Standing at Sinai in 2025: The Covenant That Carried Us

Shavuot ended this week. Quietly, as it always does, without the drama of Passover or the introspection of Yom Kippur. But for me, this year, Shavuot carried more weight than ever before.

It commemorates the moment our people stood at Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments, not just as a revelation but as the beginning of a covenant. A responsibility. And in 2025, that message felt less like ancient history and more like a lifeline.

We are living through a time when truth feels negotiable and morality is distorted by ideology. Antisemitism is not whispered in the shadows; it is shouted in the open, cloaked in the language of justice and progress. Jews are increasingly portrayed not as a people with ancient roots and deep trauma, but as oppressors. This inversion of history does not just erase Jewish suffering, it attempts to justify new forms of hate.

Shavuot reminded me that we have been here before. That this moment of confusion and distortion is not new. And that the Ten Commandments were never meant to be abstract. They are a radical moral blueprint. These are not just religious principles. They became the foundation of Jewish civilization and ultimately the moral and legal foundation of Western civilization.

Their influence extends far beyond Jewish tradition, shaping how we understand fairness, responsibility, and the limits of power. They demand that freedom be tied to conscience and that values be translated into action. And that is where my personal journey began to converge with these ancient teachings.

Over the previous few weeks, I had been writing about what it feels like to be openly Jewish in this moment. I reflected on how growing up in the Soviet Union gave me a moral instinct to recognize danger, even when it came dressed in the language of virtue. I wrote about the disorientation of having your pain denied, and about how difficult it is to explain antisemitism to people who seem unwilling or unable to hear it. I wrote about silence, and what it means to live in a world that increasingly denies or distorts Jewish experience.

And unexpectedly, those reflections led me somewhere deeply personal. I decided to have my bat mitzvah.

Not at twelve, but now, as an adult, on my own terms. And in preparing for it, I began studying the Torah portion that would be mine: Parshat Yitro.

It is this portion that we read on Shavuot, the portion that recounts the giving of the Ten Commandments. But what struck me was what came before the thunder, a lesson in justice. Moses, overwhelmed by the demands of leadership, listens to his father-in-law, Yitro, who advises him to appoint capable, ethical leaders to judge fairly. Before revelation, there must be structure. Before commandments, a system.

That felt especially resonant this year, when so many of the institutions we once trusted, including academia, media, and civic leadership, seem to have abandoned moral clarity. Yitro reminded me that justice is not just an ideal. It is a structure, a shared responsibility, a system that depends on people of integrity to sustain it.

And it reminded me that even without formal religion, that structure lived in my home. My parents, like many Soviet Jews, could not practice Judaism openly. But they taught by example. They held fast to dignity, to truth, to justice. They did not talk about Sinai, but they carried it with them. Our connection to Torah was not spoken. It was lived.

That is what I felt this Shavuot. The covenant made at Sinai was never just a contract between God and one generation. It was a framework for survival. We lost our land, our sovereignty, our temples. But we did not lose our law. We did not lose our memory. We built a nation not on borders, but on books. Not through force, but through moral transmission.

And now, we do have a land again. The State of Israel is not just a miracle of history. It is a test of our responsibility. If we were sustained in exile by our laws, memory, and moral clarity, then having power and sovereignty must raise the bar, not lower it. Those of us in the diaspora also have a role to play: to support, to protect, to strengthen. Not only materially, but morally. We owe it to our past and to our future to help ensure that the covenant continues to guide what we build, not just what we remember.

And this is what I carry now, after the holiday: the understanding that we are still here because the covenant carried us. We endured exile without power, without land, without safety, but we never let go of the law, the memory, or the responsibility. Now, it is ours to carry forward. With clarity, with courage, and yes, maybe with a few extra pounds.

Because if there is one thing Jews do on Shavuot besides study Torah, it is eat cheesecake. A lot of it.

But we have always known that survival is not just about what we consume. It is about what we uphold. We did not make it this far by accident. We made it here because we remembered who we are.

And now, we choose to remember. Louder, prouder, and more deliberately than ever.