibly any other character in Tanach, shows the tenacity of spirit to keep the faith, to step up, to shoulder her responsibility (in fact, way more than), to give and to keep plugging away. She achieves greatness through her ancestry of the Line of David, and she seemingly does it with what to me seems enormous courage and persistence – she doesn’t give up.

Shavuot is a real day of celebration – it is a modest one – it is not dramatic, but it is a chance to take a deep breath and enjoy the Torah we spend so much of our life trying to live up to and to instill into our children. It can boost us along the way by showing us that there is actually tremendous reward and satisfaction for the hard graft.

Counting the 49 Days of Sefirat Ha’Omer is not easy; it involves consistent and constant care and attention. The same goes for the annual crop, which is only just beginning to bear fruit at Shavuot. Keeping God’s Law is the same.

But Shavuot is not the end, and we haven’t achieved our final goal. In an individual sense, we have to go through the hardship of the Three Weeks and the effort of Elul to build ourselves towards the annual finishing line that is Yom Kippur. As a people, we have not completed our mission. In Exodus, God redeems us with five sayings – only four of which we have achieved, and the fifth is arguably happening as we speak, but there is a lot of work to do. As it says:

It is for this reason we debate having four or five cups and agree on four with an extra cup for Elijah at the Seder.

Shavuot is the 4th milestone on this journey – personal and individual. There is still a 5th which is something we are in the grip of.

For these reasons, Shavuot is not the time for an all-out party– we are not done – but we must strengthen ourselves and reaffirm that we are making progress, we are in the right direction, and we will have the courage to keep fighting.

This is a theme for Shavuot that feels very relevant to me in my 50th year fighting a terminal disease that threatens to take me down with no treatment. I and we have to keep fighting.