We are on the cusp. It has taken forty-nine days to reach our destination. 49 days since we left Egypt. 49 days to prepare for the most significant singular moment in our spiritual history.
Tonight marks the beginning of the holiday of Shavuot. It may be better known as the cheese holiday (“the land of milk and honey”), where we who are not lactose intolerant indulge in such delights as blintzes. But on Shavuot, we celebrate receiving the Torah, our wisdom tradition. If they had the privilege of tasting it, our ancestors would have taught that the taste of Torah is even richer than Vermont cheese.
One tradition for this chag is to stay up all night learning Torah. So it is a fitting time to ask you to consider what Jewish learning might inspire you? We’ve put together a 2-minute survey to help us plan strategically for our JCOGS adult education in the coming years. We’re calling it Learning for Life.
And here’s our new Learning for Life website. There, you’ll find our upcoming adult ed events, a link to my website with learning opportunities, and recordings of our Shabbat morning service melodies. You’ll also find information about our new library, which has recently been revamped. Thanks to a very generous donation from one of my mentors, Arthur Kurzweil, we have a new and improved library that will knock your learning socks off, from Jewish feminism, to Kabbalah, to Israeli and Holocaust history, to fabulous novels. Come borrow a book or two (or three) and ta shma, go learn!
Finally, please join us to celebrate Shavuot as I lead services tomorrow/Friday at 6pm. We’ll hear from two of our members who studied in our second cohort of the year-long discussion on ethics in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Foundations for a Thoughtful Judaism course. Come for the learning, stay for the dinner. And Saturday afternoon at 2:30pm, we hike the mountain with our friends at Living Tree Alliance, just like Moses did!
May your learning be as rich and delicious as Vermont cheese.
Tihiyu bri’im, may you be healthy. Shabbat Shalom, Chag sameach, and Happy Shavuot!
