Shavuot and Optimism

Rabbi Melanie Aron

June 5, 2003

Several years ago the Optimist Society had their annual convention in San Jose and I was invited to give an opening invocation. I came home with a plaque making me an honorary optimist.

Jeremy, who at that age was just understanding what an optimist was, thought this was quite a trick. Something out of Wizard of Oz, you present someone with a piece of plastic and voila they are an optimist.

Wearing my optimist hat and looking at the bright side, there is a lot to celebrate tonight.

This is a great class. Its not just that I was there for most of your Bar and Bat Mitzvah preparations and ceremonies, some of you I have know since you were little munchkins, when you could still be carried around, before your youngest sibblings were even born. I remember your alef service, and your daled service, visiting at your Havurah, coming to your house for shivah, welcoming you to the Temple.

It was a good year. You came to class, regularly, and engaged with us, your teachers and with the material. You participated in out of class activities, the trip to LA, services, mitzvah day projects. Everyone seemed to have someone to hang out with in the class, and when we pushed you into groups with people who weren't your closest friends, you made some efforts towards connecting and working together.

But my kids will tell you, I am not always an optimist and don't always look at the bright side. Seeing the cup half empty, I note that during my first years at Shir Hadash we could count on about a third of the class spending the summer in Israel. Those trips created a enduring friendships and a lifetime of memories. I am sad that you will not have that experience, and pray that by the time you are in college, the idea of spending a summer or semester, or even winter break in Israel, will seem so much more feasible to you and your families than it does today.

There is another little cloud in my mind. Confirmation is in some ways the capping stone of our religious school program. It is the end of formal education at Shir Hadash, though we now have wonderful special programs for 11th and 12th graders- The March of the Living Year of Study of Jewish Life in Europe, and The Jewish Civics Initiative. Still, the presumption is that by this point you have learned all that you need to know to function as a Reform Jewish adult.

Now we did try and pack a lot into Confirmation, history and philosophy and theology, and you had many fine teachers over the course of your years here. But I think you and I would agree that there might still be a few gaps in your Jewish education.

When I think about that I can get quite distressed, noting all that is still lacking in our educational program, but preparing for Shavuot put me in touch with the extent to which this feeling of inadequacy is not unique to me or Shir Hadash.

The great moment in Jewish history, which we commemorate tonight, is always called Matan Torah, the giving of the Torah, never the receiving of the Torah. Why is that? I think it reflects some humility on the side of past generations, who recognized that even if we were, in the words of the haggadah, kulanu chachamim, kulanu nevonim, kulanu zekeinim, kulam yodeah et ha Torah, all of us wise scholars and learned sages, elders and students of Torah, we would still have received only some small part of God's revelation to humanity. The mystics describe it as a great fountain overflowing, and each of us collecting the water in our own small dish.

This same attitude is expressed in the blessing we say for the study of Torah, we never say, "lilmod Torah", to learn the Torah, but only "laasok bdivrei Torah", to occupy ourselves in the words of Torah. As Jewish philosopher Louis Jacobs explains: It is not demanded that we actually reach the full truth, only that we honestly engaged in seeking it.

Learning Torah is a lifetime's challenge. That is why we, the community, come together to receive the Torah, year after year. We get credit as it were, not because we know everything, but because we occupy ourselves with Torah study , we are seekers, standing at God's mountain.

In a moment you will be presented with your Confirmation certificate. It includes a verse taken from Parashat Kedoshim, the heart of the Torah- You shall be holy, for I the Eternal your God am holy.

Like the degree presented to the scarecrow, the medal presented to the lion, and the award for philanthropy given to the tin man, this certificate is meaningful only to the extent that it is outward recognition of something that exists already within you. Like my optimist plaque, it may also be something you aspire to, that you work towards throughout your entire life.