Shavuot 5782
Survivor Season 613:
Sinai Wilderness
with Rabbi Eliot J Baskin
Learning blessing:
Baruch
atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu la’asoak
b’divrei Torah.
Blessed
are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who hallows us with mitzvot, commanding us to soak up
words of Torah.
W5 Five Ws of journalism: Who, What, Where, When and Why?
Text 1
Rabbi Oshaya Rabbah said: The Torah says, "I was the
artisan's tool for the Holy One, Blessed be."
As a rule, an earthly monarch who is
building a palace does not build it according to his own ideas but according to
an architect; and the architect does not know how to
build it out of his head but has parchments or tablets to know how to design
the rooms and openings. In this way, God looked into the Torah and created the
world.
B'reishit
Rabbah 1:1
Text 2
After creating the earth, the Holy One
said to it, "If Israel accepts the Torah, you
shall survive, but if not, I will return you to chaos."
Tanchuma Genesis,
Shabbat 88a
Text 3
Once the world was created, it could not
have been sustained had it not occurred to the Divine Will to create human
beings to engage in the study of Torah. For just as God looked into the Torah
and created the world, humans look into it and sustain the world.
Zohar 161
a-b
Text 4
Why was the
Torah given
in the wilderness? To teach
that if you do not set
yourself free like
the wilderness,
you do not
merit the Torah.
And just as
wilderness has
no end, so Torah
is without
end.
