We received the Torah thousands of years ago on Mount Sinai and yet each year when the holiday of Shavuot comes around we receive the Torah once more.
When we picture receiving the Torah thousands of years ago one might imagine people wearing sandals and robes and covering their hair with scarves and turbans, out in the desert in the middle of nowhere with fire and lightning and awesome angels flying about.
When we receive the Torah each year it’s as if we were all standing around Sinai once again in the desert.
And on the other hand we must see how to bring the Torah from Mount Sinai to this very day.
Today we dress differently. The modern age has taken us far from the days we stood in the desert, and yet we know that the Torah we received thousands of years ago is eternal and applicable to us in every single generation. Our job is to see how this generation can imagine all the Jews standing at Mount Sinai including themselves, and look deep into their soul and find how that same Torah, every single word of it, is still talking to them today.
Is it the way we dress today? The language we speak? The jobs we each have? The homes we are living in?
The Torah we received on Mount Sinai is in every single place we allow it to enter, it is the same Torah from thousands of years ago.
Hashem in his infinite wisdom instilled in the Torah the way we should live in every single generation. Whether it’s out in the wilderness in the desert wearing robes, or whether it’s 2022 in 20-story buildings, fancy cars, fancy clothes and modernization in every corner, the Torah still applies.
More than the Torah just applying to us as a commandment, and as something we must keep, the Torah keeps us sane and helps guide us to a normal life no matter what is happening around us.
We are the only nation that has lasted as a nation throughout all these thousands of years. Many nations have risen and fallen, many cultures came about and then disappeared.
The Jewish nation and the Jewish people are the only ones who have been together through thick and thin, throughout all these years.
The Torah is the only book that every single Jew no matter what his status or position is in life, can find themselves and their families heritage inside of it.
A Jew is never alone, one always has family because we all come from the families listed in the Torah.
True, that throughout the generations we have been scattered around the world, and we have gone our separate ways. However, the Torah is the only thing that can and will always keep us together. By keeping the Torah, we are bound together forever.
I live in Jerusalem in the community that many people from all over the world come to when seeking their Yiddishkeit and looking to return home. Many of the people in my community are converts as well, from all over the world, who too are seeking to find their home and place.
We don’t need to be in the wilderness nor see lightning coming from the sky, nor do we need to hear and see awesome voices and angels.
Receiving the Torah in every generation, is seeing all these souls coming back to the land of Israel and to the Jewish nation. Receiving these Jews and converts into our family is the awesome power of the Torah to reach inside every single person in this modern age.
Today we have become so isolated with the computer and phone not needing anyone at all. Today we can do it all ourselves, through the touch of a finger.
The holiday of Shavuot, which comes each year, reminds us how the Torah is eternal, and how the Torah reaches everyone without any computer, with the touch of a heart, and with the touch of Hashem’s finger, connecting us and guiding us, in the best way, forever.
May we finally have the merit to have Hashem rest in his home here in Jerusalem, and may we merit going up to Jerusalem to the house of Hashem three times a year to worship and serve Hashem, the way we did thousands of years ago when we had the Holy Temple.
Amen.
