This Shabbat, we celebrate Shavuot, the moment that, according to tradition, we all stood at Sinai together to receive the Torah. And it really was all of us. Every single Jewish soul who was or would be, according to the tradition, stood together in that powerful moment of gathering, connection and unity. There was thunder, lightning, the awesome power of God and then, silence. A pure stillness: no bird chirping, no wind whispering in the trees, no rustling, no babies crying, just a quiet resting on the earth, and from that silence, God spoke.
We all stood there together; we all had that experience; we were all linked and bonded from that day forward. We became a family, a people. The Torah links Pesach and Shavuot through the counting of the Omer. Pesach was an experience that happened to the Israelites as individuals. Each was a slave, had their own journeys, they were islands, but then they journeyed to Sinai. They travelled together and began to form connections. They cared for each other, and they had unique, significant moments that began to change their relationship with one another. And then came Sinai. A pure collective awe, an experience which touched their souls and changed them.
The Torah begins by describing the Israelites in the plural, but then it says they gathered, using the singular form. Not a mistake, a revelation. In that moment, although there were many souls, they were as one; they all joined together to create a singular, beautiful whole. And the tradition teaches it was not just the people who physically stood at Sinai, it was every single Jewish soul, all who were and all who ever would be. According to the commentaries, we were all there. We are all part of that singular whole. And because of that, we still feel that pull, the connection.
I hear it from people who choose to convert to Judaism, they say: “It feels right, I know in my soul, there is a connection,” and that is a deep knowing that comes from being family. I hear it from people returning to Judaism after time apart, I hear it from people discovering their Judaism for the first time, I hear it from dedicated, committed people in our community: “it feels like home, it is home. It is where we belong, in the arms and embrace of our family.”
And it is a big, beautiful, diverse family. The legends tell us that when God spoke, we all heard the message the way we needed to hear it, we all understood and were embraced in the way that we could and needed to be. Our togetherness is not uniformity; we will have disagreements, we will drive each other a little crazy, but when it matters, we are there for one another, we are together, because we know, we stood and heard the voice of holiness, we touched the sacred and it touched us. And we are forever linked, connected and held.
I hope we can all know the magic of peoplehood, of being a part of something greater than each one of us alone, and I pray we will always hear the voice of holiness and see it within ourselves and one another, especially as we stand together again at Sinai this Shavuot.
Chag Shavuot Sameach
Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio