“The Torah that I hope to pass on is …”

I used to love to read the book “A Precious Present” by Spencer Johnson to my campers when I was a camp counselor. The book teaches, that of all the things a person would want – to resolve the past, or hope for the future – the best gift we have is the gift of now – the gift of the Present. I always think of this story when Shavuot draws near. I am reminded how much Torah is a part of our present, not our past. We honor the Torah, as a gift given at Sinai to be sure, but re-imagined as if we are there (not WERE there) – receiving every time we climb into its sacred words.

A few years ago, Hava Nashira (the annual songleading and music workshop of OSRUI and the URJ) fell over Shavuot. Cantor Ellen Dreskin, Shira Kline and I led a Shavuot ritual as our Festival Shacharit. We explored Torah in three parts, inviting participants to write on post-it notes and add to a wall of our own created Torah parchment – telling our Torah, in the present, yet weaving together past and future, allowing opportunity for reflection:  The first part focused on, “From whom did you receive Torah?”  The second part, “What does it mean to you to CHOOSE Torah?”  And the final reflection; “The Torah that I hope to pass on is …”

Looking back on the patchwork of names, places, dreams, and heartache associated with Torah, splattered in multi-colored diversity on our “Torah”, I find myself in Genesis – at the beginning of our story, as a reminder that we always begin again - in a beginning that is our present, a creation that is now and will be tomorrow. This beautiful setting of Shirona expresses that B’reshit – (www.shirona.com/music/jls/BResheet.mp3)

Woven throughout these stages of the personalization of Torah in our lives was a dramatic telling of the Ruth story. This “Ruth’s Song” was written by my cantorial classmate Cantor Hollis Schachner and was sung during a conversion service in my congregation. (Insert mp3 of Ruth here)

Another melody we used in that Shavuot tefilah, and which I use every Shavuot is, “The World is a Circle”. This piece travels from the personal to the communal – reminding me first that I am part of the circle and that I have a responsibility to teach Torah, to celebrate its presence in my life each day, and live by its teachings.  And in the next verse that you, the other, are part of the circle – helping me see the tzelem Elohim, the image of God in everyone with whom I come in contact. And then that We are – that those who came before, those with us now, and those yet to come are all telling this story of standing at Sinai. Craig offers it to us free as a download, Courtesy of Craig ‘N Co. For more music, please visit www.CraigNCo.com.

Let us receive this Precious Present – the gift of Torah, and the Present moment, in which we live its values, lift up its deepest truths and struggle with its ancient wisdom.