Correction: Full thought!
Jun 03, 2022 6:04 pm
The weekly email was sent without the full thought. I included it here:
What we need now is the peace and quiet that comes with not existing.
The holiday of Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Although that event technically occurred 3,334 years ago, we don't simply commemorate it as a historical event.
What happened during the giving of the Torah? A profound prophetic experience where, for the first time, humans experienced out-of-world energy. Not-of-this-existence energy. The feeling of not me.
The transcendent energy was so powerful that our Sages tell us that it lifted the mountain into the air and caused the Jews to die. G-d brought them back to life but they were forever changed.
The mitzvahs given to us as part of the Torah are little micro-doses of not existing. Doses where we feel the fullness of G-d, not the self.
Each year, when we stand in the synagogue listening to the Ten Commandments being read on Shavuot, we can smell a whiff of that feeling. We can just touch the knowledge that we are transcendent beings - beings that don't exist.
Each Shavuot we recommit to living a life according to G‑d's Will, one filled with mitzvahs, filled with outside the world energy.
May this Shavuot uplift you beyond existing,
don't be,
Rabbi Mendy