(RNS) The story of the two-day Jewish festival of Shavuot — beginning this year at sundown on Tuesday (May 18) is well known, starting with a ragtag group of Israelites who had just escaped slavery in Pharaoh’s Egypt.
The ancient Israelites, under Moses’ leadership, weren’t yet ready for prime time, much less entry into the Promised Land. First they had to endure 40 difficult years of wandering in the Sinai wilderness — time enough for a new generation to arise, one that was unburdened by the painful scars of slavery.
Freedom without meaningful goals and defined laws frequently results in chaos, civil strife and self-destruction. Freedom needs a clear driving dream that motivates people and gives them purpose — not simply as individuals, but as a community of shared ideals and values.
For Americans, that motivation was provided by a pair of conventions in Philadelphia that first created a Declaration of Independence in 1776 and, 11 years later, a Constitution that’s been durable enough to be amended 27 times.
Yet for the Israelites of 3,200 years ago, there was no convention to draft a set of defined rules, regulations, and common principles. Nor was there a referendum to decide such matters. The foundation document of the Jewish people was provided in a uniquely different way.
And that’s where the Shavuot story comes into focus.
God delivered a divine “mission statement” for the former slaves amid thunder and lightning and the blasts of the ram’s horn. For 40 days, Moses stood alone atop Mt. Sinai, during which he received the two inscribed stone tablets containing the famous Ten Commandments.
But while Moses was on Sinai, the Israelites grew fearful that they had been deserted. They badgered Moses’ brother, Aaron, who appeased the people by allowing them to create a golden calf that they worshiped as a god. When Moses returned, he was shocked. In anger, he shattered the tablets and forced the people to melt the golden idol. He ultimately returned to the mountaintop and received a second set of tablets.
Shavuot celebrates that moment of revelation. In Hebrew it’s called “z’man mataan Torah,” “the time of the giving of the Torah.” The key word is the present-tense verb of “giving.” It indicates a continuous process, not a single event.
In short, what began at Sinai did not end there. Revelation is a continuous process.
Jewish scripture, obviously, extends beyond the Torah. There are the Psalms, Proverbs and the prophetic books. They, in turn, were followed by the post-biblical Talmud and rabbinic teachings throughout history. Judaism is an organic living tradition, not a one-time revelation etched in stone.
Not everyone, however, accepts that concept of religious faith. Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican official charged with interreligious and ecumenical relations, has recently been dealing with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), an ultra-conservative group that was excommunicated decades ago from the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI is now attempting to restore the group to full ecclesiastical standing.
Among the Society’s many problems is that one of its bishops, Richard Williamson, has publicly denied the Holocaust. In addition, the SSPX has not accepted the reforms adopted 45 years ago during the Second Vatican Council, including overtures to non-Catholics and the call for “mutual understanding and respect” between Jews and Catholics.
“Dialogue with (the SSPX) is not easy,” Kasper has said. “The main problem with them is not the Mass in Latin, but the concept of tradition. Do we want a living tradition or a petrified one?”
Clearly, the SSPX represents “a petrified” tradition. Shavuot, however, comes around each year to remind us that divine revelation is indeed, as Kasper would say, “a living tradition.”
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
