
“Giving and Taking.”
At Mount Sinai the Jewish nation assembled as,
“One person with one heart.”
We were unified in such a way and had prepared appropriately such that we were able to experience a huge revelation of God.
God spoke the first 2 of the 10 commandments.
The people were completely overwhelmed by the experience.
The Midrash teaches that after each intense encounter with God “speaking” to us,
every Jew “died” and had to be revived.
The encounter was so intense that we couldn’t survive it.
In response, Moses was given the task of
ascending the mountain to get
the rest of the 10 commandments and the Torah.
The revelation at Sinai was like a “kiss” from God:
an intimate contact with everyone present.
At that time, God gave us the gift of connection and
then gave us the gift of the Torah in order
to have an ongoing relationship with us in the future.
In any relationship,
we must be able to not only give but also to take.
God, the quintessential giver, initially gave
in a way that was too overwhelming for us to survive.
Perhaps this can teach us the importance of
recognizing the capability of the receiver to receive.
On the one hand, we need to make ourselves worthy of and
able to receive God's gifts and blessings and
at the same time recognize that our capacity is limited.
In our lives, in different relationships and at different times
we fluctuate between being givers and being takers.
A giver needs a receiver, and a receiver needs a giver.
Both are needed and the balance shifts over time and within each relationship.
In our own lives this is certainly the case:
our healthy relationships are
predicated on us being able to sometimes give and
sometimes receive (in the right measure).
In fact, by receiving, we give the gift of allowing the other to be the giver.
We may think of God as always being the giver and
yet by receiving we are able to ‘give’ back.
Let us be able to find the correct balance so that we can achieve
healthy, meaningful, mutually loving and
intimate relationships with others and of course with God
Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov and Chag Sameach.
Elissa
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