Shavuot begins at sundown, Saturday, June 4.
By JIM CLEVENSON
Shavuot commemorates revelation from God — on Mount Sinai, what was revealed?
That we should be good!
And how should we be “good”? The Ten Commandments given at Sinai are guideposts to the “good life.”
And the Torah tells us to regard and love our neighbors as ourselves! Wow! Not easy! It requires lifelong efforts at self-transcendence: people need continual reminding (prayer three times a day!) (Muslims five times!), and continual encouraging inspiration. And we do that. We deepen readers’ understandings, and induce them to do the right thing.
Today we have philosophical chaos and the resulting social upheaval, profanity, violence and crime, when standards of “normal” morality that we had taken for granted —at least in the U.S.— for the past several generations, are coming apart at the seams.
Yeats saw it coming— or had already seen it in the World War. In 1920 he wrote in “The Second Coming,”
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
We can “think globally” (even Messianically), and “act locally.” We can build, in our region at least, frameworks and works of peace and understanding.
The Jewish World engages everyone who understands “ethical monotheism” and its practical applications for improving and transforming everyday life.
We stand shoulder to shoulder with every Jew and every gentile working to improve, better, and perfect himself and our hellish decaying world.
Our job as Jews is to shed light to expose the yetser harah (evil inclination) for what it is (dark, fatuous, and insufficient), and encourage the yetser tov (good inclination) in the hearts of Jews and gentiles.
We are your partner in this work.
Without the Jews, without Shavuot, what is Western civilization? It wouldn’t exist.
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WHAT ARE
The Ten Commandments?
The Ten Commandments are the first ten of the 613 commandments given by God to the Jewish people. They form the foundation of Jewish ethics, behavior and responsibility. These commandments are mentioned in order twice in the Torah – once each in the Book of Exodus and the Book of Deuteronomy.
