4 Questions for Shavuos | The Deep Meaning of the Holiday in Light of Chassidus

00:00 What exactly are we celebrating on Shavuos? The simplest answer is obvious: it is the time of the giving of our Torah. This is the festival on which we celebrate receiving the Torah. But when we look more deeply, several questions arise—very simple, basic questions. We’ll divide them into four questions about Shavuos. Question number one: What exactly was new on the day the Torah was given? After all, even before the giving of the Torah, there were holy and pure tzaddikim. Our holy forefathers Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov lived before the giving of the Torah. What’s more, Torah study already existed. Avraham studied Torah, Yitzchak studied Torah, Yaakov studied Torah, and the tribes studied Torah. When Yaakov our forefather went down to Egypt, he established a yeshiva. Rashi explained this to us earlier, in Parshas Vayigash. So that is the first question: What exactly was new about the giving of the Torah? The Torah was there already. Second question: When we look at the parsha, Parshas Yisro, which we read on Shavuos, there is upheaval, a revolution, thunder and lightning, a great commotion, and the sound of the shofar. And especially when we look at the Gemara in Tractate Shabbos, in the discussion of the giving of the Torah on pages 88 and 89: with each and every utterance, their souls flew from their bodies. What was all the commotion about? Why was such a tremendous upheaval needed for the giving of the Torah? And the third question: When we look at what the Ten Commandments actually say, we find the simplest, most basic things—things the Jewish people surely knew already, and not only the Jewish people. Even the simplest person among the nations of the world knows that there is a Creator of the world. It is clear to him that one must behave decently: not steal, not murder, and so on; honor one’s parents. Simple mitzvos, basic mitzvos. So, seemingly, what exactly did we receive on this day? What are we celebrating? What is so special about Shavuos?

02:33 And the fourth question is this: When Shavuos arrives, we don’t see anything particular that we are supposed to celebrate with according to halacha, according to the Torah. On Pesach, for example, the festival revolves around the prohibition against eating chametz, eating matzah, and all the meanings bound up with that—why we eat matzah, and so on. It is the Geulah of the Jewish people. On Sukkos, there is the mitzvah of sukkah and the mitzvah of lulav. Shavuos has no special mitzvah from the Torah. There is a custom to eat dairy foods—a beautiful custom, a profound custom with many explanations—but from the Torah, nothing. The only thing the Torah speaks of is atzeres, stopping. The seforim explain why this festival is called Atzeres. The Gemara calls it Atzeres; that is its general name in the Talmud, because the only thing is to stop, to refrain from doing work. But there is no special mitzvah. So what, really, is the meaning of Shavuos? When we delve into it, though, we’ll see that Chassidus illuminates this wonderful festival, Shavuos, with clarity. We’ll see that despite—and precisely because—it has no special mitzvos, it is on this festival that the essential point comes to expression: the essence of the Jewish people, of our Torah, of our connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and of our mission to make this world a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In fact, Shavuos is the festival on which our entire identity, our entire essence as the Jewish people, finds its deepest and most fundamental expression. The moment of the giving of the Torah—“Hashem descended upon Mount Sinai”—Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s gift, His descent here below, and the Divine revelation of the Ten Commandments at the giving of the Torah: what exactly happened at that moment? The first word of the Ten Commandments really tells us everything. The first word is Anochi, “I.” That is how

04:55 the Ten Commandments begin: “I am Hashem your G-d.” Anochi is an interesting word. What does this expression, Anochi, mean? Anochi is not a holy Name. The word that follows it is a holy Name: Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei, the holiest Name, the essential Name, the unique Name, the Explicit Name. “Your G-d” is also one of the holy Names. But according to halacha, in a Torah scroll Anochi is a word like any other. In other words, it is not one of the seven Names that may not be erased. It is a word that may be erased or corrected. On the other hand, Anochi expresses the deepest thing of all. As the Zohar says, Anochi means “I Myself, Who have no name”—so to speak, the very essence of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. All the holy Names are names. Names refer to actions, attributes, expressions that convey the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Midrash says that each Name expresses a particular aspect of His greatness. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu acts with kindness, with might, or with mercy, these are expressed by the different Names: Keil, Elokim, Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei, Tzevaos. Anochi is not a name, an attribute, or an action. It is, so to speak, Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. The Gemara in Tractate Shabbos says that Anochi is an acronym for “Ana nafshi ksavis yehavis.” Translated into Hebrew: “I wrote My very self, so to speak, and gave Myself”—yehavis means giving. With the word Anochi, Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells us that something extraordinary happened here: “I placed My very self, so to speak—My essence and being—into the Torah.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave Himself, His very essence, beyond every attribute, name, and sefirah, within the Torah. That is the essential, revolutionary innovation of the moment the Torah was given. Yes, the Torah existed before then, but the Torah that existed before was wisdom. The Torah our forefathers studied contained the wisdom of Torah, and that wisdom

07:35 contained a great deal of knowledge and many teachings about how to behave. But the very “I” of Hakadosh Boruch Hu remained in a higher world, in a loftier place, within a holy Name. Why do we call Him Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Kadosh means holy—set apart, removed, exalted above. The moment the Torah was given was the moment when Hakadosh Boruch Hu said, “Now I am giving My very self, so to speak, in the Torah.” “Ana nafshi ksavis yehavis.” The Zohar comments on the verse, “Let them take for Me a contribution.” It says that terumah, “contribution,” alludes to the Torah, because the word terumah contains the letters of Torah. The letter mem represents the forty days Moshe Rabbeinu spent on the mountain to receive the Torah. So terumah alludes to the Torah that was given over forty days. The Zohar says of “Let them take for Me a contribution” that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is telling the Jewish people: Do you want to take hold of Me? Do you want, so to speak, to grasp Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to become united with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself? “Let them take for Me a contribution”—through the Torah. I Myself am present in the Torah: Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. Something truly extraordinary happened when the Torah was given. That is the fundamental point. Once we have that point, we can understand the unique effect of the giving of the Torah in every area and from every angle, in everything we discuss: what the Torah accomplished with respect to the Jewish people, to the world, and to every single thing. Something essential happened at the moment the Torah was given, a fundamental change in everything. Let’s talk about the reality of creation. The world had already existed for 2,448 years before the giving of the Torah. The day the Torah was given was 6 Sivan, in the year 2448. The world already existed, but as the Midrash says, “The heavens are the heavens of Hashem, but the earth He gave to humankind.” So to speak, before the giving of the Torah there was a certain

10:08 A kind of separation between the higher and the lower, between Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the Creator, and His creations. There was a kind of barrier, a divide, between the higher and the lower, between the reality of the higher worlds and that of the lower worlds. The Midrash gives a famous parable about this. A king decreed: The people of this province may not go down to the people of that province, and the people of that province may not go up to this one. In other words, one province was up on a mountain, and the other was down in a valley, and the king put a barrier between them. These people could not go up there; those people could not come down here. Until, at a certain point, he removed the barrier, rescinded the decree, and said: Now the people of the upper province may go down, and the people of the lower province may go up. The Midrash says this is exactly what happened with the creation of the world. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made a barrier, as it says in the Torah in Parshas Bereishis: a firmament separating the upper waters from the lower waters. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made a barrier between the higher worlds and the lower worlds. “The heavens are the heavens of Hashem, but the earth He gave to human beings.” Even though righteous, holy, and pure people lived here in this world—the holy forefathers, as we said, the tribes, Noach, and so on—the ability to connect physical reality with G-dly reality did not exist as long as the Torah had not been given. So yes, they learned Torah. It was a spiritual Torah; they observed mitzvos, spiritual mitzvos. But for there to be a connection between the physical world and the spiritual world—that was impossible. To take a physical object and, by performing a mitzvah with it, connect the physical world, the material world, with the G-dly world—that did not exist before the giving of the Torah. Physical tefillin: taking the hide of an animal and making tefillin from it, and those tefillin that you put on connecting you with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, while the tefillin themselves become an object

12:38 of holiness. A Torah scroll, a mezuzah, and so on. Physical things become holy objects, objects used for sacred purposes. Before Matan Torah, that did not exist; it could not exist, because these were two worlds with an enormous divide between them. A gap. At Matan Torah, when there was the revelation of “Anochi”—all these distinctions and barriers hold as long as the world operates according to nature. By nature, of course, the spiritual and the physical are two worlds very, very far apart. The higher and the lower, the higher worlds and the lower worlds, have no connection to each other. That is from the standpoint of the nature of creation, of how I see the world, of the world’s own boundaries. Once that great historical event of “Anochi” took place, Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself was revealed within creation, and this wondrous connection between the world and its Creator came about. That is the connection in the world. The same is true—and now we come to a Jew who learns Torah. After the giving of the Torah, this wondrous thing happened: when a Jew learns Torah, he is, in fact, in charge of the Torah. A Jew has the ability to decide halachah. The Gemara says, “The Torah is not in heaven.” Since the Torah was given, a Jew has become, so to speak, the one in charge of it. There is a whole story about this in the Gemara, in tractate Bava Metzia. The Gemara relates that the Tannaim had a dispute over a particular halachah. It was a major dispute: great Tannaim ruled one way, and other leading Tannaim ruled the other way. Among them was the great Tanna Rabbi Eliezer ben Horkenus, Rabbi Eliezer the Great, who ruled a certain way. Most of the sages of Israel disagreed with him, and the sages ruled according to the majority. In Torah law, when there is a dispute over halachah, we follow the majority. Rabbi Eliezer ben Horkenus did not agree, because he knew from his understanding that he was right. He said that if he was right, a heavenly voice should come forth and say so—and he brought it about. A heavenly voice came forth and said that the halachah followed Rabbi Eliezer ben Horkenus. And despite that,

15:04 the sages said no: “The Torah is not in heaven.” The Gemara relates that one of the great Tannaim, who had a connection with the higher worlds, met Eliyahu Hanavi and asked him, “What happened in heaven after that episode?” He told him that Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself smiled and said, “My children have prevailed over Me, My children have prevailed over Me.” To that extent. At Matan Torah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, handed over the authority to decide halachah to the Jewish people—to the sages of Israel, who are down here in this physical world, souls in bodies. This power, the power a Jew has to decide matters of Torah, is an immense power that was given at Matan Torah. Why is that, really? Because it, too, is connected to the same point: the Giver of the Torah. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave the Torah, He handed over His power, so to speak—He handed Himself over to the Jewish people—and said, “Now the Torah is in your hands.” The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya that the Torah is compared to water. The Gemara says this too, but the Alter Rebbe adds: What exactly is the significance of water? Why is the Torah compared specifically to water? The Gemara is speaking about humility. A person needs to be humble like water, which descends from a high place to a low place. A person needs to be lowly in spirit, humble, and then he is a vessel for the light of Torah. But the Alter Rebbe adds an entirely different depth to this. Water: we say that the water was once on the mountain, and today it is in the valley. It leaves the higher place and is found specifically in the lower place; that is where the water is. The Alter Rebbe says: When the Torah was given, like water, the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu—which is in the highest, loftiest place, what the Gemara calls a “hidden treasure”—descended into this physical world. Now the Torah is here, including the very essence of the Torah, the Giver of the Torah. Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself placed His wisdom

17:27 and His very essence within the Torah. And which Torah? Not the Torah that is in heaven, but the Torah that is here below on earth. When halachah is learned here, when a physical Jew with a physical body learns halachah, a ruling in Torah, here in this world, it is here that he becomes united with the Giver of the Torah, with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. That is why a Jew, specifically, has the ability to bring forth new insights in Torah and the ability to issue a ruling in Torah. And when a Jew performs a mitzvah, his mitzvah brings about a connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, and he makes the physical substance of the world into an object of a mitzvah, an object of holiness. Only a Jew has this power, and only in this physical world, through learning Torah and observing mitzvos in the physical world. Because here, within the Torah that we learn, is Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, the Giver of the Torah. This fact—that “Anochi,” “I Myself,” is present in the simplest, most physical things—is the great revolution that happened at Matan Torah. And that is the difference between the Torah before Matan Torah and the Torah after Matan Torah. The forefathers learned Torah, but their Torah was a spiritual Torah. It was Torah in a higher world. It was Torah that did not have the ability to connect the world with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Why? Because it was Torah itself, the wisdom of Torah. It did not yet contain the Giver of the Torah, “Anochi,” the very essence of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That was not there yet, and so it did not have the power to change nature, to change the reality of creation. It was a spiritual Torah, and so it had a certain limitation. At the moment the Torah was given, this wondrous thing happened: “Anochi” entered the Torah. So now that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is in the Torah, every single Jew, even if you are not on the level of Avraham

19:27 our father and not Moshe Rabbeinu’s, and that is really the whole foundation. When we speak about the spiritual dimension of Torah, the intellect of Torah, the wisdom in Torah, there are differences of degree. Some things are more elevated, others less so. Some people are more elevated, more holy, and others less so. But when we speak about the “I” at the heart of Torah—Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, the Giver of the Torah, His very essence—once that is present in the Torah, there is no difference between the simplest thing and the deepest thing. It makes no difference what we are talking about. So in the simplest things—“Do not steal,” “Do not murder,” “Do not desire,” “Do not covet,” “Honor your father and your mother”—in the simplest mitzvos, in the simplest things a Jew does down here, there is the deepest connection between the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, with His very essence. And this helps us understand the revolution of the Giving of the Torah. We asked: What exactly happened at the Giving of the Torah? What were all those sounds and flashes of lightning about? Yes, because something tremendous happened here, something of the most fundamental significance. Before the Giving of the Torah, not stealing was a matter of ethics: be a decent person; don’t steal. Why is stealing forbidden? Because it isn’t right to steal. Now, not stealing comes from “I am Hashem your G-d.” Now, when a Jew conducts himself in a Jewish way, according to the Torah, and fulfills a mitzvah—even the simplest mitzvah of not stealing, even the simplest mitzvah of honoring his parents or honoring Shabbos, all the mitzvos written in the Ten Commandments—it is no longer a simple, ordinary, worldly matter connected with the concerns of everyday life. It is connected with “I.” It connects the Jew, at the deepest place in his soul, with the deepest thing

21:43 —Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. This helps us understand what all the tremendous excitement at the Giving of the Torah was about. That is why their souls left them. At the Giving of the Torah, the Jews felt something overwhelming. At that moment, they came to feel and recognize that in fulfilling even the simplest mitzvah, I connect myself with the deepest, most wondrous, most infinite thing there is: a connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. This was what was new at the Giving of the Torah, and it did not happen only for that one moment. It has been happening ever since, at every moment, every day. Every time a Jew studies a verse of Torah, every time a Jew fulfills a mitzvah, whatever mitzvah it may be, this wondrous connection takes place. Mitzvah is related to the word tzavsa, meaning “togetherness”: the connection of the Jew with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So when we look at Torah study, it makes no difference whether it is Moshe Rabbeinu or the simplest Jew. Every Jew has a mitzvah to study Torah every day. Of course, there are differences in the level of study: what he understands, what he grasps, how far he reaches. But as for the act of studying Torah itself, every Jew has an obligation according to halachah: “You shall speak of them,” “You shall meditate on it day and night.” Every Jew who studies Torah, even the simplest of the simple, when he says a verse of Torah—even if he understands nothing at all and only says the words—connects with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the Giver of the Torah, on the same level and with the same depth as the greatest and holiest Jew. That is why there is a blessing over the Torah. What does it say? We recite it whenever we read from the Torah on Monday, Thursday, and Shabbos. A Jew is called up to the Torah. It makes no difference who he is: a great rabbi or a simple man, a Jew who studies more or studies less, who observes more or observes less. The moment a Jew approaches the Torah scroll, he is about to read

23:44 a verse that he himself might not understand. But he will say the words or listen to the Torah reader reading them. There is a blessing over the Torah, and in that blessing he says: “Who has chosen us from among all the peoples and given us His Torah. Blessed are You, Hashem, Giver of the Torah.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us the Torah. That giving is what happened at the Giving of the Torah: Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave us the Torah as a gift, and He placed Himself within it. He gave Himself within this Torah, and when I say or hear this verse, I become united and connected with the Giver of the Torah. That is the tremendous significance of the Giving of the Torah, and it helps us understand why we celebrate Shavuos in this way. Shavuos has no special mitzvah of its own, because any particular mitzvah would only detract from the essence of the day. If we assigned it a particular mitzvah, that would give it a specific form, a specific theme, a specific detail—and that is precisely not the point of the Giving of the Torah. The point of the Giving of the Torah is “I am Hashem your G-d”: connecting with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. On Shavuos, a Jew needs to understand, to grasp, to receive the Torah anew. That means knowing that on this day, every single year, “I am Hashem your G-d” is revealed anew. Every year on this day, there is a G-dly revelation from the deepest and loftiest place, saying to the Jew: I am yours, and I am present in every word of Torah you study, in your prayer, and in every mitzvah. And that is exactly why there is no special mitzvah, because this day itself is about the deepest, most powerful point in the giving of the Torah: the connection of a Jew with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This also explains what it says in the Shulchan Aruch. The Alter Rebbe writes in the Shulchan Aruch that when we say, “And You have chosen

25:47 us from every people and language,” we should have the Giving of the Torah in mind. The day of the Giving of the Torah was the day Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose the Jewish people. What does “You have chosen us from every people and language” mean? At the Giving of the Torah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose the Jewish people. But wait—that is the same question we asked earlier. The Jewish people were already a special people before then, from the time of Avraham Avinu, in Egypt, and at the Exodus from Egypt. What happened on the day of the Giving of the Torah? “You have chosen us from every people and language.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s choice was that He gave Himself to the Jewish people. He said to the Jews: You are My people, and I am yours. “You have chosen us” means a choice coming from the deepest and most wondrous place in Hakadosh Boruch Hu: He Himself chose the Jewish people, and we became His people. That is the wondrous thing that happened on Shavuos. And so Shavuos is a festival when each and every one of us needs to connect with the Giver of the Torah through the Torah. Many have studied Torah but forgotten the Giver of the Torah. Shavuos is the day when we need to connect with the Giver of the Torah through studying Torah. This festival, Shavuos, is also, among other things, the yahrzeit of the Baal Shem Tov. The Baal Shem Tov, who revealed the teachings of Chassidus, the inner dimension of Torah, taught us the depth of Torah: that Torah study is not only a matter of wisdom and intellect, but that through studying Torah, a Jew becomes united with the Giver of the Torah. One of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings was on the verse, “For I have given you a good teaching; do not forsake My Torah.” The Baal Shem Tov says: “For I have given you a good teaching.” I have given you the Torah. Torah is a good teaching. What does Hakadosh Boruch Hu ask? “My Torah

28:04 Don’t abandon it. Don’t abandon it, and don’t forget that this Torah is My Torah, the Torah of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. When you learn a verse in the Torah, don’t forget the Giver of the Torah. You can learn Torah and enjoy its beauty, depth, wisdom, and insights, but if you’ve forgotten the Giver of the Torah, you’ve forgotten what matters most. When you learn Torah: “For I have given you a good teaching, but do not forsake My Torah.” Don’t forget that we’re talking about the Giver of the Torah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, who is present in every word, in every verse you learn. And because a Jew has the Giver of the Torah within the Torah, he also has the ability to transform creation, the physical reality of the world, and make the world a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We received this incredible power on Shavuos. Why is it called Shavuos? The Alter Rebbe said: to make a festival out of the weeks. The weeks are the weekdays, the ordinary days. “And you shall make the festival of Shavuos”—make a festival out of the weeks. Take simple things, ordinary days, ordinary things in the world, and infuse them with holiness. That is the power a Jew received on Shavuos by learning Torah, fulfilling mitzvos, and connecting with the Giver of the Torah. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu grant each and every one of us that we receive the Torah with joy and inwardly, and that we take the power of the day the Torah was given to unite anew with the Giver of the Torah. Then the Torah we learn will have the power to illuminate the world, to make this physical world a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And may we soon merit to see the whole world become a world of Torah, a world of holiness, a world illuminated by Divine light, a world of peace and tranquility. “Hakadosh Boruch Hu found no vessel to hold blessing for Israel other than peace.” “Hashem will give strength to His people; Hashem will bless

30:17 His people with peace”—the peace of the true and complete Geulah through our righteous Moshiach, speedily in our days, amen.