Hashem Sends Gifts: The 17 Days Every Jew Must Make the Most of Before Shavuos

00:00 Have you noticed something interesting? We just celebrated Lag BaOmer, and seventeen days later comes Shavuos. In other words, these days between Lag BaOmer and Shavuos are days connected with the giving of the Torah. Now, what is interesting about all this? In the history of the Jewish people, Shavuos obviously came many years earlier. The giving of the Torah took place in the year 2448, when the Jewish people left Egypt. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai lived about fifteen hundred years later. So Lag BaOmer, the day of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s passing, came much later. But in practice, when we celebrate these days, we celebrate Lag BaOmer first, and then Shavuos arrives. That is no coincidence. There is certainly something very important in it, because when we speak about the sequence of festivals, there is a kind of preparation: one festival prepares us for the next. Pesach comes, then Sefiras HaOmer, and afterward Shavuos. We know that the festivals form a chain, with each one leading to the next stage, especially when we understand the depth and meaning of each festival. Then we see what they have in common and how one is connected to the next. So what is interesting here? In terms of when the events happened, Shavuos clearly came first, and Lag BaOmer took place many years later. But in the calendar year, we celebrate Lag BaOmer first and then Shavuos. What, then, is the connection? That is what we will discuss today. On the one hand, we will understand the connection between these two occasions,

02:23 which are seventeen days apart—seventeen being the numerical value of tov, “good.” As it says in the sefarim, there are tov days between Lag BaOmer and Shavuos. What is the inner connection between these two festivals? What is the difference between them? What exactly does each one add? If they were the same thing, of course, they would not be two separate days. What does each festival give us, and why do they come in this order? As we said, on the one hand Shavuos took place before Lag BaOmer, while on the other hand, during the year we celebrate Lag BaOmer first and then Shavuos. And what is the message for us today? What does it tell us during these great days of preparation for the giving of the Torah? In general, we know that these two days are alike in that both are connected with the revelation of parts of the Torah. Shavuos, of course, is the day we received the Torah—the great, historic day when Hashem descended upon Mount Sinai and Moshe received the Torah at Sinai. Hakadosh Boruch Hu revealed Himself on Mount Sinai and gave us the Ten Commandments. The giving of the Torah took place on Shavuos. As for Lag BaOmer, it says in the sefarim and in works of Chassidus—particularly in maamarim of the Alter Rebbe, even more so in maamarim of the Rebbe Rashab, and in a number of other Chassidus writings—that Lag BaOmer is a day when the inner dimension of the Torah was revealed. The Rebbe Rashab even writes in Sefer Hamaamarim 5666 that just as Shavuos is the day the revealed part of the Torah, the part dealing with halachah, was given, Lag BaOmer is the giving of the inner dimension of the Torah. Now, we must make this clear: G-d forbid, this does not mean there were two separate givings. At the giving of the Torah, we received the entire Torah. On Shavuos, the day the Torah was given, the whole Torah was given. The giving of the Torah happened only once. It will not happen again, as the Alter Rebbe said and repeated

04:30 many times. The giving of the Torah will not happen again, because there is no need for it to happen again—not even in the days of Moshiach, although the verses speak of a kind of new Torah then. The wording of the verse is, “A new Torah shall go forth from Me.” There, too, it is explained to us that, G-d forbid, this is not a different Torah. It is the depth, the secrets, and the inner dimension of the Torah that Moshiach will reveal. So, of course, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who revealed the secrets of the Torah, began to reveal them. He did not bring a new Torah; he only revealed the depth of the inner dimension of the Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu had brought. In other words, at the giving of the Torah on Shavuos, Moshe Rabbeinu brought the entire Torah, which already contained everything: the Written Torah, the Oral Torah, pshat, remez, drush, and sod. Every part of the Torah—the entire Torah, in its totality—was given to Moshe at Sinai. It is just that some parts were given openly right away, while others were revealed over time. We see this in general with the Oral Torah: the Torah was given together with its explanation, but it took forty years for Moshe Rabbeinu to reveal all its parts. After that, “Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Yehoshua; Yehoshua to the Elders; the Elders to the Prophets,” and then to the Men of the Great Assembly. There was a process of transmitting the Torah, the Oral Torah. How much more so with the inner dimension of the Torah: that took a very long time, many years—as we said, close to fifteen hundred years—until Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai came and, together with his circle, began to reveal the secrets of the Torah through the Zohar. Afterward it was concealed again, as part of the long story of how the inner dimension of the Torah was revealed. Nevertheless, the Rebbe Rashab tells us that Lag BaOmer is considered the day on which, every year,

06:21 the light of the giving of the inner dimension of the Torah is renewed. As we know from the Zohar, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said, “I am bound with a single bond.” He revealed the secrets of the Torah. On the day of his passing, he told his students that he was going to reveal that day the deepest secrets—secrets within secrets that he had never revealed before—so that they could write them down. He said that these secrets would be revealed only with the coming of Moshiach, and this is the part of the Zohar that we know was revealed on that day. So every year on Lag BaOmer, that light shines anew. And here we see something remarkable in the similarity between these two days: Lag BaOmer on the one hand, and Shavuos on the other. We also find that both days are called a wedding. Shavuos is called a wedding. There is an explicit Mishnah at the end of Tractate Taanis: “Go forth and gaze, daughters of Zion, upon King Shlomo, upon the crown with which his mother crowned him on his wedding day.” The Mishnah says that “his wedding day” refers to the giving of the Torah. In other words, on the day the Torah was given, there was a kind of wedding between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people. So much so that, as explained in many sefarim, the wording we say under the chuppah is: “Who sanctifies His people Israel through chuppah and kiddushin.” This is the wording of the blessing said when the groom betroths the bride at every wedding. What, then, does “Who sanctifies His people Israel through chuppah and kiddushin” mean? It refers to what happened at the giving of the Torah. The mountain that Hakadosh Boruch Hu held over the Jewish people, the cloud, was the chuppah, as the Midrashim explain, and the giving of the Ten Commandments was a kind of kiddushin. At the giving of the Torah, there was a wedding between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people. A number of Midrashim explain this to us, and many verses in Shir HaShirim explain that this was a moment of a wedding, of chuppah, of kiddushin, of marriage, and Hakadosh

08:24 Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel. So much so that the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya that the wording we say in every blessing, “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us,” refers to marriage. Just as a groom betroths his bride, Hakadosh Boruch Hu betroths His people Israel through Torah and mitzvos. So Shavuos is the day the Torah was given. It is the wedding day of Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Knesses Yisroel. Lag BaOmer is called the day of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s hilula in the books of Kabbalah. The source is also in the Zohar. Although the Zohar does not explicitly speak about Lag BaOmer, the Kabbalists have understood, generation after generation, that it means this day, Lag BaOmer, and it calls it a hilula. The joy of this day is the joy of a hilula. What does the word hilula mean? A wedding. In other words, this day too, Lag BaOmer, is called a wedding. So that shows us a very deep, very inner connection between the two days. They are two stages of a wedding. What is the difference between them? As we said, on Shavuos, although the entire Torah was given—and more than that, on Shavuos there was a revelation of the supernal chariot. If we want to understand that the Torah truly is one Torah, it is clear from all the Midrashim that explain that at the moment of the giving of the Torah, the Jewish people saw the supernal chariot. What was later hidden, found only in the esoteric teachings, in Kabbalah, what is called maaseh merkavah, was openly visible when the Torah was given. So much so that the Rebbe once said something remarkable: at the giving of the Torah, the hidden dimension of Torah was revealed, while the revealed dimension of Torah was hidden. In other words, the Jewish people saw maaseh merkavah before their eyes: “All the people saw the sounds,” the flames and the sound of the shofar. That includes seeing the supernal angels,

10:29 the banners. As is known, they saw the supernal chariot with all the angels. It says explicitly in Tehillim, chapter 68, the well-known chapter that describes receiving the Torah: “The kings of armies flee, they flee.” There was an extraordinary Divine revelation. They openly saw maaseh merkavah, while the revealed part of the Torah was actually hidden. No, no, we did not receive all the halachos there. We received them only over time, as we said. And afterward, it became the opposite: Moshe Rabbeinu revealed the revealed part of the Torah. The esoteric part remained secret and hidden, as its name suggests. These are the Torah’s secrets, which, as the Gemara says in Maseches Chagigah, one may not reveal. There are all kinds of prohibitions and strictures about revealing the secrets of the Torah. Then Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai came and began illuminating the world with the light of Kabbalah. Of course, in his time it was only for a small circle, the holy fellowship. But later, as the generations progressed—when did that happen? When the time of the Arizal came. As the Alter Rebbe writes in Tanya in the name of Rabbi Chaim Vital, the Arizal’s student, he writes that specifically in the later generations before Moshiach’s coming, not only is it permitted, it is also a mitzvah to reveal this wisdom. The time had come for this wisdom to go out into the world and spread throughout it. The Zohar also alludes to this in several places: before Moshiach’s coming there will be a revelation of the inner dimension of Torah, as there was in the time of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and even more so. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai writes that even young children will understand the secrets of the Torah. He says that “in the six-hundredth year of Noach’s life” refers to the six-hundredth year of the sixth millennium. That has happened over the last two or three hundred years: we see that since the revelation of the Baal Shem Tov and his students, the whole subject of the inner dimension of Torah, the Torah’s secrets, has been revealed in the world. So it follows that there is a very deep connection between these two

12:28 days, with this difference: on Shavuos there is more emphasis on the halachic part, the revealed part, Moshe Rabbeinu. On the other hand, Lag BaOmer is the time when the inner dimension of Torah, the Torah’s secrets, would be revealed. Now, which comes first, as we asked earlier? Does the revealed part come first, or does the hidden part come first? As we have seen in the history of the generations, the revealed part of Torah was revealed first. Only afterward, fifteen hundred years later, did the time come—precisely at the beginning of the harsh, terrible, dark exile, the final exile. Only then did Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai appear, and the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah began, continuing through all the stages of the following thousands of years until the later generations. So the revealed part comes first. But as we said, which do we celebrate first in the yearly cycle of festivals? Lag BaOmer is a preparation for Shavuos. Here is the explanation. It is very simple. First, look at how we educate a child in Torah study. When someone begins learning—and certainly when we teach children—you cannot start teaching them the secrets of the Torah. First you teach them the revealed part of Torah, the halachic part. That is also what halachah says. The Rambam writes that one may not enter into the secrets of the Torah until one has “filled one’s belly” with halachah, Gemara, and study of the revealed part of Torah. And so we see that the order of study for young people is certainly to teach them halachah first, then Chumash, then Mishnah. After that we teach them Talmud, Gemara. Only once they have a firm grounding in halachah, the revealed part, do we slowly begin revealing the inner dimension of Torah to them. Or, as we said, specifically in our later generations, younger people too—people used to say that you could not study the secrets of the Torah until the age of forty, but after

14:40 the revelation of the Baal Shem Tov and the revelation of the teachings of Chassidus, particularly Chabad Chassidus, the fear of the inner dimension of Torah was removed. They explained these matters so clearly and understandably that, G-d forbid, one cannot make the mistake known as “cutting the shoots”—that is, going in the wrong direction. So on the contrary, young people study it too. But the order is halachah first; afterward comes the inner dimension. Or, in the language of the Zohar, first the body of the Torah, and then the soul is placed within the body. You build the body, take the halachos, and then nishmasa d’oraisa, the soul of the Torah, its inner dimension, gives it inwardness and depth. This is also the explanation of studying pshat, remez, drush and sod. A person first learns the world of pshat, builds the world of remez upon it, then the world of drush, and only afterward reaches pardes, the secret dimension of Torah. On the other hand—and here is the remarkable point—the fact that Lag BaOmer prepares us for Shavuos in the yearly cycle of festivals conveys a very important message. Although deep, thorough, detailed study comes later, before you begin learning even the halachic part, you need at least the foundation: to know the inner dimension of Torah, to know its depth. We are not talking about detailed knowledge of Kabbalah, the supernal sefiros, the worlds, the order of spiritual descent, the levels and all these matters. We mean the basic foundations that the inner dimension of Torah teaches us. To put it in terms of Torah study: before a Jew begins learning, before beginning the halachic part of Torah—even when we are teaching children—we must first educate them in the foundations of Judaism, the foundations of faith. Instill in a child the reality of Hashem. Instill in a child that Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s glory fills the entire earth. Instill in a child the knowledge that the Torah, the entire Torah, is the names of

16:50 Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Even before a young child begins to understand the meanings and explanations, he should know that there is a Giver of the Torah, that there is G-dly light in the Torah. Although he does not yet understand in detail how to explain it, this knowledge must be given to a child before he begins to understand halachos and their details. At least the basic part of it. We see this, for example, in the Ramban’s introduction to his commentary on the Torah. The Ramban wrote a wonderful work, his commentary on the Torah, and in its introduction he says that a Jew must know that the entire Torah consists of the names of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In other words, the Torah is a G-dly Torah, a spiritual Torah, entirely G-dliness. In His great kindness, Hakadosh Boruch Hu clothed the Torah and brought it down into our world so that we, too, could understand it here. A child needs to receive at least this general knowledge before he begins learning: knowledge of Hashem in its broad sense, the foundations of faith. The Rebbe often related a story about education. There was once a teacher in Lubavitch, in the time of the Rebbe’s father-in-law, the Frierdiker Rebbe. His daughters also studied Torah with a teacher. One teacher taught the children only the parts of the Torah that they could understand. He would read and skip over various passages. When the Rebbe Rashab, their grandfather, learned of this, he said the teacher had to be dismissed. The teacher began arguing and explaining that he did not want to frighten the children with things they could not understand, with stories that seemed removed from reality; it might confuse and disturb them. The Rebbe Rashab said: That is not how you educate a child. A child must be raised with simple, genuine, pure faith in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And we see this in Rashi, too. Who is a greater teacher than Rashi?

19:12 The finest teacher, the finest educator—when he begins his commentary on the Torah, one of the first things Rashi says in Parshas Bereishis, in his commentary on the very first verse, is this: “Bereishis.” Rashi explains it as “for the sake of the first.” What does that mean? For the sake of the Torah and for the sake of the Jewish people. A young child has not yet begun learning anything, and Rashi comes and tells him: Know this. You look at creation, you see the world—know that all of existence was created for the sake of the Torah and for the sake of the Jewish people. These are foundations of the inner dimension of the Torah. We need to know this before we begin to learn, and that is the story of Lag BaOmer. The day on which the inner dimension of the Torah was given is the preparation for Shavuos. Before Shavuos, a Jew must already begin to internalize these foundations: there is a Giver of the Torah; there is G-dliness within the Torah; there is an inner dimension of the Torah, a soul of the Torah. Only then can you come to Matan Torah and understand and receive the revealed dimension, the halachah, while sensing the Giver of the Torah within the Torah. There is a story about the Baal Shem Tov. In light of everything we have discussed, it is truly remarkable. The Baal Shem Tov’s yahrtzeit is on Shavuos. Think about that: the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidus. It is no coincidence that his hilula, his passing, his yahrtzeit, is on Shavuos. The story goes that the Baal Shem Tov came for a visit. As is well known, he traveled a great deal. Once he visited a certain town full of scholars and scribes—Brod, Brody, a town near where he lived. He went into a yeshivah, a place where people sat and studied Torah. There sat

21:17 brilliant scholars and Torah scholars, learning with the fervor of Torah, with tremendous diligence and devotion. The Baal Shem Tov saw them learning and said to them, “I want to share a Torah thought.” He said: It is written, “For I have given you a good teaching; do not forsake My Torah.” The Baal Shem Tov explained that “a good teaching” refers to the Torah. The Torah is a good teaching—the most wonderful, delightful, pleasant thing that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given us. “For I have given you a good teaching”: Hakadosh Boruch Hu took the Torah, brought it down into this world, and said, “It is yours.” The Torah is not in heaven. It belongs within the human intellect; a person studies it, understands it, and grasps it. “For I have given you a good teaching.” But Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “Do not forsake My Torah.” Please, do not forget that it is My Torah, Hashem’s Torah—that in its essence the Torah is G-dly wisdom. Look for the inner dimension, the soul, in every halachah and every verse. “My Torah”: we are speaking here of G-d’s Torah, the Torah of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the inner dimension of the Torah. There is a soul here. There is depth within it, real depth. Do not forsake it; do not disconnect from the G-dliness within the Torah. Many studied Torah and forgot the Giver of the Torah, as discussed in a number of places, including the Gemara in Nedarim. There is Torah study, but there is also the G-dliness within the Torah. This explains Lag BaOmer: these are days of preparation for Matan Torah. Chassidus explains that Lag BaOmer is the day of the shidduch, the day the connection between the groom and bride begins. The spiritual part begins on Lag BaOmer, just as we see with weddings: the spiritual part begins, and only afterward does the actual wedding take place. The spiritual part, the shidduch, the l’chaim—the celebrations begin, and only afterward do we come to the wedding itself. From Lag BaOmer begins the time when the groom meets the bride

23:30 and they hold the first celebration. It is written that throughout the seventeen days from Lag BaOmer until Shavuos, the groom sends gifts to the bride. In other words, this is a time when we receive abundant G-dly strength, gifts from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so that we can truly receive the Torah with joy and in an inward way on Shavuos. So now, during these days, each of us needs to devote ourselves to Torah study—to learn with more vitality, more joy, and greater delight. But we must remember to bring the Giver of the Torah into it, and then our receiving of the Torah is entirely different. We will come to Shavuos, and on Shavuos we will truly feel “I am Hashem your G-d”—Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the Giver of the Torah, revealing Himself and giving us the Torah anew. Then we will truly be able to join the two parts, to unite the body and the soul so that they become one. And soon may we also merit a new Torah, as it is written—the inner dimension of the Torah, the Torah of Moshiach—may he be revealed speedily in our days, amen.