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Shavuot issue reflects timeless Jewish values
All your readers surely appreciated the richness of your Shavuot edition (May 15). Three articles in particular deserve special mention regarding our Season of the Giving of the Torah.
Tim Miller’s piece on “The agricultural origins of Shavuot” puts the festival in perspective within the evolving Jewish civilization we can all recognize. Not a rigid and unchanging trail, but a path through the centuries and experiences that have brought us to our generation. Time is not our enemy, but our partner in discerning the values that our ancestors bestowed and we have inherited. The anniversary of Revelation is perhaps the best season at which to affirm that revelation is continuous and eternal.
Guest columnist Rabbi Daniel Greyber’s opinion piece is a contemporary expression of our Jewish values for which we owe him special thanks. His exposition of “what it means to be a Zionist today” is a courageous challenge to recognize the innate humanity of all children, and perhaps especially those who can benefit from the Gaza Children’s Village he describes so lovingly — not at the expense of security for Israel, but helping chart the kind of future its citizens might enjoy if indeed we can create the partners it will need for peace. This is surely the Zionist ideal in its proudest expression.
And finally, the Torah column by Rabbi Mendel Rosenblum, who goes out of his way to teach us that even as we read the Torah text of early chapters in Sefer Bamidbar, we see that God’s goal was “never for everybody to become the same.” The individuality of the 12 tribes of Israel was celebrated by each tribe marching “beneath its own banner, with its own symbol and identity.”
What a timely and valuable lesson for all of us, that Judaism is neither monolithic nor binary; that our traditions provide fertile soil for all that is unique and eternal within our Jewish hearts and heritage. PJC
Rabbi Stephen E. Steindel
Pittsburgh
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