The Torah tells us that once upon a time, on the day of giving the Torah (which we call today Shavuot, the feast of weeks) a group of humans, the People of Israel, standing at the foot of a mountain, mount Sinai, in the middle of a desert, heard God speak.
“For what mortal ever heard the voice of the living God speak out of the fire, as we did, and lived?” Deut 5:23
Obviously, those Israelites thought that the only way to hear the voice of God was to die. By dying they’d stop being material and become spiritual. Being material impeded communication with God, who is spiritual.
By giving them the Torah, however, God showed the Israelites an alternative to death.
The observance of the laws in the Torah was the way to communicate with God while remaining material. They didn’t have to die to become spiritual. They would becme spiritual through keeping the commandments and thereby be able to communicate with God.
In contrast to other religions Judaism rejected the idea that death changed a person from material to spirit. Death put s stop to life and hence a stop to observing Torah and thus a stop to holiness. Death made material impure and impurity was considered contagious; a living person became impure by coming into the most minute contact with a dead body.
According to Judaism, only a living person can resch spirituality, through observing the Laws of Torah.
We celebrate the giving of Torah because it enables us to reach a level of spirituality close to God’s level, making it possible to communicate with God, which is man’s most cherished desire.
The paradox here is that being material firces us to have feelings, through our five senses, and having feelings is what arouses the need to communicate with a higher power, to help us in our suffering.
Being material we suffer pain and sadness and delight in happiness.
Changing material into spiritual is counterproductive, because being spiritual we loose the feeling of pain and happiness. Although as spiritual beings we’d be able to communicate with God, we’d loose the urge to pray.
I want to feel pain and happiness, that is what makes me human. I don’t want to loose my humanity in a sea of spirituality. I’m so scared of loosing my humanity that I refuse to observe the laws of Torah
I wish you a joyous festival. Be like Ruth, humbly gathering the leftover barley, delighting in God’s generosity but forever cherishing our humanity.
