The Holiday with No Date: Why Shavuot is All About the Journey (Shavuot) | Land of Israel

So, out of all the holidays, >> [clears throat] >> you know, I don't know about you guys, but I tend to prepare least for Shavuot. Right? Like all of the other holidays, they really require a lot of um a lot of prep time. Uh uh you know, when you think about it, you have to, you know, for for Sukkot, you have to get the wood and the and the foliage, and you have to set up your sukkah and then get your four four species. And for Passover, you have to clean the house and buy your matzah and the wine and set up the Seder plate. Shavuot has this tendency. It's like, I mean, it's only one day, and it kind of feels like this, you know, it's it's it's like this short holiday. There's not really much that you have to do. It's almost like no-brainer. You just kind of get there. >> [clears throat] >> Well, what's interesting is that when you look closely in the Torah, Shavuot actually has more prep time than any other holiday. I mean, we're spending 49 days walking towards Shavuot, and the preparation, the need to prepare, is actually built into the name of the holiday. What do we call the holiday of Shavuot, even though it has a few names in the Torah? The most beloved name that just rolls off of our tongue is Shavuot, based on Exodus 34, which says you make yourself a festival of the weeks. Shavuot means weeks. What are the weeks? The weeks are the 7 weeks that we're counting for the Omer up to receiving the Torah. So, that's actually mind-blowing when you think about it. On Shavuot, we know, just from the counting of the days, that it's the that it's that it's the time when we had the revelation at Sinai, because we know that 49 days after, you know, yeah, 40 these 49 days of counting, these 49 days and days, we know that we received the Torah. But the name is not called Holiday of Revelation of the Torah. It's named after the time that comes before the revelation. It would be like calling Passover the holiday of slavery because of the slavery that came right before it. It's actually really funny when you think about it. I think it's pulling our attention. It's like saying, "Hey guys, notice the main idea of this >> [clears throat] >> of this festival is the preparation for it itself. The preparation for the holiday is what we're supposed to be planting into our hearts. You know, when you look at the elements of, you know, this drama that happened in the first year of, you know, the the Exodus, there was human participation. The Israelites had to prepare in some way for all of the different miracles that happened in the festivals. You know, we wouldn't you we needed Hashem to save us. We needed God to save us from Egypt. But, Israel also had to get up and go. I mean, we know that many were left behind. If you want to, you know, on Sukkot, Hashem Hashem protected us in the desert, but we needed to build a booth to live in. The revelation at Sinai, that's just something that came down. That's Hashem's bestowing something on us. At that particular moment, there was nothing to do but to receive. But, how do you make yourself a vessel that can receive? It's all about the preparation. You can only receive the Torah if on the way to receiving the Torah, you've been making yourself into a vessel that's clean, that's pure, that's able to actually perceive the unique Torah that's being given at this time every year. >> [snorts] >> Um you know, so so so when we look at the Torah, how do you actually do that? So, you know, in tonight in in uh in the Women of Valor and Sacred Seasons, we're really going to go deep on But, just to give sort of a little a little taste, you know, there's this 49-day journey that we're right now in the midst of when you're when we're counting towards receiving the Torah. Now, normally, how do you guys count when you're counting towards something that you're excited for? People always, you know, they often think of these 49 days like a countdown. We're so excited. You know, my nephew is getting married soon, and every day they have uh a different friend or family member post uh like a a picture with a count down of the number of days until the wedding. So, it's like 18, 17, 16. But, we don't do that when we're counting our way to Sinai. We're not counting like 49, 48, 47, because we're not in a countdown. We're in a count up. We're starting from the bottom of the bottom, starting as slaves. Like there's nowhere worse to start, starting as slaves and counting up in the Omer, digging ourselves little by little out of the dark place that we were. In in in in the slavery in Egypt, and kind of climbing our way up these 49 steps of a ladder towards Sinai. So, there's What are the What is this time about? So, first of all, there's just the walking in the desert. That willingness to walk towards the mountain of Sinai, to follow Hashem into the unknown. So, it's like, how do we translate How do we translate in our life? It's like this commitment to say like, Hashem, I will follow you into the desert. I will follow your path. I don't know what will come. But, I know that I'm going to follow you into the unknown. And as they get closer, Hashem gives them more instructions. And it's right today. It says in the first day It says in the third month, on like the very day. Today, we're on the first day of Sivan, we started to really prepare. And I don't know if there are many chapters in the Torah that use the word prepare or ready so much as the chapter preceding the revelation. Hashem says, you have to get ready like this, you have to get ready like that. You have to purify yourself. You have to wash your clothes. You limit your your physical indulgences because you want to make yourself a really pure vessel leading up to this special day to be able to receive the Torah. Say, "Yes, Hashem. I'm not I'm going to kind of clean up my life a little bit more to make myself a a little bit more pure, a little bit less involved in the physical and more involved in the spiritual. And then comes this covenant. We usually think of revelation itself as the covenant. When you read the verses, you see that the covenant came first and then the revelation. Hashem says, "If you obey me and keep my covenant and you will be a treasure to me. And and and you'll be a kingdom of princes and a holy nation." And then [snorts] Moshe comes and tells this to Israel. And then Israel says, "Everything that Hashem says we shall do." And Hashem gets through that message back from Moshe. And Moshe takes those words back to Hashem. And then the revelation begins. Meaning, leading up to the revelation is what's really going on. It's that commitment that we make in our hearts. We say, "Hashem, whatever you're going to tell me to do, I am pre-committing to that." This is before they receive the tablets. They say, "Hashem, we're just going to do it." And this is such a beautiful moment. You know, we kind of what There's so many paintings of of, you know, Israel at Sinai. They all look so beautiful and angelic standing at the bottom. You know, it says that on the day of the revelation, Israel, they stood tall at the bottom of the mountain. You know, they stood up at the bottom of the mountain. And you kind of have this image of these beautiful angelic people in their clean clothes at the bottom of the mountain, which is true. But at the same time, you have to remember who we're talking about. We're talking about a people who've been slaves. There's probably people there without a finger, without an arm, without a leg. This is likely a very raggedy bunch. You have a lot of people there who've lost their babies to being thrown in the Nile. You people who've been like through a lot. And then they leave after all of that only to be attacked by Amalek and and have to to to to fight and to and to deal with and and to have, you know, just they've they've been through so much. And when you think about it like that, there's something so beautiful about they stood tall at the bottom of the mountain. Like they said, yes, Hashem, even with everything we've been through, wherever we are, we are standing here and we are accepting We're accepting you as king over us. Rashi says that they said to Moshe when when Moshe when Hashem offered to speak through Moshe, they said, We want to hear you, Hashem. So it's sort of an invitation when the name Shavuot is inviting us to look mostly at the time before Shavuot, this time that we're in right now, and say, "How do I prepare myself? How do I say, Hashem, with everything I've been through, and all the mistakes that I made, and all the things that have happened to me, I'm going to stand here and I'm going to say, 'Yes, Hashem, I want to hear your voice. I want to hear your voice in my life, and I will follow you through the desert, wherever you send me.'" And I think that is what we're marking. And you know, the word Shavuot has a double meaning cuz it means weeks, but it also means an oath, like a covenant. And it's in plural. Meaning, we are making an oath to Hashem, this commitment to Hashem, and Hashem is making the commitment back to us, saying, "When you make yourself a ready vessel to receive the Torah, I will come and I will meet you, and I will take you, and I will take you as a person to me, as as to be in a relationship with me." And so it's those preparations leading up to Shavuot that really set us up to reap that benefit and the enlightenment and the holiness that is packed into that day and just waiting to come down to us. So I bless us to really use these coming days to prepare ourselves for the holiday of Shavuot, to use these weeks in this final week to really renew our oaths with Hashem and our vows with Hashem. So, and to the ladies, of course, I invite you to jump even deeper into this tonight with me and then, of course, feel free to share it back with the gentlemen. Tell the gentlemen all of the things we learned. So, with that I'll say goodbye to everybody and hope to see some of you back at Women of Valor later on today. >> [music]