The Desert Bride

When planning the occasion of your life-a wedding, or some other huge event-you want every detail to be perfect. What you think of first (after you've figured out the main thing-who you're going to marry) is your choice of venue. You want it to be a beautiful hall, to match your elegant affair. Or maybe you're thinking of an ocean-side wedding, and you choose the beach carefully, at a location where the water is just the right shade of blue and the sand is silken under the marriage canopy.

Next week we celebrate the greatest event between the Creator and His people. The sages call it many things-the betrothal, marriage, sanctification, the time when heaven and earth united-but all recognize it as the time when G-d descended from on high and came down to give His people the Torah. It was the grandest wedding of all time. And G-d chose the venue very carefully.

He chose the desert.

A barren, empty, dry desert. No velvet curtains or beautiful vistas. Not even the Holy Land that G-d chose as His favorite place and was destined to hold the Holy Temple. No. It had to be in a lifeless, soulless desert.

This week we read the portion of Bamidbar, which means "in the desert" and is always read before Shavuot, the day on which we received the Torah on Mount Sinai . Obviously, this is to emphasize the lesson we should take from the fact that the Torah was given in the desert. What is this important connection between the desert and Torah?

The Torah was given to the Jews over three thousand years ago; for us to learn and keep forever, through all of history. Good times and bad times. Independent sovereignty in the Land of Israel and exile, persecution, and homelessness everywhere else. Through it all, the Jews clung to the Torah, as we continue to do today.

Why? Because it was given in the desert, and the desert belongs to no time and place. We weren't given the Torah in the Land of Israel, a settled, civilized place, where the Jews did not have to worry about survival. There it's obvious that we should study and keep to the Torah! Rather, it was given in the desert, the most uninhabitable place on earth. And if G-d gave us the Torah there, then there is no place on earth, through the vagaries of macro-history or our micro-lives, where we can say, here life is too difficult, here the Torah does not apply.

G-d gave us the Torah in the desert to teach us that the Torah is eternal, in both time and place. And we know that we can keep it anywhere, in any circumstance. No exceptions. After all, the wedding was in the desert, so we know the marriage can handle anything.

 It's Good to Know-Shavuot Customs

Remaining awake the first night of Shavuot - When it was time to receive the Torah, instead of waiting eagerly at the mountain, preparing spiritually for the momentous event early in the morning, the Children of Israel slept! To make amends for this gaffe, we stay awake every year on Shavuot night. The synagogue lights burn the entire night as Jews gather en masse to participate in a night of spiritual preparation.

We spend the night learning, and more specifically, we read "Tikkun Leil Shavuot" (the Atonement for the Night of Shavuot), which contains bits and pieces of all areas of the Torah: the Five Books of Moses, Prophets, Holy Writings, Mishna, Zohar, the 613 commandments, and more. This really puts us in the proper frame of mind, ready to receive the Torah the next morning, when the Ten Commandments are read from the Torah scroll.

Others have the custom of simply studying Torah-any topic of interest-throughout the night.

Eating dairy foods on the first day of Shavuot - There are many reasons for this custom-not least the fact that what would Shavuot be without cheese blintzes?! -but here are some taught by the Sages:

·      When the Jews received the Torah on Shavuot, suddenly they had to keep 613 new commandments, one of which was the mitzvah to eat only meat which was ritually slaughtered. Since the Torah was given on Shabbat-when it is forbidden to slaughter animals-they were forced to eat dairy for the rest of the day.

·      To remind us of Moses who was rescued as a baby from the Nile on the 6th of Sivan (the date of Shavuot), and who refused to nurse milk from a non-Jewish woman.  

·      Chalav-the Hebrew word for milk-has the numerical value (Gematria) of 40 reminding us the number of days and nights that Moses spent atop Mt. Sinai.

·      One of the eight different names for Mt. Sinai is "Gavnunim," which means white-like cheese.

·      The words in the Torah referring to the Shavuot holiday offering are "Mincha chadasha l'Hashem b'shavuotaychem," are also an acronym for the Hebrew word m'chalav-"from milk."

·      Shavuot is the completion of a spiritual process that we begin on Passover, and their respective holiday offerings represent the stages of this process. At the Passover seder we have two cooked dishes to commemorate the two offering brought on Passover in the Temple times. To connect the two holidays, we eat two cooked foods on Shavuot as well-one meat and one dairy.

·      Two loaves of bread were offered in the Holy Temple on the holiday of Shavuot. To commemorate this offering we eat two meals on Shavuot; one dairy and one meat (eating meat is mandatory on every festival).

Adorning the synagogue with greenery - In honor of the giving of the Torah, G-d miraculously adorned Mt. Sinai, which was situated in middle of the Sinai Desert, with greenery and vegetation . To commemorate this special miracle, we decorate our synagogues and homes with flowers and plants on the holiday of Shavuot.

Calendar

This Shabbat is Shabbat Mevorchim - we bless the incoming month of Sivan.

This Sunday, May 28, is Rosh Chodesh Sivan. This day is considered a mini-holiday, and we add special portions to the daily prayers.

On The Lighter Side...

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to "Honor thy Father and thy Mother," she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?"

Without missing a beat, one little boy (the youngest of a family) answered, "Thou shall not kill."  

This week's Tmail is in honor of the birthday of Chaim ben Minah. May he have a year of heath, success, nachas, and happiness