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From: dovid@dorsai.org (Dovid Staloff)
To: reb-shlomo@shamash.nysernet.org
Subject: Shavuot Torah
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New York, 5751.
My beautiful friends,

i just returned from Yerushalayim, from the Holy City, from the Holy Wall, from
everything holy and beautiful in our lives. And we are in the middue of
counting,
counting our days, counting life, counting beautiful things. I will share
with you a
little bit about Lag B'Omer, about Shavuoth, and about Kiddush Levanah, the
Blessing of
the Moon. My dear friends, the deepest depths of Yiddishkeit is, that I am
longing for so
much and I am so broken that I don't have it yet. Yet I do have it. The
Isbitzer says, If I
need a hundred dollars it is because I don't have it. But  for G-D, if
crying for the
Torah, if  crying for Yiddishkeit, it is because I really do have it.

You know friends, G-D gave us the Torah on Mount Sinai and the saddest
thing in the
world is that we had the arrogance to think that we had it. So we lost it.
When Moshe
Rabbenu broke the tablets, he gave us the Torah again and the Talmud says
that both
tablets, the whole ones and the broken ones, are lying in the Holy Ark. We
need both.

So basically the laws of the Torah which we receive on Shavuoth are not
enough to
protect us from the Golden Calf. So G-D in His infinite mercy gives us
broken tablets -
the deepest secret of the Torah, the Torah of Rabbi Akibva and Reb Shimon
Bar Yochai.
He gives them to us before Shavuoth, on Lag B'Omer. And then on Shavuoth what we
receive is even deeper than the secrets of the Torah, the utmost
heavenliness and
godliness of the Torah.

The Gemara says that G-D always gives the medication before the disease. So
every
Shavuoth there is always a possibility of making another golden calf. Maybe
last year
we did it, maybe we are still doing it. So Lag B'Omer is the day that G-D
gave us the
secrets of the Torah. You know what the secret is? The secret is something
that fills
your heart so much, it fills you with longing, it fills you with depth. A
secret is like a
little bit of light beyond vessels. Basically, when G-D created the world,
G-D was
hiding in the world. G-D is the biggest secret in the world. He is so
obvious and yet so
hidden. So G-D gives us the secrets of the Torah before Shavuoth.

And every Lag B'Omer Reb Shimon Bar Yochai and Rabbi Akiva are giving over
to us the
deepest depths of the Torah. Reb Zadok Hacohen says, How do you know how much
somebody loves you? When somebody loves you, they want to tell you all
their secrets.
You know what is living on Lag B'Omer? He gives us the deepest depths, how
much the
Torah loves us, how much we love the Torah. Lag B'Omer we are telling the
Torah all
our secrets and the Torah is telling us all the Torah secrets.

Reb Akiva was longing all his life to give his Iife for G-D. He had such
deep longing for
G-D. He was ready to die for G-D, to show that the way that I love G-D is beyond
vessels, deeper than everything in the world.

A few days after Shavuoth we are mekadesh levanah (sanctifying the moon).
Everybody
knows that the moon receives the inside light of the sun. Everybody knows
that during
the day we take care of the outside. We work, we do business. The night is
the inside.
The Gemara says the night is for learning, especially secrets; the night is
full of
secrets. Do you know what secrets are? Secrets are: after you hear the
secrets you
still don't know them, there is so much more to them.

The levanah, the moon, is so deep. The moon is always longing for more.
When the moon
is full, it is not satisfied. It knows there must be more in the world than
just this
light that fills it and it begins all over again. So we Yidden get together
between the
beginning of the month and the full moon to thank G-D for this new light.
Every month
the moon is new again; the sun is always the same. Inside people are always
new. In
other words, inside people are always so broken, but they are also always new.

     My beautiful friends, I am inviting you all for Kiddush Levanah. The
first Kiddush
Levanah after Shavuoth, whatever we didn't do on Shavuoth, whatever we
missed out,
we can still do, because it is the month of Shavuoth, the moon of Shavuoth.
It is the
light of Shavuoth.

     You know, Shavuoth night we are up all night. We are reading the
beginning and the
end of the every parsha and tractate. We are connecting ourselves to the
beginning and
the end because we know the beginning is in G-D's hands and the end is in
G-D's hands.
We pray and hope that we'll be able to do something in the middle.

     The Talmud says: If all the oceans will be ink and all the leaves will
be quills to
write with, we still could not tell each other the holiness of that night.

     And then that morning at dawn we receive the Torah with all our
hearts. G-D is
is telling us, I am really your G-D and I am with you always, always. And
you are my
people. Let's be together that night, let's be together Lag B'Omer and
let's be together
at Kiddush Levanah. We should be together, my friends, every Shabbat and
every Yom
Tov. And I bless you that you should always have someone to tell your secrets.

                                       Love, Shlomo


