The holiday of Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai to the people Israel fifty days after their flight from Egyptian slavery. This event marked a watershed in history. From that moment forward, the Torah and its commentaries have guided Jewish life, observance, and celebration.

A Shavuot custom of all-night Torah study, and a daytime synagogue service featuring a reading of the Ten Commandments are two of the ways the momentous occasion is honored. Many synagogue congregations also read the biblical Book of Ruth, which tenderly chronicles how the protagonist Ruth, at a time of hardship and loss, nevertheless chose to link her fate to that of the Jewish people. Another Shavuot association with the Book of Ruth is that on the holiday we also commemorate the yahrzeit of King David, a descendant of Ruth. And finally, the yahrzeit of another great spiritual leader is commemorated on that day as well: the founder of the Hasidic movement, Israel Baal Shem Tov.

Annually, Elie Wiesel and his wife Marion would travel to Jerusalem for the festival of Shavuot, and, as he writes in his memoir, Open Heart, he would spend Shavuot night with friends “in a yeshiva in the Old City studying biblical and Talmudic laws and commentaries.” To further enrich our experience of the holiday, we have gathered some excerpts from Professor Wiesel's 92NY lectures that bear on Shavuot themes and observance. We can thus study with him, and he with us. Nothing, I think, would have pleased him more.

Torah Study

In the Bible: The Solitude of Moses, October 19, 1995
There is no substitute for learning. Anyone claiming to have learned enough has yet to begin. Languages, we are told, can be learned if you put an audio cassette under your pillow. Don't try it with the Talmud. Whoever declares he knows everything knows nothing. To wish to understand everything is praiseworthy; to say that one has fulfilled that wish is och un vey. It is not. We possess a limited knowledge of the world of truth. God Himself, says the Midrash, is still studying Torah. If He does, how dare we not?

God in the Bible, October 10, 1996
What is the Torah? It means study and teaching, the practice of mitzvot and faith in God who articulated them. The Torah is more a blueprint for the future than a history of the past. It contains the meaning of life and the solutions to its problems. "Hafokh bah ve-hafokh bah dekhola bah," says the Talmud. Turn the pages of the Torah and turn them again, for everything is in them. That is why, in our prayers, we find the expression Ahavat Torah, love for Torah, as frequently as Yirat shamaim, fear of heaven.

It is in the Torah that the people of Israel met for the first time the God of Israel. They continue meeting there to this day.

It is remarkable to note the importance tradition grants the Torah, called Torat Chaim, the teaching of life, and Torat Emet, the teaching of truth--conveying to us that the Torah contains primary messages and ultimate secrets. In Talmudic literature, it is compared to a strange medication that cures the just and kills the wicked. It is also compared to wine. And to water. And to fire. And to a double-edged sword. If God chose to hand down the Torah in the desert, it was to alert all the people in the world, so they could come and claim it for themselves. But Israel alone wanted to receive it. That’s why God loves Israel. And that is why Israel clings to the Torah: it is her ideal and her idealistic remedy for exile. When Jews suffer in exile, says the Midrash, let them study Torah and they will not feel exile.

The Book of Ruth, October 26, 1989
Usually the Book of Ruth is read during Shavuot, the holy day of the Festival of Weeks--why? Is it because King David, Ruth’s illustrious descendant, died on Shavuot? Another hypothesis has been suggested by another Talmudic school: like Ruth, our ancestors became Jewish, that is, converted to the Jewish faith, when they received the law. When was that? On Shavuot.

Ruth ha-Moavia, Ruth the Moabite: her name conjures up a past filled with doubts and anguish, and a future penetrated by an irresistible light, the light that illuminates exile, the messianic light that will put an end to suffering and injustice everywhere.

In our tradition, she is loved--oh, how she is loved. She ranks among the matriarchs--Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah. They gave us the twelve tribes of Israel, but Ruth gave us a king. King David is a descendant not of Sarah but of Ruth. Without Ruth, our people might never have had a king, or else might have had another king, but not David, of whom it will be said: "David melech Yisrael chai vekayam--he lives and shall go on living until the end of days."

What do we owe Ruth? We owe Ruth King David and--our hope.
 

Israel Baal Shem Tov

The Relevance of Hasidism Today, October, 17, 1991
It is written that God is man's shadow, and the Baal Shem Tov’s comment reads as follows: "Just as the shadow imitates the human being, so does God. For what is above is also below. Let man fulfill his destiny and creation as a whole will be improved, and only man can improve it." So the Baal Shem Tov's Hasidism, in a world of inhumanity, puts the accent on man again, on the human being. And therefore, the Baal Shem Tov went on saying, "Man cannot help others through self-denial or self-effacement. He who says that man is to be sacrificed to God ends up in sacrificing both."

What the Baal Shem Tov wanted, and what his disciples wanted, was to create links between man and God, and man and man, and man and himself--[and] human beings among themselves. There was so much solitude threatening the Jew from within and from without, that something had to be discovered to diminish it or at least counterbalance it. Just like today. Hasidism, therefore, when you think about it, was a remedy against solitude.

The Baal Shem Tov saw it as his task to bring people together--all people, not only Jews. He never advocated proselytizing among non-Jews. Among Jews, yes. What he wanted was to make Jews better Jews, and men, therefore, better men...

If it is true--and it is true--that with one hand before one’s eyes, as the Baal Shem Tov used to say, one can hide the light of the world and its breathtaking mystery, it is also true that it is up to the human being to remove that hand from one’s eyes.

And this is precisely what Hasidism has done. It removed the hand from our eyes.