Shavuot Study On Line #1

On Line Study Texts

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SHAVUOT STUDY I:

Does Torah sustain your World?

Consider the following texts and the questions that follow:

TEXT #1:

Rabbi Oshaya Rabbah said:
The Torah says, "I was the artisan's tool for the Holy One, Blessed be."

As a rule an earthly King who is building a palace does not build it according to his own ideas, but according to an architect; and the architect does not know how to build it out of his head, but has parchments or tablets to know how to design the rooms and openings. In this way, God looked into the Torah and created the world.

Bereishit Rabbah 1:1

TEXT #2:

When the Holy One created the earth, he said to it, "If Israel accepts the Torah you shall survive, but if not, I will return you to chaos."

Tanhuma Genesis, Shabbat 88a

TEXT #3:

Once the world was created, it could not have been sustained had it not occurred to the Divine Will to create human beings to engage in the study of Torah. For just as God looked into the Torah and created the world, humans look into it and sustain the world.

Zohar 161 a-b

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

How do you understand the relation between the Torah and the world? What do the rabbis seem to be getting at? Can you make sense of what they are saying in terms that make sense to you?

What is their conception of the essence of the Torah? What is your own?

Is there a "torah" -- a teaching, an insight, a principle -- that you cannot live without? Is there a word of Torah without which your world would revert to chaos?

Does the Torah we celebrate on Shavuot strengthen and deepen the torah that you live by? Can you imagine it doing so?

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Consider the following text on the relation between Torah and Existence.

TEXT #4:
Why was the Torah given in the wilderness? To teach that if you do not set yourself free, like the wilderness, you do not merit the Torah. And just as wilderness has no end, so Torah is without end.

Pesikta De Rav Kahana

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Shavuot celebrates matan torah, the giving of the Torah. But there is no real giving without a real readiness to receive and, according to Rav Kahana, we must first prepare ourselves by becoming truly receptive and "free, like the wilderness."

What is this wilderness? This freedom? What does it oppose? What must we separate ourselves from in our own lives if we are to become truly free and ready to receive the Torah? If this freedom alone enables us to accept the Torah properly, might it also enable us to reject the Torah as well?

What is the true measure of whether the Torah has been received in freedom, if not whether the Torah is lived in freedom?

What does it mean to you to receive the Torah in freedom and to live the Torah in freedom? What would it feel like, look like, be like to live the torah in this way in your own life, in your wilderness?

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