From the Rabbi's Desk

People who know me well know I’m partial to symmetry. I like when things are in order and when they’re balanced. Some call this a bit annoying. I refer to it as something extra special. Many people who see the world as I do like to have a “B” to each “A.” They like to have everything in pairs just like I do. Our holidays come in pairs: Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret, Hanukkah and Purim, Passover and Shavuot. Each pair of holidays tells a deeper story and greater narrative than any of the holidays by themselves. We celebrate the New Year and then begin to look back and ahead at how we can change to be better. We celebrate the cycle of nature with Sukkot and then the cycle of the Torah with Shemini Atzeret. On Hanukah we commemorate our near destruction at the hands of ourselves and an external enemy and on Purim we focus on the human story of overcoming an eternal external foe. Passover and Shavuot tell the story of our complete history and identity. On Passover we celebrate our redemption and our freedom and on Shavuot we celebrate our covenant and our relationship with the Divine.

We left Egypt to come to Mt. Sinai and stand in relationship with God through our acceptance of the Torah. This incredible relationship between Passover and Shavuot is discovered in this week’s פרשה/Parsha: אמור/Emor when it describes the obligation to count seven sets of seven days from the second night of Passover until we reach the 49^th day. The next day, the “50^th” is the designated day of the holiday of Shavuot and thus the celebration of the giving of the Torah. Each year as we count, as we are commanded to do this week in אמור, we recall the connectedness of these two celebrations.

The connection is important and shouldn’t be lost on any of us. At Passover Seders, we read and sing the words of “Dayenu”. Those words state “Had God brought us out of Egypt and had not brought judgement upon (the Egyptians) it would have been enough”. As the reading continues, it says “Had God given us Shabbat and not brought us to Mt. Sinai it would have been enough. Had God brought us to Mt. Sinai and had not given us the Torah it would have been enough. Had God given us the Torah and not brought us to the Land of Israel it would have been enough…” The list goes on and on, and in reality, we need to be grateful enough to recognize the true power of “Dayenu” and that we have to be satisfied with what we have. At the same time, we don’t live in a world where God took us out of Egypt and didn’t bring us to Sinai, didn’t give us the Torah, and didn’t bring us to Israel. We live in a world where we received all those things, which are all necessary and all connected. We can’t say something would’ve been “enough” because we don’t know what our world would’ve looked like if we hadn’t received them.

As we navigate the Omer period to the celebration of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, we must see that our freedom, received when we left Egypt, was a freedom to be in a relationship with God and with our people through the Torah. The freedom isn’t absolute. It’s about our ability to share in the sacred and great relationship with God. As I’m writing these words, it’s the 23^rd day of the Omer and we’ll count the next one tonight. This means we’re left with 26 more days to prepare ourselves to grow in our relationship with Torah and with God.