Midnight

Rabbi Noa Kushner

May 8, 2020

1.

They say that on Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates our receiving of torah 

Torah — the very precious book that asks us how we can bring truth into our world

The soul opening words that teach us to choose righteousness 

The keys that unlock the hidden mysteries of creation

They say that on Shavuot, the night when we receive all these treasures of Torah

In the middle of the night of Shavuot, at midnight, in fact

The skies part, 

the light of heaven shines, 

words of Torah are revealed 

And prayers are answered.

Which is why 

When R. Jessica and I were on a call with the other rabbis and leaders in the Jewish Emergent Network — communities from across the country like Romemu in NY, Sixth and i in DC, others of course

On this call regarding the Shavuot all night learning festival we’re hosting together

We got concerned:

Because if we’re celebrating all together from at least four time zones, when is midnight? 

I learned via Nechama Leibowitz via R. Samuel Hirsch via the Talmud that we needn’t worry too much about the midnight thing. 

Because, in fact, he teaches that the Talmud says that Torah was not even given on Shavuot, at all. 

It was given on the next day. 

In other words, the holiday of Shavuot does not celebrate our receiving Torah, the key to all the secrets of the world, but instead, it celebrates the culmination of our preparations to receive Torah. 

Because, remember, after we left Egypt it was not like we got handed Torah as we went through customs and crossed the sea. We didn’t even get Torah for our first shabbat. We had to wander for seven weeks, getting ready. 

Getting ready to get ready. 

And if you are considering what that amount of time would feel like, well, let’s just say we’ve now been sheltering in place for about seven weeks, give or take. 

Or if you want to have a sense of that time, consider Marilyn our ritual maven who counts each day from Pesach to Shavuot, seven weeks of counting as is our tradition. 

Either way you imagine it, it’s a lot of counting, preparing. 

Wouldn’t it make the most sense to culminate all of that preparing with our receiving the actual Torah? 

What are we supposed to learn from this? 

2.

I learned this week: the Sfat Emet, 

commenting on the time of priests and sacrifices

He says that the eish tamid / the fire that must always burn on the alter that Torah describes

That eish tamid, 

even though God commands us saying — this fire is not allowed to go out

Sfat Emet says

There is also a fire in each one of our souls

And this fire, too, says God, may not go out. 

And not only is this a command: that we must tend to this fire, 

Sfat Emet says, it is also a promise from God 

No matter what 

No matter how long we have to wait

No matter how much darkness and loss there is around us and sometimes within us

No matter how faint the fire gets

Even if we tried to extinguish it 

That fire within each of us does not go out, it cannot go out. 

Perhaps the reason we celebrate the culmination of the preparation is because we realize that without feeling the presence of the fire within ourselves and each other

Without our knowing that this fire burns even in times of great waiting and darkness

We might not feel we deserve Torah 

We might be afraid to try to receive it 

So even if Torah were to be put in our very hands 

The letters would stay flat on the page in front of us

Even if we were to be invited to stand at Sinai 

The gates of Torah would remain locked 

1,000 Shavuot midnights could come and go and we’d still be afraid to pray for anything

600,000 letters of Torah could fall around us like snow and we wouldn’t be able to catch a single one. 

3. 

There’s a story about Akiva, one of our greatest all time scholars

Who, it says in Avot de Rebbi Natan, “Up until the age of 40, had not studied a thing.”

Now 40 was not the very sprightly young baby age it is today

One day Akiva was standing by a well in Lydda that had a stone close by with a deep indentation in it

And he asked, “Who hollowed out this stone?” 

And the people there said, “Akiva, don’t you know? That stone was hollowed out from some water from the well falling on it day after day.” 

Akiva thought to himself: “Is my mind harder than this stone?”

And text says Akiva went to the school house with his child and he and his child began learning the letters, one at a time. “Alef…bet….”

And eventually he becomes the scholar Akiva. 

I love this story — not only b/c the great Akiva makes the connection between his head and a rock

Not only because of how long it takes Akiva to notice 

(we will note, he takes much longer than even our 49 days of preparation)

I love how long it takes him to notice but also, precisely what he notices

Akiva, one of the greatest minds of his generation, is a very late bloomer

We don’t know who he was for the first 40 years 

It is possible that he was relatively unengaged with the world

And it is also possible that he thought about learning many times

That there was the beginning of wanting to learn somewhere deep in him

An eish tamid / a fire he couldn’t always see 

And so the metaphor of the rock being slowly eroded by a drop of water

Something the eye also cannot see in real time

This was not only something Akiva thought could happen or would happen

In that moment, whether he knew it consciously or not

Akiva was also talking about something that had already happened

That is, he had gone from someone who had never studied and would never study

To a person willing to look within and see a possibility  

That possibility was within him, even him 

The holy fire of possibility that had already been burning his whole life 

And I want to suggest this shabbat that for Akiva, just as it is for us, 

there were also things as solid as rocks within him that had to be altered, shifted before he could even know what it was he so yearned to do, 

Before he could acknowledge the eish tamid / the fire always within him 

In other words, Akiva noticed the rock because he was already like the eroded rock  

And after his 40 years, he was ready to say something out loud, to try and go to the school house, to learn one letter. 

Sometimes our preparations are elegant and we count the omer like tzaddikim

Sometimes we forget

Sometimes our circumstances are so fruitful, we see who we need to be and run towards possibility

And in some moments we are under such great duress, we are suffering such loss, we cannot imagine wanting to receive anything except relief 

But whether we know it or not, the tradition teaches 

We are preparing just the same

The fire always burns in us / eish tamid

It’s just sometimes we know it easily, and sometimes it is harder for us to see 

5. 

(via Shaul Magid)

R. Ya’akov Moshe Charlap, chevruta of R. Abraham Isaac Kook 

Teaches that there are two kinds of miracles

There are the ones that everyone can see, supernatural miracles 

Miracles like plagues or seas splitting, or Torahs revealed at Sinai 

But, actually, he says, these miracles are the lower level of miracle

First of all, as we know, they don’t last 

They come and then are gone 

The whole point is just to inspire those who get to see them, to make us feel a certain way 

“It arouses a feeling that there is [something holy] in the world and then that miracle is gone.”

But the HIGHER level of miracle, he says, is the one so small as to be unnoticed

Incremental

Not unlike a drop of water on a rock

Virtually undetectable 

Not at all supernatural

An internal movement within a soul or a group of souls

That goes unnoticed for a long time 

But creates an unmistakable, permanent shift 

This, says R. Charlap, is a true miracle, this --

growth is miraculous 

because it changes everything

And in fact, just like Akiva had to gestate his yearning internally for forty years in order to have the courage to say something out loud that would allow him to learn the one letter that would inspire countless others 

So too, the internal, barely perceptible shifts within us 

Whether we fully know we’re preparing to receive Torah or not

These shifts are the true miracles

These are the shifts that, perhaps over many years, will allow us to eventually open our arms, like Akiva, 

to catch one of the 600,000 letters of Torah 

The one that is destined just for us, written just for us

And waits to be illuminated by the very eish tamid / fire that is only within us 

Precisely and exactly and only at midnight, 

whenever you think midnight happens to be.