Shavuot: Visions of Learning and Community
Shavuot’s name has an oddly retrospective meaning that doesn’t really center the day itself. Shavuot means “weeks”, and comes from the practice of counting days and weeks from Passover until you’ve reached seven weeks, and then the next day - the 50th - we celebrate Shavuot.
This holiday came to mark the moment that Torah was given at Mt. Sinai, and many traditions on Shavuot focus on learning and teaching as key Jewish practices for encountering each other and the divine. Pedagogy, theology, and social justice interweave as partners in conceptualizing what it means to be Jewish. God says that the Israelites will be a mamlechet cohanim v’goy kadosh מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ (Exodus 19:6), “a kingdom of priests [i.e. torah teachers] and a holy nation [i.e. a society obsessed with ethical and spiritual aspiration].” How so? Through fruitful meditation on Torah and practicing its mitzvot.
In the story of preparing to receive Torah at Mt. Sinai, Moses instructs the people to wait three days. But in our cyclical re-encounter with the giving of Torah, we count day by day for fifty days! Although learning can be serendipitous, it also often requires patience, intention, and incremental gain. Day by day, “one who gathers a little shall increase” (Proverbs 13:11, cited in Talmud Eruvin 54b).
Charmingly, the Talmud then tells us that most of the sages ignored that advice… They were ravenous to learn, and whether or not they serve as models for our own learning process, they did become great teachers of Torah.
Last night at Kavana’s Shavuot celebration, we learned of two such sages, Rabbi Chanina (Rabbi “Grace”) and Rabbi Chiya (Rabbi “Life”). Once, they got into an argument about how to recover from a theoretical disaster in which the whole Jewish people forgot the Torah (Talmud Ketubot 103b).
Rabbi Chanina said to Rabbi Chiya: You are arguing with me? If, Heaven forfend, the Torah would be forgotten from the Jewish people, I would restore it through my analyses!
Rabbi Chanina’s argument is simple - his intellectual acumen is so sharp that he could single-handedly recreate the Torah if necessary. That is surely impressive! His offering is, like his name, a form of grace, chen, a gift beyond merit. In a world of forgetfulness, he (and he alone) could restore learning with ease.
But Rabbi Chiya has a different approach, one that also evokes his name which means “life,” with its messy-yet-not-wasteful, redundant, effortful, and interconnected qualities.
Rabbi Chiya said to him: I am working to ensure that the Torah will not be forgotten from the Jewish people. For I bring flax and I plant it, and I then weave nets [from its fibers.] I trap deer, and I feed the meat to orphans, and I form scrolls from the skins of the deer. And I go to a town that has no teachers of children in it and I write the five books [of the Torah] for five children. And I teach the six orders [of the Mishna] to six children. To each and every one I say: Teach your order to your friends.
It is all well and good to theorize about how to restore a forgotten Torah, but perhaps a better plan is to ensure it is never forgotten. Rabbi Chiya subtly rebukes the centralized and towering authority of Rabbi Chanina by describing his own humble and distributed method of teaching Torah.
Every action Rabbi Chiya takes is in service of Torah and in service of the people. He provides material sustenance to those without parents, and spiritual and intellectual sustenance to those without teachers. And then he says: Don’t just learn. Teach each other.
This is what it looks like to be a mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Rabbi Chanina could be a new Abraham or Moses, but Rabbi Chiya could be someone even more important - he could be you.
What are you learning, little by little? Who gave you Torah and tradition? Who have you taught it to in turn? And whose lives have you nourished along the way?
Chag Sameach, and Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
