Sermon: Shavuot

Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 7 June 2022

There are these 2 guys, so the story goes – let’s call them Josh and Elliott. They’re in their local Starbucks, drinking their usual skinny Latte and double Espresso before heading off to their work in telephone sales. “So, Josh,” says Elliott, “you say we Jews aren’t special, that we’re not better than any other nation? Well, I can show you just how special we are. God has the Torah and is looking for a people who’ll take it. God approaches the Edomites – you remember they’re the lot descended from Esau – and says to their leader, “I’ve got this Torah. Good things in it. Do you want it, free of charge?” “What’s in it?” they ask. “Well, among other things,” says God, “there’s ‘you shall not murder.’ Are you interested?” “We don’t know who you are,” they reply, “and thanks for the offer, but sorry, they’re not for us. You see, we earn our living by murder. When Esau, was being blessed together with his brother Jacob, their father Isaac said to Esau “by the sword you shall live.” (Genesis 27:40) Not exactly what you’ld call the greatest of blessings, but you can see why we really can’t accept it. It’s sort of in our DNA. So, on your way, mate!” God lands on another group, the Moabites and Ammonites. Same conversation: will you accept this Torah? Same question: What’s in it? “’You shall not commit adultery,’” says God. Same response, “Sorry, bro’,” they say. “Not for us. Our origins are in sexual misdemeanour: our ancestor Lot slept with his daughters (Genesis 19:36)” God tries a few other peoples. Always the same offer. Always the same response. By now, Josh, you can imagine God’s getting a bit desperate. You know that feeling when you’re flogging what you think is a great product but nobody’s interested. Anyway, finally, God sees a group wandering in the Sinai desert, near a mountain. “Will you accept this Torah?” God asks. To God’s surprise, quick as a flash they reply, with one voice, “na’aseh v’nishmah.” God who, just like R2D2, is proficient in 265 different languages, recognises this as Hebrew: “We will do and we will understand.” So, Josh, if you needed proof about how special we are that’s it. We alone of all peoples could see what was so special about this Torah. (Sifre Deut 343, Pesikta Rabbati 21)

“Nice try,” says Josh, “but that’s not exactly the way I heard it. Yes, the people were camped at Mount Sinai. Yes, God did appear to them; yes, God did offer them the Torah. But frankly, they were a bit och-and-veyish about taking it, sight unseen. Who could blame them? But the upshot was that God lifted up the mountain and held it over their heads. Sensing that Elliott is about to interrupt, Josh stops him: “Don’t be a wise guy with nonsense questions about ‘if God is all-powerful can he make a rock too heavy for him to lift?’ The fact is that God holds the mountain over the people, there they are “b’tachtit ha’har” and says, “Accept this Torah because if not, this place will be your grave!” A pretty compelling argument, I’d say, one even you can’t ignore! And so the people does, indeed, say “na’aseh v’nishma, we will do and we will understand.” (Shabbat 88b) But ‘see how special we Jews are,’ Elliott? No way.”

The fact is that Josh and Elliott – two names I just chose at random – are, I suppose, both right. Recognition of the Torah’s value, on the one hand and, on the other, how valuable can something be if accepted out of a mixture of coercion and self-preservation? Nor should we be surprised that neither of the midrashim on which that conversation is based are new; both were written well over 1500 years ago. In other words, already centuries ago the rabbis were aware of the issue: do we follow Torah because we recognise and appreciate its inherent value or because we feel coerced for one reason or another to do so? It’s not just a Jewish question, of course. In his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) for example, the philosopher John Locke argues that coercion is not the right way to come to religion; nor should anybody in power – the State, the Church, the Ruler – attempt to coerce religious belief or practice.

One of the reasons why we situate ourselves in this synagogue is precisely because we might have grown up in a part of the Jewish world where that coercion to accept and conform was too strong; or because we find here a satisfying mixture of freedom to choose while not being simply “do what you want.” ‘Coercion’ isn’t the right word – maybe something like ‘duty’ or ‘obligation’ is better? Something which suggests it comes from inside us rather than something imposed from outside.

On Shavuot, one of the questions must be ‘what place does Torah have in our lives?’ In our time, Shavuot is now probably lower down the league table of Jewish observance than Chanukah or Purim – for obvious reasons, some would argue. ‘Obvious’ because Purim and Chanukah are so child-oriented, certainly have become exponentially so over the past couple of generations: fancy dress, presents, foods, a counterpoint to Christmas and so on. Yet those facts while true are, in themselves, pretty damning. Because, important as our children are, the Torah, like youth, might well be spoilt on the young. We’re happy to dance with and around the Torah on Simchat Torah – maybe not quite so happy to actually open it, learn how to read it, devote time to studying what’s in it. Though this is not, of course, a conversation I should be having with you but “with those asher eiynenu poh imanu hayom who are not here with us this day.”

Where do we stand in relation to those two midrashim: are we the grateful accepters of Torah offered to everybody but rejected by them? Or was that acceptance not entirely wholehearted? I wish I had Rabbi Mendel Kelmenson’s certainty. He writes in this week’s Jewish Chronicle that what we celebrate today happened precisely 3334 years ago. It’s the sort of statement that makes me want to ask “yes – but was it in the morning or the afternoon?” He quotes the historian Cecil Roth: “throughout our history, there have been elements swallowed in the great majority; only the more stalwart have carried on the traditions of their ancestors.” I’ve not checked the Roth to see if that’s exactly as he put it; but, whatever, no prizes for surmising who Roth – or Kelmenson – might mean by the ‘more stalwart.’

There is something about Jewish writing that is quite remarkable. It’s no big deal that midrashim portray us as the only ones who recognised the greatness of Torah. Most peoples like to think their origins lie in the marvellous deeds of their ancestors. Anyway, when that midrash was written, Jews probably felt superior to the pagans, idolators and the like among whom they lived.

What I find much more remarkable is the midrash about God holding the mountain over the people. There’s a marvellous, courageous, subversive element in that recognition of the very human hesitation of the people to accept the Torah: “don’t think you’re so wonderful for accepting it,” the midrash is saying. Midrash is where the rabbis can express some pretty outrageous ideas.

The Torah is not far away from us, over the mountains, across the sea, we read in Deuteronomy (30:12) “Lo Bashamayim he” “it’s not in heaven.” That becomes the peg on which to hang a dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and all his other colleagues. To clinch his argument, he calls for a heavenly voice to support him. Sure enough, that bat kol tells the others not to argue with him. At which point they stand up and say “‘Lo Bashamayim he” “it’s not in heaven.” In other words, “Butt out of the argument, God. Don’t interfere.” How does this all end? With God sending a bolt of lightning to zap those who dare to tell God to mind his/her own business? Not at all. God laughed and said “nitzchuni banai, nitzchuni banai, my children have conquered me! my children have conquered me!’” (Baba Metzia 59b)

Bernard Henri Lévy, French Jewish philosopher, wrote about the Torah, remarking on the fact that, according to the Talmud, it has 70 faces:

The text is a living thing, he writes, full of verses that are themselves living, desired, desiring, endowed with a soul, and sometimes capricious. They are not the frozen, closed, rigid beings that fanatics take them to be…

The idea that the Torah has faces must also be grasped in its literal sense. Those faces are the faces of the subjects who appropriate it…. because it takes on the face of the subject who studies it, one can say that the Torah calls the subject to an encounter with himself and reveals to him his true face. … the subject of the commentary, its topic, is I – as a subject.

The Torah is an infinite book. The Torah is a book on a human scale, a human-like book. The Torah is a book composed, ultimately, by the people who discover themselves in it.

Bernard-Henri Lévy “The Genius of Judaism” (Penguin, New York 2017) pp119-121)

And wo are “the people who discover themselves in it”? – that’s you and me!