Being Ready to Receive

In nine days we will begin our celebration of Shavuot, the commemoration of the day when Hashem gave the Torah to the Jewish people.  I really love this holiday and its theme of recommitment...I even love staying awake all night learning Torah, despite my usually strict adherence to an early bedtime as mandated by the teaching profession.  There is something about listening to the Ten Commandments being read aloud at the break of dawn that gives me goosebumps every time.

I came across an article by intellectual giant Adin Steinsaltz that (I think) beautifully captures the important distinction between Hashem's giving of the Torah, and the Jewish people's receiving of it.  Although they clearly go together, they are not the same event.  Steinsaltz points out that while the giving of the Torah was a one-time, top-down event, the receiving of the Torah was--is--an ongoing process that occurs from the bottom up.  Although the Jewish people were willing to accept Torah right away, evident by their declaration of, "All the words that Hashem has spoken, we will do and we will hear!" (Shemot 24:7), it actually took a long time for them to be able to commit to living out the words of Torah.  The Jews always knew they wanted it, but they just weren't ready right out of the gate.  It took time for them to truly absorb what they had been given.  Steinsaltz explains:

"The receiving itself is not just a matter of passively listening to the message of Torah; it is an act of committing oneself to absorbing the poetry and the principles, and carrying out the commandments all the days of one's life.  To begin with, there had to be a certain receptive state of mind--'We shall do and we shall hear'--in order for the Torah to be given.  On the other hand, the inner meaning of this formulation of readiness only became evident later, as expressed by the words of Moses forty years later when, in taking leave of the people, he said, 'And G-d did not give you a heart to know and eyes to see and ears to hear until this very day' (Deuteronomy 29:3).  And indeed, only many generations later could it be said that the people of Israel had developed a heart able to know the Torah designated for them."

Now, while I would never fully equate recovery with receiving Torah, I do think there are some genuine parallels we can draw in the sense that both are drawn-out processes that depend on a gradual increase in readiness.  In recovery, we might know what we need to do long before we are ready to actually do it.  Although our treatment team gives us the tools, it might take an extended period of time for us to muster up the fortitude to use them.

For most of my recovery I worked with one outstanding nutrition therapist. There was a period of time many years ago in which I became frustrated with my compulsive need to measure everything I ate.  Each time I brought it up, my nutritionist would suggest stopping the measuring.  Although intellectually I knew it was a great idea, my response was always, "Mmmm...nah, I don't think so."  This went on for months, until finally I entered a session with her and said, "I want to stop measuring!"  Even then, we both knew I wouldn't be able to go cold turkey--so, she coached me through letting go of measuring one food item at a time.  My nutritionist was ready to hand me Freedom From Measuring long before I was ready to receive it...but she understood that, and was patient with me throughout the entire process.

I really wanted to be able to recover immediately, just like the Jewish people had every intention of fully accepting Torah.  But the reality is that recovery is not a linear process, and neither is receiving Torah--both are ongoing and challenges do pop up along the way, requiring us to shift and reaffirm our commitments.  However, just as Hashem was--is--patient with the Jewish people throughout the evolution of our ability to receive, so too should we be patient with ourselves as we find our ways through recovery.  It isn't only the end result that matters--it's the entire process of getting there.  As Shavuot draws near, I invite all of us to assess honestly the progress we've made over the past year, and to recommit to the journey!