"Pave over a field and an amazing thing happens each spring: grass grows through the blacktop. Somehow, even the industrial strength of the pavement, powerful enough to support the tonnage of trucks, can’t stop a single, fragile, nascent blade of grass yearning for light.
At this time of year, we are like the grass. We are all like the grass that breaks through the blacktop. The grass is searching for the sun. We are searching for our light, the light that is Torah. And our job during the Omer is to find it. Like for the grass, sometimes seemingly insurmountable obstacles block our path. Instead of blacktop, we have to overcome petty rivalry, jealousy, hatred, and ego, just to name a few. These are often harder than pavement."
These are words from Joel Hoffman’s blog, one of Yom Limmud Sydney’s fascinating presenters. Joel’s speciality is bringing the Bible to life with fresh insights and interpretations about religious life in the 21st century. Joel is a chief translator for the popular 10-volume series, My People's Prayer Book (winner of the National Jewish Book Award). He holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and has served on the faculties of Brandeis University and Hebrew Union College. You can view his impressive CV here.
Shavuot is upon us this Sunday and Monday, the day that commemorates when we stood at Mt. Sinai and received the Torah. We have counted and waited 49 days from the second day of Pesach for this festival. It’s a time of spiritual limbo. We have our freedom, but we don’t yet have guidance from Torah. So we can do what we want, but we don’t know what we should do. The Omer is our yearly moral navigation check-up, a time to ask: "Am I going in the right direction?" We emerge yearning for light, just like grass.
Grass apparently contains chemicals called auxins that pool in the lower parts of the grass shoot and which give the grass no choice but to grow upward. We in contrast have free choice, so we should ask ourselves at this time of year: are we growing in the right direction, are we becoming better people, are we proud of where we're going and what we're working to do, are we growing consistent with our values and traditions?
"We have one final thing in common with the grass. We can’t see the light until we overcome the obstacles blocking our path. The Omer can be dark and frustrating, but if we spend our time wisely, it will be worth it."
Come and hear Joel in person at Yom Limmud Sydney. What better opportunity than to learn and grow in the wake of Shavuot than to register for Yom Limmud here in Sydney on 3 July. Joel will speak at 9:30am about "The Bible Doesn’t Say That" He will peel back 2,000 years of revisionism and take a look at the Bible as it originally was.
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