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RABBI’S FORUM

“How many of you celebrated Passover?” Good...now answer this, “How many of you celebrated Sukkot?” Or, better yet, “How many of you are looking forward to celebrating Shavuot?” Not as many hands raised, right?

Why is that? It seems that some holidays get all the attention, while to others we give the short shrift. This may have to do with our lack of understanding or appreciation of what the Holiday is all about. Passover we understand. “Pharaoh tried to kill us. We escaped in the desert while the raw dough became Matzah. Great. Let's eat.” The holiday's themes of redemption and freedom and Jewish triumph over tremendous odds strike a chord with us. We can relate to those ideas more readily than we can to the Lulav or the Esrog, or, dare I say it, the Sukkah itself. I want to change that, however. I want to open your eyes and your minds to something tremendous and unexpected. I want to clue you in on something truly special that will happen in our congregation.

The holiday of Shavuot falls this year on Sunday and Monday June 8-9. In its most basic sense, we say that this holiday is Z'man Matan Torah, the Season of the Giving of the Torah. Shavuot is the anniversary of when God gave the Torah to the Children of Israel. On Simkhat Torah in the fall we celebrate finishing and beginning the Torah again, but Shavuot is all about how we got the Torah in the first place. We rejoice that it is a part of our lives, and we give thanks for the teachings it has to offer. These are surely things we can all agree on, even if some of us disagree on the specifics on how we came to possess the Torah itself.

We have two extra reasons to rejoice this year on Shavuot. Not only will we be celebrating Confirmation, but we will also be welcoming a new Torah Scroll into our community.

Shavuot has been the traditional date upon which Reform Jews celebrate Confirmation. This is the day on which young people (16 year olds in our Religious School) formally conclude their synagogue-based education and fully and publicly accept upon themselves the dictates of our tradition. Why has this been tied to Shavuot? Because of the giving of the Torah, Our Confirmands accept Torah upon themselves just as our ancestors did in the Wilderness of Sinai.

This Shavuot we will also be formally dedicating a new Torah Scroll in our congregation. Through the hard work and generosity of Jim and Penny Walzer, our brand new Torah will be ritually installed in our sanctuary on Shavuot. This new Torah is a symbol of many things. It is on the one hand a tangible sign of our link to the past. Nothing is more important to a congregation than the possession of a Torah, this is our heritage. Moreover, having a new Torah says something significant about our future, as we look forward to using this sacred scroll as part and parcel of our worship for years to come. The appearance of a new scroll is always a cause for celebration, so much the more so that it will be taking place at Shavuot.

So come this year to Shavuot. Come and understand why the holiday is important. Come and give thanks for the Torah, the unique possession of the Jewish People. Come to celebrate with our young people who are entering the next phase of their lives. Come and witness as our Ark gets filled anew with the heritage of Judaism.

Shalom,

Rabbi Fratello