Shavuot 

Contributed by Stephen Wickman, St. Thomas Episcopal, McLean

The Jewish festival of Shavuot, occurred June 1-3.  According to Rabbinic tradition, this celebration marks the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai. 

Amidst the ongoing violence in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Cameroon, and anti-Jewish attacks and other religious-based assaults against peace-loving civilians in the United States and elsewhere, let’s listen to the thoughts of Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, who shared this recording on the BBC recently. 

“’I’m your God, don’t abuse me or one another.’ I hear these words with sorrow and shame but also hope. I’m horrified by how we hurt each other, the wars, the cruelty and hunger, yet the world remains intricately and inspiringly beautiful. That’s why I cling to the deeply imaginative interpretation rooted in Jewish mystical thought by the rabbi of Ger, a popular Hasidic teacher who died in 1905.

When God said, I am your God, every creature experienced those words as spoken directly to them. For an instant, every living being, humans, donkeys, birds, understood that their deepest nature, their innermost spirit, comes from and belongs to God. They heard those words, I am your God, not just from the mountaintop but from inside their hearts. Afterwards, everything returned to normal, each human and animal to its separate consciousness, its own reality, in this material world which conceals from us the deepest truth of who we are. But in that moment, we understood that one life, one consciousness, fills us all and that something sacred, something deeper than all divisions, unites us.

For that brief interval, said the rabbi, we were incapable of harming one another. This was long ago, but he maintained, if we listen deeply, we can still catch the after-echo of God’s voice in all creation. If we could be attentive to that voice in our fellow humans and in all life, we would instinctively hold back and, in Isaiah’s words, not cruelly hurt or destroy any living being, but instead do our utmost to bring healing to our world. Maybe it’s that after echo we hear when, in a heartfelt conversation, we reach a pause and sit silently together, knowing that something words can’t reach has touched us.” 

Our Rector, the Rev. Fran Gardner-Smith on Easter Sunday used a similar metaphor: we are the after-image of God’s photograph, taken at the time of creation, like the image on your retina after a photograph. And yesterday, on Ascencion Day in the Christian tradition, our parish administrator added in his sermon, quoting the Book of Revelation: we are a “pre-image” of heaven on earth, a shining city.   

This blog post is the expressed opinion of its writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Tysons Interfaith or its members.