Is Shavuos the most important Jewish holiday?

a relationship is a two-way street and that includes our relationship with Hashem for our people that relationship began at the Revelation at Sinai which we commemorate on the anniversary of that day every year on the holiday we call shuis so in this video we're going to be talking about how to take that relationship seriously get into the head and heart space of recommitting to that relationship and allowing Hashem to choose us and commit to us check it out is known by four names in fact the villagon says that it's Russia Davis the word schwoz is an acronym for the names by which the antiv is known uh the shin is shavuas obviously that one's the easy one base is the day of the first fruits the iron is at Ceres a day of holding back and the tough is Torah Matan Taylor the Schwarz is the celebration of the giving of the Torah at Sinai on the sixth day of Sivan asks a question he says what the meaning of the name at Ceres you know shavuas means weeks so that's a simple meaning is the culmination of seven weeks when is Shores the Mitzvahs count seven weeks and then celebrate your social weeks that didn't make sense it's a culmination of a period of weeks be couldn't that makes perfect sense because we couldn't the first fruits were actually brought sure so that also the correlation is very obvious like we said the date of the date of matantara coincide but what's the meaning of atse what does that serious mean ades means just holding back uh it means not doing anything so how what's what's the significance of the name it's sort of related to the question a similar question parallel question which is every yamta from the Jewish calendar has some sort of special mitzvah and then when it comes to chevous it doesn't have a special mixer you're going to say you know the the chili the cheesecake the milfix that's just a customer it's an admit for this no special Mitzvah it's not like pesach you have matzo and sucas you have um the sukkah and the low love and like Rosh Hashanah you have the chauffeur shavuas you don't have a special Mitzvah that's connected with sure so why is that so I give it and ask you actually another question which is a maybe we'll we'll put all the questions out front at the beginning biblical holidays okay rabbinically we keep holidays for two days because because the the doubt regarding the date because of the uh the uh sanctification of the moon but biblically the holidays are what like like uh like circus you have one day right did one day of this and then it's followed by a whole period of what we call it it's it's it's it's uh not restricted entirely for doing labor but it's like a week-long period of of seven days and then at the end of the seven days you have another coach which is sort of like the the uh the sandwich for circus but the point is you have a yangtiff and then it's followed by a whole week of Soviets pesach is the same thing pesach you have one devyanthif and then you have a whole week and then at the end of it also SRI as well but you have those those seven days you don't have the seven days now it's interesting because in the times of the base of when you had to bring a Corbin on yamtif they would allow you seven days from shavuas to make up the Corbin but it wasn't the yamta for seven days not like PESA where there's seven days or circus with your seven days Schwarz is really just the one day and then you could make up the Corbin but it's not another uh it's not the rest of the week isn't it isn't a yamta there's no hollamide Schwartz concept so what's with that you following all the questions we have okay it sounds good huh yeah yeah maybe yeah there'll be good business for the uh for the zoo or for the aquarium that could come up with a columbite shavors okay so what are we asking here we're asking what's the meaning schwas has four names Torah three of the four names are very clear in their meaning one of the names what does it mean s it's just not doing we asked why does schulus not have a special Mitzvah associated with it every other yamtv does and we asked why every other at least of the sugar has that seven day thing and she was just one day so basically here's the here's the answer this is how it was uh explained by by the rabbit s commemorates the chosenness of the Jewish people um you chose us among all the nations when did that occur unsure smart entire now when God chose us what did he choose us for I know there's the old Shalom alaikum joke from Fiddler on the Roof where Tavia laments and says I know that we were chosen but couldn't you choose somebody else once in a while that's a cynical uh joke you know obviously yes we've had our fair share of challenges as a people but we've also obviously the miracle of the Jewish people is how much resilience there there is as well so chosen for what what were we chosen for and and the truth is the job description of a Jew is not that we are the ones who dive into Hashem it's not yes it's not that we're the ones who do Mitzvahs version Hashem yes we do Mitzvahs it's not that we learn Toyota for Hashem yes we learn Torah but that's that's not the job description the job description of a Jew is a blank check when Hashem chose us and we chose him we didn't choose each other because of what we can do for each other we chose each other because of who we are to each other if it requires David and we David if it requires learning title we learned if it requires doing mixes we do mitzvahs but the actual nature of the relationship is a blank check it can't be limited it can't be boxed in with a description and Rosh Hashanah we express the fact that God is our King and we have the coronation ceremony and we sound the Schaefer and on sulcus we celebrate the fact that God is our protector and we we build the sukkah as a symbol of the shelter they provide provided us and continues to provide us and and and and and pesach we celebrate the God is is Our Redeemer and when when we the matzah as a commemoration of how he took us out of Egypt before the and so so quickly before the bread even had a chance to rise and each of these holidays we celebrate another aspect of the relationship another aspect of who Hashem is to us and and conversely who we are to him I'm sure we celebrate the relationship itself the fact that he chose us and we chose him there's an old uh funny poem how art of God how out of God to choose the Jews and the answer is not so odd the Jews chose God what do we choose him for we choose him to be our lawgiver our protector Our Redeemer yeah God has done all those things and does all of all of those things for us but we chose God to be our God and conversely he chose us not because of the fact that we learned Torah we do Mitzvahs or or we Davin or any of the other beautiful things that that we have to offer the relationship but he chose us so the other holidays of the year are different aspects of what Hashem offers to the Jewish people what the Jewish people offer to Hashem comes through us and it's just the relationship itself the fact that we chose him he chose us so that answers all of our questions why is shuos also called ades aceres means holding back doing nothing because to do something would be to make it too specific if we would have a specific thing then it's like to the exclusion of everything else then answers our second question why schwas doesn't have a special Mitzvah associated with it again that's the idea if we would make it one Mitzvah then it would narrow it down and it would just be that thing and schwus is not just one thing it's everything or anything between Hashem and the Jews that might arise and it also answers the question why is one day and that's seven days as we know from Counting Sphero the seven represents the seven emotional aspects that's the fullness of of the human character which mirrors the seven emotional spheroids from on High um you know there's certain times in our relationship or in any relationship where where we we put in our lesson or we put in our gura we put in artiferas and and so on and so forth and and these holidays they're seven days to represent the different facets of the character or the personality that we bring to our relationship with Hashem comes in it's one day because it's not any particular facet it's just the relationship itself can't be narrowed down so in in a certain way is like the non-yamtv it has none of the characteristics that that limit any other yantus and and that's because schwuls in a certain way is the foundation of every other yangtiff because if it wouldn't be for what happened once God choosing us and US choosing God then we wouldn't have any other Yom to to celebrate tell your story there was a a businessman a Jewish businessman he came from what we call uh yakisha stock it was a Yaki it came from actually Austria and he was a survivor and after the war he came to Canada to Montreal and he ended up being taken in by labavich why labavage because that's where a War Orphan could get an education didn't have any Hasidic uh stock he didn't have a connection to to labavage but that's where that's who took him in and uh this young man went into business after he left Yeshiva and he went to Crown Heights he went to 770 for the high holidays for tissue after he was leaving he knew being you know a businessman that he should leave a donation that's what you do so he was leaving 770 and he stopped off at the eba's Secretariat to write a check and he started to think to himself how much how big of a check should he write and uh and then he stopped and said you know I'm not from uh you know Hasidic background but you know I I was taught by the system about what a rabbit is and one thing I understand what they taught me is that a rebel knows who I am the rebel knows my my nishama and knows my purpose in this world well if the Devon knows who I am then the reper knows exactly how much DACA that my nishoma needs to give so he left a blank check at the Secretariat and he left and he went back to Montreal so uh this is at the end of the high holiday season the end of uh tissue so a week goes by two weeks go by it was checking to see if the check is gonna is gonna clear a month goes by two months go by finally it's Hanukkah and he gets a call from that other Secretariat from abraharakov who was the Rebus Chief secretary says the debit would like to know if would be okay to fill out the check for ten thousand dollars I think the year was 1963. and so ten thousand dollars would be like you know a hundred thousand dollars today and this was not a big businessman it was a young businessman he was starting out but he had made a decision right he was going to leave a blank check and now here he said let the debit decide that was a decision he made that ABBA should decide and now he's being told that Eva says ten thousand dollars would that be okay so he forced himself to say yes it's perfectly fine and he hung up the phone as quick quickly as possible before he could talk himself out of it and then he starts stressing where in the world he does not have ten thousand dollars so he starts thinking how long does it take for a check from America to clear and the the funds have to be in in the bank in Canada and how is he going to get it and what type of loans and what type of uh debts will he have to call in and this is a big deal how is he going to get the money and he starts to stress out and uh the phone rings again on the line again and yeah would like to know one more thing okay okay one more thing okay yes never would like to know if you are doing this are you doing this with joy and gladness of heart and the young businessman stopped and he thought what's the honest answer to this question and he remembered his State of Mind when he left the blank check the State of Mind was you know what however much the dock I need to give that I've been known slept it ever figure it out and now here that ebb is telling him this is how much stalker he needs to give so it occurred to him why shouldn't he be elated he's finding out what he's needed for to the penny exactly how much money he's needed for I mean wouldn't we all like to be told so clearly our mission in life so he says yes yes I'm doing it but simple but to have laid off and uh with joy he ran out scrambled around like a madman and somehow found funds to cover the check check cleared and that's the end of the story if you are Hasidic if you're also American and you want a Hollywood ending I'll tell you the rest of the story but you don't need a Hollywood ending because from the story but an American crowd so I'll give you an American ending which happens to be a true ending that year this young businessman Joe fallig went from a small young businessman to a very successful businessman his business went through the roof and of course he attributed to the stalker that he gave to the rabbit but that's not the point that's the Hollywood part of it the point is that if you fill out an amount in the check you limit it if you tell your beloved here's what I'll do for you as long as the list may be you limit it but if you say to your beloved I'm yours I belong to you and whatever is needed ask and you'll have it from me that's a blank check voice is our blank check we wrote a blank check to God saying we will be to you whatever you need us to be and he wrote a blank check to us he will be to us whatever it is that we need him to be juices different than every other Optive in that respect another way to describe this is means self-sacrifice or self-surrender giving oneself away turning over one's Soul literally means to turn over your soul but uh we have to understand what turning over your soul really means because a lot of times when we hear that expression we automatically imagine something akin to martyrdom something bloody something uh violent and that that is one form of martyrdom and there have been Holy Martyrs through our history who have given their lives in such a manner not by their own choosing obviously against their own choosing but they are forced in such a into such situations and that is one form of turning your soul over to God but there's another form of turning your soul over to God as well you know in 1967 around this very time of year when the situation in Israel was becoming clearly dire and War was clearly impending the danger was uh the danger was very real and miraculously I guess you might say many Jews from outside of the land of Israel Jews from America from Canada from Australia from England from well to do affluent First World countries started getting on planes and flying to Israel at this time of impending danger because they wanted to be part of the war effort they wanted to support their their their brothers and their sisters and during this dire time and and many many of them flew there to Israel and and they were there during that time of crisis and then we know the end of the story is that there was a miracle a very clear miracle and that the Jewish people were victorious and safe and in six days completely supernaturally God revealed his hand and we were victorious and then after that these young people started getting on planes and flying back to their homes in America and Canada and Australia and England they just went back home in droves he just started going back home and the golden ear Who was the Secretary of uh foreign affairs at that time she was not yet obviously the Prime Minister until a few years later but she was Secretary of Foreign Affairs and it was her place to address this issue so she said to these young people from abroad who had come to Israel right before the war and they were all just fleeing and running away after the war she said to them I don't understand in the time of War you were willing to come here and die with us in the time of Peace you're not willing to live with us I think there's something relevant there there's an insight there it sounds counterintuitive How could somebody who's willing to die with you not be willing to live with you if you're willing to die for the cause you won't live for the cause it sounds counter-intuitive but I think there is a logic the logic is like this dying for something you do once living for something is for the rest of your life which is more demanding now if you think about it we I guess human nature I'm talking about here we tend to automatically give value to the first type of self-surrender and we tend to minimize or play down the second type so for instance you think about the Paradigm of giving your life for the cause you know like the soldier who dies on the battlefield and you know every Park that you go to there's some Soldier there's some right some war hero some statue of some Ward Europe this is like the biggest type of hero and the biggest pillar of courage in every society in every country every every every nation who are the people that they look up to us really haven't given everything for the cause you know these types of people you know the the soldier type Paradigm they give their lives yes obviously that's that's very moving and meaningful but what about those who quietly live for a cause every day in every moment of their life you know if the soldier is one paradigm what do you call the other paradigm and I'll suggest to you like this the difference between the first type of sacrifice the soldiers type of sacrifice which is spectacular and and with uh with great Fanfare and excitement and then the second type of self-surrender which is quiet and unassuming and under the cover is the same difference between pesach and shavors everybody knows peso you know why everyone knows pesach I'm saying even Jews were not particularly religious they they know PESA they they even have some type of a savior okay maybe they don't wait until sundown to eat the matzah but they pay such they know right you go to any grocery store talking about a regular non-kosher grocery store in any regular suburban community and if there's a Jewish population at all within a few weeks before Passover there's already a Passover section peso is popular I mean for crying out loud if you go to Universal Studios in L.A and you go on the rides they have a creasyam Surf Ride right and Malaysia obana looks like Charlton Heston and they have the right because from The Ten Commandments the Cecil B DeMille movie they have the splitting of the sea I mean pesach Passover Exodus is is spectacular and everybody knows about pesach you ask your I mean you have to go outside maybe of the five towns but go find somebody who's not so religious and you ask them about shavuas is a very obscure holiday it's not so well known it's it's ironic because like we were saying earlier that we only have every other because we have shulos as a young and yet who knows is not so well known is kind of quiet you know why because pesach is the type of maceda Snapfish of there's this threat you know the Egyptians are chasing us there's this you know this this intensity and and and we're we're we're there's there's the firstborn are being killed all around us and this you know it's it's spectacular and it's it's a little bit violent and it's a and and we're running and that type of self-sacrifice is is easy to celebrate then what's sure is where we agree that that for the rest of our lives we're gonna live according to God's rules that's where we give our lives over to him our business our marriage the way we relate to our children what we eat I mean it gets really mundane not so celebrated so if if pesach is like The Warrior who gives his life in in a spectacle and what she was like the mother the mother who gets up in the middle of the night and takes care of her child multiple times a night hundreds of times thousands of times in in it throughout the the infancy of the child and nobody knows about it and nobody talks about it and there's no statue in any park built to any mother because she got up thousands of times night after night after night after night thank you basically what I'm telling you is just like masculine courage and heroism is celebrated and feminine heroism is sort of overlooked it's the same paradigm that's why I think it's interesting that was Golda Meir was a woman who said to these young people you're willing to come die with us you were not willing to stay and live with us pesach is sort of that masculine energy and that's what people get excited about it action and Schwarz is sort of feminine it's like making this quiet commitment you're writing this blank check to be there day or night no matter what for the rest of your life it's a lot less celebrated it gets a lot less attention or excitement another way of describing this this difference there are symbols there are two symbols that represents respectively one of the symbols of pesach is blood right the blood of circumcision the blood of the Corbin pesach that blood that same blood that was placed on the doorposts so that God would pass over the Jewish homes pesach is associated with blood even at the Seder at one point the wine in our cup symbolizes blood we pour out the the the the ten plagues so pesach is a blood symbolism and blood is that a snafish of Dying For a Cause if PESA has blood then what shows milk Schwarz is Malcolm there's many reasons why milk is connected to Schwarz you know one of one of the explanations is that hollov is the gematry of 40 Moses is 40 days and and Mount Sinai um but on a deeper level it's the juxtaposition or the contrast between blood and milk blood is sacrificed when you die for something milk a sacrifice you know when a mother gets up every night many times a night night after night to take care of the child and give that child life by nursing that child that's also self-sacrifice [Music] but it's not as celebrated it's not as spectacular or at least unfortunately our reaction to it is that it's not as spectacular as the first kind of self-sacrifice we get excited about the spectacle and we Overlook the quiet unassuming commitment so the warrior gets all the press and the mother you know mothers hardly get recognized now I'm saying this literally mothers hardly get recognized but I also mean in our own relationship with Hashem in our own Jewish identity blood gets a lot more attention than milk what do I mean by Blood and milk you want to talk to Jews about Judaism what sells sorry to speak so crassly but what gets people's attention blood okay so if we talk about Holocaust Education that gets people's attention but let's say I want to get a bunch of Jewish children together and teach them how to make brachas on food gets a lot less attention [Music] not denigrating the importance of remembering those who gave their lives as Jews what I'm saying is it's funny not funny haha but strange that the same people who get excited about celebrating martyrdom were Jews gave up their lives and had to die as Jews have a hard time getting excited about Jews living as Jews teaching children how to make brachazan food nah that's not spectacular that's not that's not exciting or give you another example you talk to people about the security of Jewish people in the Jewish homeland and the land of Israel if you talk to me about a threat to Israel there are many Jews who will get very very serious about that that means something to that that means a lot to them if you tell them there's a cause and the cause is to support security of Jewish people I think it's very very very inspired as they should as they should there's a place for it but the very same people you tell them um we're raising money for uh for a Mikvah so that we can promote the purity of of the Jewish marriage come on you're gonna bother me with your rituals now you're boring me it's Human Nature it's human nature that we get excited about the life and death intensity the pesach Paradigm the blood and we're unimpressed with the Quiet commitment the mother the shortest the milk it's just human nature I I had a a grandfather my uh my grandfather Oliver Shalom was uh he was a business owner he was a lawyer but he was also a business owner and actually the story of he passed the bar in 1929 when he was 20 years old he was uh the first one for my family was born in America and he was 20 years old and in 1929 he graduated from law school at 20 years old and then he couldn't take the bar because he had to be 21. and his first case was that he sued the state of Illinois for permission to take the bar before he was 21 and he won so and then he was a business owner and over his lifetime he gave away millions of dollars now I want you to understand something he was not a wealthy man by by any stretch we would most people consider him middle class no way a lot of money that was just how he lived and he never considered it to be anything particularly special that's just how he lived he gave away money I mean that's that's how he saw it he saw he saw it as like we don't call it charity we call it sadaka why because it's a documents Justice just the right thing to do so he gave away a lot of money I want to tell you he told me one time sometimes in the summer I would go work in the storeroom at his at his company I would work in the it was a factory there and I work in the store room and I would do inventory or which left boxes and then uh during breaks I would hang out with him so I remember one time he told me a story and it's interesting because I heard the same story but a totally different version of it um years later from from a fundraiser I'm going to tell you the way the fundraiser told it to me and then I'm going to tell you why my grandfather told me because I want you to hear first the way that's not so great and then I want to tell you the way that I think is is really great I want to leave you with the you know with the best for last um this fundraiser told me that sometimes when he's fundraising and he's trying to squeeze somebody for a little bit more of a commitment so he he has this Parable he says that one time a uh a chicken and the pig were walking down the street and they saw a sign at a restaurant that said ham and eggs so they they they were looking at each other well ham and eggs wow that's talking about us and the Pig says to the chicken um no because for you you'll only be a contributor but for me I'm making a commitment that's how the fundraiser told me the joke like somebody's giving like a chicken means yeah he gives a little bit here it's just contributing someone gives like a pig he was saying it in a good way that they they they're dying for the cause I guess that means they give so much until they go bankrupt and they can't give to anyone else okay maybe that's what it meant I told you I don't really like the way the fundraiser told it to me I want to tell you how my how is 80 all of Sean talked to me he told me completely different he said like this he said the Pig and the chicken walking down the street they saw the sign ham and eggs oh that's talking about us and the pig bragged and said look how fat I am look how much meat I give and you you scrawny little chicken what do you have how much meat do you have on your bones and uh the chicken says to the pig no it's the opposite every single day of my life I give an egg you're only good to someone when you're dead I give an egg every day and then at the end of my life they eat me as well that's how my zadie told the story now it's not as cute it doesn't have a punch line like the version that the fundraiser told it but I'm telling you that version of the story it's how he lived as well that every single day of his life whatever he had he gave it away and then in the end whatever he had left he gave that away as well we don't have to wait until it's do or die we don't have to wait until the fireworks of some type of of Crisis occur in our lives in order to feel like being Jewish will be quite a Pity if the the most Jewish display of our lives would be the last moment of our lives and that everything up until then would be uneventful jewishly the a tragedy and Schwartz we made a commitment to Hashem of course pesach of course martyrdom in blood that that was that was that was first we did that first but then afterwards let's grow up a little bit milk living for something giving your life for something quietly unassumingly day after day after day after day after day and in the end when you want to give everything else away give that also too thank you so grab your Kiva he was looking for martyrdom but he didn't go out and get himself martyred at the very end of his life it was it was imposed upon him he always knew was the greatest level but he didn't go out run out and get himself killed it was easy in those days to get yourself killed you just go uh mess with a Roman and it'll be Q in fact lived 120 years like my should have been lived 120 years and didn't die until the very last day until he was 120. and what did he do for those years for the first 40 years he didn't know Tyra he was a simple Shepherd then in another 40 years he studied he was a student and in the last 40 years he taught students he had students of his own he gave his entire life to others and in the end he also sacrificed himself he gave it all away but who would Rebecca if all he had was the one story about him on the last day of his life because everything he did until that time how he lived as a Jew and he lived for others and he lived for you this guy so it's interesting one of the homological explanations of the seven weeks between peso and schwus is that it corresponds to the seven days seven days of counting for a woman before she immerses in Mikvah in the Mikvah and returns to her husband that the Jewish people came out of Egypt and we needed a period of uh like a a a a a waiting time before we could purify ourselves and then be ready for the greatest Revelation that ever occurred the Revelation at Sinai the seven weeks of course finding the seven days so it's interesting our sages tell us it's fascinating the insights that our sages had obviously without the benefit of of medical technology but one of the things that they just tell us is that um by and large as a rule there can be exceptions but um a woman will not become pregnant while she's nursing and and the reason is the gamada says because that which would be blood turns to milk so it gets used for milk and then it can't become blood on a deeper level this is talking to every one of us every one of us knows that push comes to shove if God forbid we were put in the place that our ancestors have been put in generation after generation where they gave their lives fearlessly for for for their jewishness and for for God we know we could do it we know that spiritual Adrenaline Rush would would kick in and we could we could be martyred we could die for God that's blood that's blood but that same blood we can turn it into milk can turn the blood into milk what does that mean it means quiet unassuming boring sacrifice that No One's Gonna Write About in the newspaper you know that you got up and you came to school and you davened and then you went to work and you conducted yourself fairly and then you got a paycheck and you paid for your kids tuition and you gave to DACA No One's Gonna Know No One's Gonna care it's not a spectacle but that's milk that's living for Judaism and that's a greater sacrifice that's a more meaningful sacrifice that's the ongoing sacrifice dying you die once living you live every single day of your life that's the blank check that's the relationship with Hashem that we pledged ourselves to assure us and which Hashem conversely pledged himself to us that there are no limits to it it's not a job description I'm giving you me all of me everything I have whatever is needed that's a Jew and that's what Hashem gives back to us so when you're eating your cheesecake whether it's your blueberry cheesecake or your chocolate marble cheesecake or you just like good old-fashioned plain cheesecake when you're eating a cheesecake this Shivers please have in mind that uh it's all about the cheesecake it's about the milk you should give our lives day by day minute by minute quietly unassumingly to God as real Jews who live for Judaism we should all have happy long healthy lives to give to Hashem every day I hope that lecture gave you a greater appreciation of choice if you're looking for more information about Schwarz from a sort of fun perspective check out this conversation that I had with my brother David about choice he's funnier than me he's smarter than me he's a lot more interesting than me actually so check out this discussion I had with him all about what Lewis means