Fly Like An Eagle

The Power of Shavuot

When you’re younger, Shavuot kind of gets lost in the holiday shuffle. On the surface, it lacks the pomp and awe of the High Holidays. It doesn’t have the cool, external structure of a hut like Sukkot. It certainly doesn’t offer the tantalizing gifts and lights of Chanukah. So when I was younger, it had the eating-lots-of-dairy-food going for it but not much else.

When I think back to the first time it began to shift, I remember when my sister returned home from one of her first semesters of rabbinical school for Shavuot. There is a tradition to stay up all night learning and she brought that back to me, although we capped our learning fairly early into the evening. But as the young teen that I was, I remember being enthralled by these texts that we learned together. There was a reawakening that was happening that I wasn’t fully cognizant of at the time. She was taking something that I had taken for granted and helped me reimagine it.

That is the power of Shavuot, not just as embodied by my beloved sister but in the eyes of the Rabbis. The Netivot Sholom, the previous Rebbe of the Slonim Chasidic dynasty wondered why Shavuot, unique among all the holidays, requires a lengthy preparation process that comes through the form of the counting of the 50 days of the Omer. Given its lack of pizzazz as noted above, why should this holiday merit such an arduous lead up?

He answers that since Passover, when we begin the count, is our lowest spiritual time, when we were sullied by the powers of idolatry and enslavement, we need a 50 day cleansing process to purify ourselves by way of the count of the Omer. This gets us to Shavuot, the moment when we are ready to receive the Torah once more. He then takes it one step further because in his words, “this still isn’t enough.” He riffs on the idea that on Shavuot, we are meant to offer מנחה חדשה-the new sacrifice, that is uniquely offered on Shavuot of two loaves of bread:

 It's only when "you offer a new sacrifice to God." This is akin to acknowledging that in your future, you will offer a sacrifice of renewal to God. This is what Reb Levi said was meant by the phrase, "and I will bear you on eagle's wings." An eagle is called a nesher because it lets go-mashir its feathers as it gets older and regrows new ones as it's written in Psalms 103 "so that your youth is renewed like an eagle." 

Based on this, a person needs to slough their past off of themselves so that they can renew for their future. This is the sacrifice the Torah is alluding to on Shavuot when it speaks about a mincha chadasha, a new sacrifice. This is supported by what my great grandfather wrote on the verse "a wicked person should leave their path." It's not that they should fix their path but they should leave it totally. What help is it to him if he just fixes the thing that he's come to know. He needs to find a totally new path. This is what a Jew can find on Shavuot.

Picking up on the language of “new” in the name of the sacrifice for Shavuot, the Slonimer Rebbe writes that this is what we are meant to take advantage of on Shavuot. One can’t just simply count these days between the two holidays and think that’s enough. A person has to take it one step further. It wasn’t a coincidence that God took us out on eagles’ wings as they teach us this valuable lesson. As they mature, their feathers fall and are replaced by new and stronger ones. This is the work that we have to do.

Shavuot then becomes not just a holiday where we receive divine wisdom again but we also recreate ourselves. This is a powerful addition to how we can relate to this holiday and take its message outside of it. When I think back to that moment with my sister, in many ways it was a refresh of something with which I was familiar.

Studying Torah had been a part of my life up until that point. I did it in school and sometimes at home. But with my sister, it was brought alive in a different way. The ability to take this piece of ancient wisdom and figure out how to integrate it in an impactful way in my life resonated. That’s the power of Torah in the modern world.

And that’s also the power of Shavuot. Even if it’s a holiday you’ve never celebrated before. Even if you’ve only ever celebrated it for the cheesecake(valid!), do something more this year. Find something in your life you want to shed, like the feathers of an eagle. In its place, create a new pathway. Don’t just fix up something old. Carve out a totally new direction for yourself. In doing so, who knows what opportunities might open up for you?

Shabbat Shalom, Happy Weekend, and an early Chag Sameach-See you at Sinai.

Adir