Sometimes it is the one-liners that resonate:

When the Rabbis coined the tagline for the holiday of Shavuot, they chose ‘The time of the giving of our Torah.’ Every prayer for the day includes this refrain. Described as our Torah, the Torah of the people, the rabbinic formulation simultaneously grounds the holiday in a historic moment of Divine revelation and yet immediately transfers that Torah into our possessive plural national guardianship.

The Shavuot custom of studying Torah deep into the night is rooted in a rich image between the Torah and its human connection. The Zohar imagines Shavuot morning as a covenantal wedding day. But, rather than a depicting a night of nervous anticipation, it visualizes the night before with the bride surrounded by the friends in her bridal party. Throughout the night, her friends pour over the wedding dress embroidering and adorning it with distinct beads. Each individual embellishing gesture contributing to a one-of-a-kind intentional collective creation. The Kabbalistic tradition emerged to take inspiration from this scene and dedicate these preceding hours into communal toil of Torah. Before we renew our covenant of Torah between God and the Jewish people we spend the night invested in a shared labor of selfless love. This is a powerful of what a Torah that is ours truly means. It is not simply our shared property – but rather a collective mutually supported and nobly crafted inheritance.

Perhaps not surprising then, as the Mishna describes the ancient Shavuot ritual of bringing first fruits during the Temple period, the focus also begins in the hours that precede the ritual. First fruits that appeared throughout Israel were gathered by each individual farmer and ceremonially brought up and presented to the Temple priests. The Mishna vividly describes this robust procession within the city streets filling up with pilgrims and their loads from across the country before they even arrive at the Temple. The Mishna presents the moment as Jerusalem’s city people step out to greet the visitors declaring “Welcome, people of such and such, to Jerusalem”. This snapshot moment of convergence shapes the journey to the Temple. This gesture of honor and hospitality extended by the city dwellers to the rural pilgrims crowding their streets illustrates supportive bonds that pave the path of our shared sacred journey.

This year, in the midst of so many sleepless nights as we prepare for the time of the giving of our Torah, I pray that we approach this covenantal moment with an understanding of our mutual interconnection. I pray that our soldiers are safe and those held hostage go free. I pray that our eyes reflect those of the pilgrims in the alleys of Jerusalem where our differences are appreciated as essential to our collective capacity. I pray that the Torah that we study and debate, turning ideas inside-out and upside-down are expressed like a supportive bridal party striving to form a glorious fabric to adorn our treasured shared Torah of peace for our nation in Israel and around the world.