I arrived with my family in Chicago twenty years ago this month, May 27, 1998. It was four days before the holiday of Shavuot.
I confess. I’m nostalgic. I like reminiscing about the past.
We left Yerushalayim (I was in tears) on May 6, the 10th of Iyar, and headed to Chicago……via South Africa! My wife is from Los Angeles. We were married in Yerushalayim and visited LA a couple of times. However, we did not visit South Africa. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to show my wife a little of the life I lived until my late twenties before I moved to Israel to learn in Yeshiva. I wanted to show her Port Elizabeth, the city where I grew up; Cape Town, where I went to University and worked; and Johannesburg, where I had moved to learn Torah at the ever growing Ohr Somayach Center. I reasoned that we might not get the chance to go back again. (As it turned out, I was right. We have not gone back as a family and I have only been back two more times, once with Rabbi Tatz on a student trip and once for my sister’s wedding). So although it was an indirect route to Chicago, and we had our two young boys (Yisrael Tzvi had just turned 2 and Meir Simcha was 13 months old) and we had all our bags in tow, we flew to South Africa.
It was already two and a half weeks after Pesach and since the custom is not to shave or have a haircut from Pesach until Lag b’Omer, I arrived in South Africa with a well grown beard.
In Port Elizabeth, we stayed with my first cousin and his family who kept kosher. They had three young daughters. They later moved to Melbourne, Australia and the three girls are now married. It was great to spend time with my father. I visited my mother’s grave. We went to my school, Grey (named after Sir George Grey), and watched little boys playing rugby like I did when I was their age. We went to the beach. Port Elizabeth is on the very southern tip of South Africa by the warm Indian Ocean. I spent so much time swimming in the sea growing up, I always love the experience of going back to the ocean. Then we drove along the beautiful Garden Route to Cape Town, stopping at one of my favorite places on earth, Victoria Bay. In Cape Town, we visited my alma mater, the University of Cape Town, where I studied actuarial science and played a lot of my rugby. We visited many of the sites along the coast, including Cape Point, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. We took the cable car up Table Mountain to gaze over the city. I met my Aunt Frieda and her daughter Chantal and heard part of the story about my birth and adoption and saw a photo of my biological mother for the first time. The last leg of the journey was a stop in Johannesburg. We spent Shabbat at Ohr Somayach, reconnecting with Rabbi Shmuel and Liebe Moffson, who took such good care of me when I first moved to Johannesburg. We toured a game reserve with my Uncle Lulu (who now lives in Israel) and I even played in a local soccer tournament.
Three glorious weeks in South Africa flew by and then we flew to Chicago. I had accepted a position as the Associate Director of Outreach at the Chicago Community Kollel. Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh, my friend and teacher at Ohr Somayach in Yerushalayim, was the Director of Outreach and it was great to see him again. We have remained good friends all these years. I have him and our good friends, Joel and Melinda Klein, to thank for encouraging us to move to Chicago (Joel was my chavrusa, Melinda knew my wife when she was at Neve Yerushalayim).
It took us a few weeks to settle in and find an apartment in West Rogers Park. My most nerve-wracking moment in those early weeks was preparing to make my first speech in front of all the Kollel Rabbis at the ne’ilas hachag get together on the second day of Yom Tov. I must have walked around the block a dozen times practicing what I was going to say. I approached a stranger, Andrew Bransky, and asked him if I could tell him the speech. He very patiently listened to the speech a few times. (I just called Andrew this morning to wish him happy anniversary. I told you I was nostalgic).
I look back at these memories fondly. But that’s what they are, memories. Just like Memorial Day coming up. Memories, deep, important memories, with lots to reflect on and to be thankful for.
The 6th and 7th of Sivan is the holiday of Shavuot. The Torah way of looking at holidays is different. They are not just times to remember what happened in our collective past as a Jewish people. On Shavuot, we are not just remembering that G-d gave the Jewish People the Torah 3,330 years ago on this calendar day of the year. It is much more than that. Judaism believes time is a spiral. Each year has certain points in time where certain pivotal events occurred. At each of those points, a certain spiritual energy exists. As time goes by, we journey along a spiral, returning to these points of spiritual energy. Every year, when the 6th and 7th of Sivan return, when the Torah was given, the same spiritual energy returns – and we are all back at Mount Sinai! Each one of our souls was at Mount Sinai and on Shavuot, each one of us is reliving accepting the Torah personally and nationally – literally!
That is why we need to prepare for Shavuot, like we did then. That is why we stay up learning Torah all night. Because we are so excited about receiving the Torah – again.
At the same time, we also believe the Torah is given anew each and every day of the year, not just Shavuot. That is why the blessing we recite in the morning before we learn Torah is written in the present tense. Baruch Atah Hashem… hanoteyn haTorah. Blessed are you G-d who gives us the Torah. We should learn Torah each day with a freshness as if it is given to us for the first time – today. However as I heard last year in a shiur (talk) by Rabbi Yerachmiel Fried, the Rosh Kollel of the DATA Kollel in Dallas, the beginning of that same bracha is said in the past tense… asher natan lanu et Torah-to…, who gave us His Torah, to teach us that before we make this bracha we should cast our minds to the past and imagine that we are standing at Mount Sinai.
We learn Torah every day. On Shavuot, the spiritual energy that we all experienced at the most powerful time in all of world history, returns. We have the opportunity to tap into it.
Good YomTov
