Rabbi’s Monthly Message

There is a moment, if you have been blessed to experience it, when you watch your child step into
a light they have been growing toward their whole life, and you understand, perhaps for the first time, what it means to witness. For our family, we are in the midst of these moments. This weekend Talyah will
step onto the stage at her high school playing the lead in their spring musical, Cinderella. And next
month, she will graduate high school and begin her journey at the University of Hartford. It is fun to
watch as a parent!

It is no small thing that this is happening as we approach Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, when we
celebrate the receiving of Torah at Sinai. Our tradition teaches that on that day, every Jewish soul, those
present and those yet unborn, stood at the foot of the mountain and received the covenant – this special
relationship with God that defines the Jewish experience. We were not passive recipients. We said, na’aseh v’nishma – “we will do, and we will hear.” We committed before we even knew the full weight of
what we were accepting.

This is, I have come to believe, also the story of parenthood. We make a covenant with our
children before we know who they will become. We say na’aseh v’nishma to them from the very first
breath; we will show up, we will listen, we will do. And only slowly, over years of Shabbat tables and
holiday candles and bedtime prayers, do we begin to hear the fullness of who they are.

Shavuot is also zman matan torateynu – “the season of the giving of our Torah.” It is a holiday of
learning, of staying up through the night to study, of recognizing that wisdom is not a possession but
rather a lifelong pursuit. The rabbis of the Talmud ask: why was the Torah given in the desert wilderness?
The answer, as my teacher Rabbi Mike Comins shared with me once, is because the desert belongs to no
one, and Torah must likewise also be available to everyone. Wisdom cannot be hoarded. It must be
passed on.

Watching Talyah on stage and thinking about her upcoming graduation, I think about all the
people who have transmitted something precious to her over her life; her teachers, her sister, her
grandparents, the members of the Coalition who have smiled at her across the years and have watched
her grow up, and the members of our communities in Stafford and Western Massachusetts who have let
her know she belongs to something larger than herself. The Torah was not given to one person. It was
given to a people. And it is a people that raises our children and help them discover the wisdom they
carry throughout their lives.

Cinderella is, at its heart, a story about a young woman of quiet inner nobility who endures
difficulty with grace and is ultimately recognized for who she truly is. There is something deeply Jewish in
that arc and the idea that our truest selves are not conferred by circumstance but revealed through it. Shavuot is a reminder that every generation must make the covenant its own. Our ancestors received the
Torah at Sinai, but the Torah is not a museum piece. It lives when we live it. And the most sacred thing we
can do for our children is let them see us do the same.

As we prepare to celebrate Shavuot together this month, I offer this blessing: May we be a nation
that holds its children with enough love that they can fly, and enough roots that they always know where
home is. May all of our children one day stand in a light of their own making and know, because we
showed them, that they have always been worthy of it. And may we renew our covenants with God, with
one another, and with the generations who will come after us, with joy and with intention.