I hope everyone had a fabulous Shavuot and Memorial Day Weekend. It’s hard to believe we’re already in summer mode, weren’t we just buried in snow and ice? We spent the weekends with friends at the lake, and this was the morning coffee view. Impossible not to marvel at God’s beauty and generosity. He didn’t have to endow us with the gift of sight, and yet, He did. I’m also still riding the high of a Shavuot program with had with our local Jewish community. We had three fantastic speakers – and a delicious bagel lunch – talking about the importance of Shavuot, which, I’ve decided, I’m going to share a bit here. Because why not?
Parsha Naso
But before we get into Shavuot, this week’s parsha discusses how Israel should handle adultery. In the event that a husband suspects his wife of infidelity, he is instructed to bring the matter before the priest, where she drinks the bitter waters. It strikes me as a surprisingly sophisticated way of handling what could otherwise become a dangerous and emotionally charged situation.We are also given the laws of the Nazirite: a thirty-day period of abstaining from anything involving the vine (grapes, vinegar, and wine), refraining from cutting one’s hair, and avoiding ritual impurity from the dead.
It’s common to take a Nazirite vow as a thanksgiving after recovering from an illness, or the birth of a child.The Priestly Blessing
My favorite section of Parsha Naso is Numbers 6:24–26, where we receive the beautiful priestly blessing:
“The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.”
יְבָרֶכְךָ֥ יְהוָה וְיִשְׁמְרֶֽךָ׃
יָאֵ֨ר יְהוָ֤ה ׀ פָּנָיו֙ אֵלֶ֔יךָ וִֽיחֻנֶּֽךָּ׃
יִשָּׂ֨א יְהוָ֤ה ׀ פָּנָיו֙ אֵלֶ֔יךָ וְיָשֵׂ֥ם לְךָ֖ שָׁלוֹם׃
Jacob Milgrom notes that each of the three lines rises from three to five to seven words in Hebrew, while the consonants increase from fifteen to twenty to twenty-five. He also points out that “you” is written throughout in the singular, emphasizing that each of us — not just the collective people of Israel — has an individual relationship with God.
I think about this every Friday night after the candles are lit, when my husband recites these words over our children, while they try really hard not to spill their grape juice. It always makes me smile, especially when they do not spill their grape juice.
Shavuot
One of the ideas from Shavuot that has stayed with me most this year is the counting itself. We count up toward Shavuot — seven full weeks of refinement and preparation — rather than counting down the way we do for vacations or birthdays. The emphasis is not simply on arriving at the destination, but on becoming the kind of people capable of receiving the gift waiting for us there.
And interestingly, Shavuot is not called “the holiday of receiving the Torah,” but rather zman matan Torateinu — the time of the giving of the Torah. The giving is constant. The question is whether we are ready to receive it.
I think there is something deeply countercultural about that. We live in a world obsessed with rushing ahead: the next stage, the next achievement, the next milestone. It’s so easy to spend our lives counting down instead of paying attention to where we already are. But the Omer reminds us that spiritual growth happens slowly, quietly, one day at a time. Sometimes the journey itself is the point. Sometimes holiness is found not in arriving somewhere else, but in learning how to fully inhabit the life already in front of us.