This Friday, in addition to being Erev Shabbat is also Shavuot, z’man matan Torah, the holiday celebrating the receiving of Torah at Mount Sinai. Someone asked me recently what we mean when we say Torah? Torah is not only the scrolls that sit in our containing the Five Books of Moses, but it can also be expansive as the entire Talmud. Torah with a big T may refer to an actual Torah, but Torah with a small t could refer to any Jewish teaching from Biblical times until today.
Jewish knowledge can be ambiguous. Take the Talmud for example, is often called a book of law. But it is so much more than that. CSS has been part of a global seven-and-a-half-year study of all 2,711 pages that began in the winter of 2020. We are currently almost at the halfway point, having just completed Sotah, a section on a jealous husband, and just beginning Gittin, a section on divorce. Next week’s Torah portion Naso, contains the biblical reference Sotah is based on, a horrific section where the wife is put on a witch trial to prove her innocence (Numbers 5:12-30).
Sotah is a good example of why you should never judge a Torah by its cover. When I saw what we were about to read, I was not excited. But the tractate turned out to be wonderful. We learned about why Jews are allowed to pray in languages other than Hebrew, what the rabbis of the Talmud thought of Jesus, and about the strange Shamir wormthat built the Holy Temple. Torah study teaches us that learning is almost never a straight path, but often takes in many unexpected directions.
Chag Shavuot Sameah and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex