Finding The Connection Between Old And New,Rabbi David Stav

One of the unique characteristics of Shavuot is the fact that the Torah doesn't issue specific commandments relating to it. Though it is true that at the time of the Beit Hamikdash special korbanot were brought for the chag, an individual was not required to do anything specific in his home. In contrast to Pesach and Sukkot, holidays readily identified with the ideas of matzah and sukkah, Shavuot is not related to any specific halacha.

The past few hundred years, though, have seen tradition transform the evening of Shavuot to one of the most dramatic nights of the entire year. Tens of thousands of shiurim are given on this night. Participation in these shiurim reaches hundreds of thousands, and the past decade has even seen thousands of secular Jews yearning to hear words of Torah.

The significance of this phenomenon cannot be overstated - masses of people streaming to hear words of Torah in atrue fulfillment of the pasuk, "Kimitzion tetze Torah ud'var Hashem miYerushalayim" - for Torah will spring forth from Zion; and the word of G-d, from Jerusalem.

What, then, is the significance of this phenomenon, and in what direction can it be steered?

The psukim that preface the nation's stand at Sinai state, "Ve'atemtihyu li mamlechet kohanim vegoy kadosh" - and you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The Torah wasn't given to us as a nation of simple people; Avraham and Yitzchak may have kept the Torah on their own, but they didn't receive it from the Creator. Even Moshe, the greatest of our nation's leaders, only received it on behalf of the nation standing at the foot of the mountain.

In the blessing we recite before studying or reading from the Torah, we say, "Asher bachar banu mikol ha'amim venatan lanu et Torato" - He who has chosen us from among all the nations and given us his Torah. In other words, we received the Torah as the nation of Israel, and not as an undefined group of people. Our sages write that one of the reasons for our nation's exile from its land was our forgetting to recite the aforementioned blessing over the Torah. This assertion is puzzling; could it be that, because of such an oversight, our ancestors deserved to be forced into exile?

Perhaps, in order to understand this, we have to ask ourselves why our ancestors neglected saying this blessing in the first place.

Behind the brachot over the Torah and their recital lies an important idea. The Torah was not meant to be a legacy of sages and intellectual elitists; the aim of the Torah was to belong to everyone - to all of klal Yisrael. In other words, the Torah was given to us as a nation, so that we could adhere to it as a nation, and not just as individuals.

This idea has significant implications as far as our need to conduct social, economic and welfare policies according to the Torah and its values; similarly, foreign and defense policy must be based on the principles of law and justice set out by the Torah.

Of no less importance, though, is our responsibility to make the Torah accessible to every Jew who wants to feel connected to it. It is this point that leads us back to the question of the "old" and "new" guises of the Torah. The broad span of Israeli society encompasses a secular element with a thirst for Torah;a deep desire to draw knowledge from its sources, where this element of society is discovering a new-found faith and credibility- far more than in the past.

It is incumbent upon us, the bearers of Torah, to find the right pathways to strengthen and bolster this newfound connection, not just through study, but through a heightened credibility that will be raised to new levels by these Torah luminaries, through their personalities and actions.

In leading the effort to help strengthen Israel's connection with Judaism and our traditions, Tzohar (www.tzohar.org.il) strives to make the Torah a legacy for the entire nation. Through a wide range of activities - from joint religious-secular tefillot that bring new meaning to tefillah; to chuppos and the preparation for them that help unlock the secret and meaning of family - and through the dissemination of Torah to the masses - we will reveal the light of its teachings.

Rabbi David Stav is the co-founder of Tzohar (www.tzohar.org.il), an organization comprised of over 600 religious Zionist volunteer rabbis working towards promoting and enhancing the Jewish identity of the State of Israel.

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