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Judaism

Can the voice of God still be heard today?

How revelation, the theme of Shavuot, can be a personal experience.

May 13, 2010 10:13

By

Jonathan Wittenberg

3 min read

Hugo Gryn's words still startle me: "And I understood a bit of the revelation that is implicit in Auschwitz." Is revelation not linked to Sinai, and not anywhere else - let alone Auschwitz? So what can Gryn's words mean?

Shavuot is the festival of revelation; it celebrates how God speaks to us, as a people and as individuals, now, as well as then in that desert at Sinai. Yet it has become the forgotten festival. It does not possess the great themes of liberation like Pesach or the rich rituals of the Seder; it lacks the fun of succah building and the joy of smelling the etrog. Shavuot is almost devoid of symbols. Maybe that is why we treat it as the poor relation among the chagim. Or perhaps it is because the subject of revelation seems less relevant, or more obscure, to us. We can discuss the meaning of freedom for hours. But how many of us feel comfortable talking about God, or how we hear God speaking?

Still, to the seeker these questions are urgent: what does God want of us today? What is God saying to me now? As Jews, we search for God's voice in life and in the Torah, in order to understand what this very Torah means. We listen to God's speech in the wisdom of our ancestors who, century after century, formed and transformed, created and recreated the meaning of that Torah through law and lore, according to their understanding of God's voice in their specific context in history and culture.

Beyond that, more immediately, the soul "thirsts for God, the living God"; we want to hear the voice of God speaking in our conscience and our heart. We seek God's inspiration so that the commandments to love God, God's world and our fellow human beings cease to be mere injunctions and come alive with impassioned immediacy.