In a few days we’ll celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, one of the three major Jewish harvest or pilgrimage festivals, in which we mark both the wheat harvest and the giving of the Torah. While the Torah itself only provides the agricultural rationale for this festival, the rabbis and subsequent generations have marked it primarily as an anniversary of the Torah’s giving at Har Sinai/Mt. Sinai; many people today stay up late into the night learning Torah, a “tikkun” (correction) for our ancestors who should have stayed awake in anticipation of the great event.

One midrash that’s often cited on this holiday is a disturbing literal read of the line “and [the Israelites] stood at the bottom (tachtit) of the mountain.” (Exodus 19:17) The Gemara in Tractate Shabbat picks up on the common use of the word tachat to mean “under” and states: 

This teaches that the Holy Blessed One overturned the mountain above the Jews like a tub, and said to them: If you accept the Torah, excellent, and if not, there will be your burial.

Many are rightfully disquieted by this image of forced covenant – a moment meant to symbolize acceptance of our most holy text turned instead into a show of force, a false choice. The rabbis themselves even note: “From here there is a substantial caveat to the obligation to fulfill the Torah,” given that we did not enter this covenant willingly.

But Mara Benjamin, in her book “The Obligated Self,” provides a new way of looking at this midrash. “This ‘coercion’ of Israel at Sinai,” she states, “in which the people stand under divine threat, also emphasizes obligation as a name for being always already in, bonded to, and responsive to a world.” She quotes Levinas, declaring that “‘Torah is not to be understood as the limited, particular bequest given to a limited, particular people, but rather as a stand-in for the sensible substructure of the universe.’ Torah, like gravity, allows free movement on the planet. Humans are creatures who come to existence in a world of constraint, as constrained beings. We are responsive to others and to a world we did not choose.”

According to Benjamin, this sense of “forced covenant” – of existing within a framework of obligation that one did not opt into – is an apt articulation of the way we exist as conditional beings, vulnerable to and reliant upon the peoples and worlds in which we are enmeshed. These obligations and ties exist whether we choose them or not. But, as the midrash notes, obligation in which one has no exercise of will cannot convey the same ethical force. So the midrash states that in the times of Mordecai and Esther, the Jews willingly accepted upon themselves that which had previously been imposed upon them: “The Jews ordained, and took upon them…” (Esther 9:27), and Rava taught: The Jews ordained what they had already taken upon themselves through coercion at Sinai.

Commenting on this seeming paradox of both acceptance and unchosen boundedness, Benjamin states, “We always stand ‘under the mountain,’ positioned only to respond to the conditionality of our being and of the others who constitute our being in the world. Our freedom consists not in casting off all that binds us, but rather in recognizing that our boundedness and our agency are each parts of a greater whole.”

Contrary to the liberal fantasy that every individual is a sovereign world unto themself, we acknowledge that we are inextricably bound up in one another; that our vulnerability to the people, the community, the world around us also imposes obligation to this world in which we are enmeshed. It is neither possible nor desirable to extricate ourselves from these obligations to our communities, our neighbors, our city, our world – rather, we should acknowledge that we fundamentally depend upon one another, and choose to assume the obligation to promote our collective flourishing.

Join us this Shavuot as we take part in Rabbis for Ceasefire’s Global Shavuot Teach-In with 26 hours of online learning taking place with Jews across the world! Don’t miss a special JFREJ teach-in session at noon ET on Sunday, June 1, featuring a live performance by Avi Fox-Rosen of a musical exploration of a nine-part poem called Di rayze ahem/the Journey home, written by Irena Klepfisz in the early 1980s. It’s a powerful exploration of legacy, displacement, diaspora, queerness, feminism, secular Jewish identity, and memory.

Be sure to check out all the other Global Shavuot offerings, starting on Sunday at 11am ET and continuing until 1pm ET on Monday. See the full schedule and sign up here! 

You can also join JFREJ on Sunday night at the New Shul’s Kumah: Rise Up Festival in Manhattan for a marathon evening of faith, politics, art, activism and live music.

JFREJ is also participating in Shavuot Across Brooklyn, teaming up with Avodah to lead session from 11:30pm-12:30am about the ways antisemitism is showing up and being used in the current New York City mayoral race.

Lastly, if you’re looking for further Shavuot inspiration, check out our previously published Shavuot for Black Lives guide for learning, reflection, and action. 

Chag Sameach
Rabbi Lexie Botzum