Shavuot is the anniversary, celebrated continuously for 3334 years, of receiving the Torah. It’s also celebrates, each year, the day-by-day process of inner refinement and contemplation from our first steps of freedom (Pesach) until true autonomy (life with Torah). We celebrate that once again, each in our own way and facing our own challenges, earning Torah.

But what are we really celebrating? A comprehensive rule book? Even a guide to living a kind, ethical and meaningful life? Are we happy to have received a tradition that allows for and encourages a lifetime of study and contemplation? Is it enough that our Torah has formed the foundation of western civilization and is it appropriate/sufficient thus to celebrate our historical place in the world?

Our mystics, Mekuballim, those who received, or, perhaps more accurately those who align themselves (the root, K-B-L (ק-ב-ל), while a familiar word in Hebrew only appears once in the “five books”, and that’s describing how the loops in the curtains of the Mishkan (Sanctuary, the residence, as it were, of the Shechinah) were aligned with each other so they could be joined with fasteners) i.e. those who try to describe the Infinite in finite terms when they declare that Torah (Oraita, also meaning illumination and instruction), God (HaKodesh Baruch Hu (also Kudsha Brich He), grammatically referring to both the masculine and feminine aspects of Infinity) and Yisrael, the Jewish People, Chad Hu, are One.

When we received the Torah, all those years ago, through a mass and public experience of God, what we really received on that morning, 3334 years ago, was God Himself. And each of us internalized this meta-reality in our own ways, according to our spiritual and emotional needs, according to our unique experiences, unique potentials and understanding.

If only we acknowledge it, Shavuot marks our abilities and sets of processes, meditations and contemplations, to have an active relationship with The Creator/Sustainer Of All. Necessarily, this experience is unique to each of us, although our understandings and insights are all bound together as the six hundred thousand root souls of Israel and the six hundred thousand letters of the Torah comprise and compose the Great Unity.

Additionally, this means that lovingly working together, each of us respecting and loving each others perspectives and insights and priorities, is actually possible to begin on Shavuot, as a first step in truly manifesting Torah as the blueprint God used in creating the universe.

Perhaps this is the process we commemorate and continue each year by supporting and loving first, always working from the inside outwards, those closest to us, then including those who are nearby, eventually including all of Yisrael working together at and in this Greater Yichud. It seems to me that with this realization we will truly have something to celebrate.

Chag Shavuot Sameach, followed immediately with Shabbat Shalom. It’s a dream that can come true.