We all know the drill at Passover: we gather around Seder tables to celebrate the greatest gift known to humanity—sheer, unbridled human freedom.
Freedom is the elixir of life. Given how scarce it’s been throughout human history, with oppression being the rule, it shouldn’t surprise us that the Passover story of liberation from bondage has captured the world’s imagination. In the Jewish world, no matter how religiously observant or unobservant one is, “going to a seder” is on every Jew’s lips.
Not so for the humble holiday of Shavuot which begins tonight.
Shavuot doesn’t have the drama of Passover because its core theme lacks drama. As my friend Rabbi Michael Gotlieb brought up the other night, if Passover chronicles the epic jailbreak that freed the Jews from slavery, Shavuot is the sober reminder of what we must do with that freedom. If Passover is that heady moment when a teenager breaks away to college, Shavuot represents those hard years of learning how to live responsibly.
Without Shavuot, in other words, Passover is an incomplete holiday.
While commonly known as the holiday that commemorates receiving the Torah more than 3,300 years ago, it’s more than that. The late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks viewed Shavuot as a multi-layered festival that goes beyond the historical event of the giving of the Torah, “encompassing themes of covenant, chosenness, identity, renewal, loving-kindness, and hope.”
One can easily argue, then, that with this breadth of meaning, Shavuot deserves its own “Haggadah” to allow us to properly honor these multiple themes at our festival meal tonight.
It’s true, of course, that many Jews go beyond the theme of freedom during Passover and into the essential idea of what to do with that freedom. But it’s also true that freedom is the transcendent, dominating takeaway of the Passover holiday, one that is so big it doesn’t beg for more.
That is why 49 days after we finish Passover, at the culmination of the counting of the Omer, we are greeted with this holiday of many names and many ideas, this holiday that specifically challenges us to bring out our best selves, this veritable feast of meaning.
Shavuot is such a spiritual feast that one of its unique rituals is to learn all night. In my Los Angeles neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, you can see hundreds of Jews walking the streets throughout the night going from one class to another. It’s like music fans going to jazz bars.
In many ways, Shavuot is the embodiment of that classic life cycle known as the party and the hangover.
We dance in ecstasy to celebrate our freedom, and then, 49 days later, still a little hungover, we get down to the wonderful business of how to live a responsible life of meaning.
Shavuot brings out the very best in freedom itself.
Chag sameach.
