05-29-2025 Torah Commentary

A special edition for Shavuoth

At sundown on June 1, we celebrate the second of our three pilgrimage holidays, the holiday of Shavuoth. The three pilgrimage festivals are: Passover, Shavuoth, and Succoth.  We might call Shavuoth the poor cousin to the other pilgrimage festivals.  Although most Jews know a great deal about Passover and the Passover seder has become a universal celebration, and Succoth’s booths and activities are major Jewish religious events, we cannot say the same for Shavuoth. Not only is Shavuoth’s importance less well known, unfortunately we often tend to overlook its symbolism.  Shavuoth is not only the day that we celebrate the receiving of the Ten Commandments, but it is also the day on which we mark Jewish nationhood.  If Passover symbolizes our independence from Egyptian slavery, Shavuoth represents the dawn of Hebrew civilization.

It is also during this holiday we read the beautiful and somewhat erotic love story found in “Megillat Ruth/The Book of Ruth.”  Ruth’s life is one of contradictions. In the book we read about how she so much loved her mother-in-law that after becoming a widow she left Moab and became our first convert to Judaism.  Her supplication to her mother-in-law, “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not to follow you, wherever you go I shall too; wherever you lodge I shall lodge. Your people will be my people” is still said by those seeking to become part of the Jewish people. 

Ruth’s life was filled with confrontation and accommodation, tragedy and happiness. Throughout the text we see Ruth struggling to balance her personal needs with those of others.  In that sense Ruth represents both the ancient and modern woman: the woman who must assure the survival of the species and yet find personal meaning in her own life. 

We find this same theme throughout the holiday of Shavuoth and the Giving of the Ten Commandments.  Like the Book of Ruth, Shavuoth holds us responsible not only for observing the law, but also for its interpretation and the way we choose to interact with the law. And like the Book of Ruth, Shavuoth teaches the notion of personal responsibility. 

Shavuoth is unique in that we speak about a foreign woman, Ruth, rather than classical Biblical leaders such as Moses.   Ruth’s presence and Moses’s absence leaves us with the question of what our rabbis were trying to teach us by emphasizing a poor foreign woman and by omitting mention of Moses? Is this a lesson taught during a holiday of nationhood that it is not the elite but the common person who builds nations? Is the text reminding us that leaders come and go, but it is the nation’s people that endures?  Is this a reminder that leaders reflect the popular will, but its legal system expresses a nation’s eternal values?

Both Shavuoth and its main character, Ruth, challenge us to ask: How does each person find the way to match his/her personal needs with the demands of society?  What is the philosophy of law? Does the law represent ideals or goals or is it nothing more than a reflection of the time in which we live?  

Shavuoth’s historic reminders are not easy to accept, especially in historical periods such as ours, when we base too much of society on self-centeredness and self-absorption.  Perhaps it is precisely for times such as ours that its symbolism is most important.  What do you think?

Wishing you a thoughtful and happy Shavuoth