Jerusalem: It’s the only place I can think about
It was Erev Shavuos, 1960, and the Boyaner Rebbe was in Yerushalayim. Word had spread quickly that the Rebbe had come from America to spend Yom Tov in the holy city, and talmidei chachamim came from across Eretz Yisrael to spend time with him. Among them were a group of his followers from Tel Aviv who had traveled specifically to see him. They knew he would be leaving after Yom Tov, and they wanted more time. So on Erev Shavuos they approached him with a request.
“Rebbe,” they said, “we know you are busy. We know Shavuos is almost here. But can we reserve you for the Shabbos after Yom Tov? Can you come to Tel Aviv and spend Shabbos with our community? We so rarely have you with us.”
“Right now,” he told them, “there is only one place I can think about traveling. Only one destination on my mind. After Shavuos we can talk. But right now, the only place I can think about is Har Sinai.”
He was not speaking about geography. He was speaking about a state of mind that Shavuos demands of us. Not a commemoration of something that happened long ago, but a return. A journey back to the foot of the mountain, to stand there and receive what was given then. What is given now.
The Or HaChaim HaKadosh offers a doorway into this mindset, and it is hiding in plain sight in the opening pesukim of Parshas Yisro.
Perek yud tes of Shemos begins with something strange. Pasuk alef says that the Jewish people arrived at Midbar Sinai. Then pasuk beis says they traveled from Rephidim and came to the wilderness of Sinai. Any reader notices immediately that the order is backwards. First tell me where they came from, then tell me where they arrived. Why does the Torah announce the arrival before describing the journey?
The Or HaChaim explains that the arrival of Bnei Yisrael at Har Sinai was so saturated with excitement, so charged with anticipation after millennia of the world waiting for this moment, that the Torah itself could not speak straight. Hashem, so to speak, describing the approach to Matan Torah, was so overcome with joy that the words themselves tumbled out of order. They are here. They finally arrived. Wait, where did they come from? It does not matter. They are here.
The Torah’s heart was racing.
• • •
The blueprint of creation itself could barely contain its excitement at this instant. Not at the splitting of the sea, not at the plagues, not at any of the miracles that preceded it. Here. At the moment the Jewish people arrived at the foot of the mountain, ready to receive.
That is what our arrival meant to Him.
And so the journey back to Har Sinai is not an exercise in historical imagination. It is an attempt to recover the feeling that something is about to happen that the whole world has been waiting for, and that you are standing right at the center of it. If a person can feel even a fraction of that anticipation, that quickening inside at the approach of Shavuos night, that person is already on the way.
If Hashem’s joy at our arrival was so overwhelming that the words themselves tumbled out of order, then that same Hashem is still listening for our return with that same intensity. The Conductor who could not contain His excitement when we arrived at the mountain is the same Conductor who does not miss a single note.
There is a story about the great conductor Arturo Toscanini. A biographer once sat with him as he listened over the radio to an orchestra performing a symphony he had conducted himself. When the performance ended the biographer said it was magnificent. Toscanini shook his head. It was not perfect, he said. There were supposed to be 14 violins tonight. There were only 13.
The biographer thought he must be joking. But the next day he called the orchestra and asked. One violinist had come down with the flu. There had been only thirteen.
“How,” the biographer asked Toscanini afterward, “is it possible to hear one missing violin in an orchestra of a 120 instruments over the radio?”
“Because,” Toscanini said, “I am the conductor. The conductor does not miss a note.”
On Shavuos we stand before the Conductor of the greatest symphony ever performed. Every word of Torah learned, every mitzvah done, He hears it all. Not as one voice lost among many, but as a distinct and irreplaceable note that He has been waiting to hear.
The Boyaner Rebbe knew that Shavuos is not a date on a calendar. It is a mountain you can stand at, and a Conductor who hears you the moment you arrive.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach www.bachlongbeach.com.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
