Dear TBZ Community,
I am still beaming with joy after last weekend’s TBZ Community Retreat on the Cape. Close to 150 TBZ members of all ages – the youngest just two months old – joined for a weekend of community, song, learning, rest, and joy. It is always one of my favorite weekends of the year.
We celebrated Shabbat, ate delicious food, sang and danced, gathered around a bonfire, played board games, laughed a lot, biked, moved our bodies with yoga and Feldenkrais, learned beautiful Torah from teachers and fellow TBZ members, and so much more. But beyond all the activities of the weekend, what stays with me most deeply are the connections that were made – the experience of coming together as a community and deepening our sense of belonging.
In times of so much division and pain, being in community is a balm for the heart. I know that for me personally, it helps heal a heart that often feels broken by the world these days.
And perhaps that is why it feels so meaningful that, beginning tonight, we celebrate Shavuot, the holiday of receiving Torah.
לוּלֵי תוֹרָתְךָ שַׁעֲשֻׁעָי אָז אָבַדְתִּי בְעָנְיִי
Were not Your teaching (Your Torah) my delight
I would have perished in my affliction.
This is a verse I hold very close.
It says to me: without finding sweetness in Torah, without immersing in Torah, I would not be able to find my way through brokenness. Torah helps us walk through what is fractured and painful. The study of Torah guides me in the ongoing journey.
And Torah here does not simply mean a book that I read. Torah means teachings that I embrace and teachings that embrace me.
But one of the most powerful things about Shavuot is that we do not receive Torah alone. We receive Torah in community.
The practice of Tikkun Leil Shavuot (literally, “fixing the night of Shavuot”) is to stay awake all night studying Torah together. Some of us will do this tonight and tomorrow through the two Tikkunei Leil Shavuot we are co-sponsoring: the Community Tikkun Leil Shavuot in Brookline at Kehilath Israel is the in-person option and Tikkun Zoom Shavuot with Temple Israel is the online option. The practice is specifically communal. We do not sit alone to receive Torah. Revelation itself becomes something shared.
And perhaps this is because Torah is not only wisdom. Torah is relationship.
We learn from a teaching attributed to the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism:
“There will be times when something will come
your way
and you will be uncertain whether or not to
pursue it.
If you have studied Torah that day, however,
you will be able to determine your course of action
from your learning.
For this to occur,
you must sustain your connection to God.
Then, [God] will enable you to understand the
connection
between your studies and your life.”
(Tzava’at HaRivash #31, translation from God in All Moments, by Rabbis Or Rose & Ebn Leader, page 97.)
The Baal Shem Tov teaches two things here.
First, he teaches that engaging with Torah can guide our decisions and our lives. In moments of uncertainty, Torah can help us discern a path forward.
But then he adds something equally important: Torah study alone is not enough. The practice of learning must be accompanied by sustaining a relationship with the Source of Life. It is the combination of Torah and relationship with the Divine that guides us through daily life.
Torah, then, is not simply a scroll we celebrate once a year. Torah is the ongoing practice of deepening our relationship with holiness, with wisdom, with each other, and with God, so that we can continue making our way through life, through both the small and the enormous decisions we face.
And perhaps this is why the annual retreat itself felt like part of a Tikkun Leil Shavuot: It was an experience of people coming together, not to walk alone through this world. Community itself became Torah.
On Shavuot we also read the Book of Ruth, which we will read together on the second day of Shavuot during Shabbat morning services.
One reason we read Ruth is because of its connection to the harvest season. In the Torah, Shavuot is described as an early summer harvest festival, celebrated with offerings from the new wheat crop and the first fruits.
But we also read Ruth because hers is the story of someone choosing to join the Jewish people, someone choosing Torah.
After the death of Naomi’s sons, including Ruth’s husband, Naomi prepares to return from Moab to Canaan. Ruth refuses to leave her.
In her famous words she says:
וַתֹּאמֶר רוּת אַל־תִּפְגְּעִי־בִי לְעׇזְבֵךְ לָשׁוּב מֵאַחֲרָיִךְ כִּי אֶל־אֲשֶׁר תֵּלְכִי אֵלֵךְ וּבַאֲשֶׁר תָּלִינִי אָלִין עַמֵּךְ עַמִּי וֵאלֹהַיִךְ אֱלֹהָי
But Ruth replied, “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
בַּאֲשֶׁר תָּמוּתִי אָמוּת וְשָׁם אֶקָּבֵר כֹּה יַעֲשֶׂה יְהֹוָה לִי וְכֹה יוֹסִיף כִּי הַמָּוֶת יַפְרִיד בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵךְ
Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may GOD do to me if anything but death parts me from you (Ruth 1:16–17).”
Ruth chooses Torah, but she also chooses Naomi. She chooses relationship. She chooses community.
I learned a beautiful teaching from Rav Tiferet Berenbaum (TBZ’s Rabbi of Congregational Learning) who says that what Ruth is truly saying is: I will not leave you alone in your grief.
What is it that Ruth chooses? Torah? Naomi? Grief? Future? Past? Perhaps she chooses belonging itself.
She chooses to bind her life to another person, to a people, to a story larger than herself – with all its pain and all its possibility.
Rabbi Ebn Leader, my spouse, shares a beautiful teaching from the Zohar regarding Naomi and Ruth in My Jewish Learning, which you can read fully here. He writes:
In the imagination of Tikkunei HaZohar (part of the later strata of the Zohar, usually printed as an independent volume), the story of Ruth and her mother-in-law returning to Judea (Ruth 1) merges with the story of Moses bringing the tablets down from Sinai (Exodus 32).
Bereshit — created two.
Thus it says: ‘The two of them walked’ (Ruth 1:19).
They are the two Torahs: A Written Torah and an Oral Torah.
(Tikkunei Zohar, Tikkun 31, p.75b.)
Like all teachings in the Tikunei HaZohar, this one begins with a reflection on the first word of the Torah: bereshit, in the beginning. Tikkunei HaZohar starts by observing that the word bereshit can be anagramed to bara shtei, “created two.” This hints that in the act of creation, the unity of the divine necessarily enters into duality.
This idea is exemplified in the two women, Naomi and Ruth, walking one road back to Judea. They are an unlikely pair, one an Israelite born in Judea, the other a Moabite born in enemy territory. One is an elderly woman whose sons have died, the other a woman whose childbearing years are still ahead. Naomi is a critical link to the past, Ruth a crucial bridge to the future. Created two.
According to Tikkunei HaZohar, these two women, walking side by side, are the two Torahs that come down the mountain with Moses: the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. At the moment of revelation, the Written Torah is visible and physically present. Carved in stone, it bears a record of Israel’s past. It will be copied over and over in every generation, with great precision, so that the Jewish people’s link to the past will not be severed, so they do not become an uprooted tree. But the Oral Torah, a Torah not yet written down, has no physical form yet. It is an ongoing revelation, channeled through human lives, articulated in the mouths of each generation. God appears to us in this duality. Created two.
This is such a powerful image and teaching.
Ruth and Naomi themselves become the Torah we receive at Sinai.
Their relationship, their bond, their refusal to abandon one another in a time of grief, their commitment to rebuild after devastation – this too is revelation.
This too is Torah.
And perhaps that is what community is ultimately about: walking together through grief and uncertainty, refusing to let one another face the world alone.
I return again to the words of the Psalmist: “Were not Your teaching (Your Torah) my delight I would have perished in my affliction.”
The Torah we receive on Shavuot is not only words on parchment. It is the living embodiment of relationship, care, memory, accompaniment, and belonging. It is the Torah of Naomi and Ruth walking side by side.
May we continue to build a community where no one has to walk alone.
May we deepen our capacity to accompany one another through grief and joy alike.
May Torah continue to guide us toward lives of compassion, courage, humility, and connection.
And may we each find ourselves, again and again, held by community, by learning, and by love.
Chag sameach and Shabbat shalom,
Rav Claudia