Shavuot 2026: Striving for the Messiah
As we say goodbye to this year’s counting of the Omer and the celebration of the giving of Torah at Sinai, we take one last look at the themes of Shavuot through the parshah for this Shabbat. Part of this reading includes one of the most fascinating inner contradictions in the Torah. In Deuteronomy 15:4-11, it reads:
There shall be no needy among you…if only you heed the ETERNAL your God and take care to keep all this Instruction that I enjoin upon you this day…
If, however, there is a needy person among you...do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kindred. Rather, you must open your hand and lend whatever is sufficient to meet the needs…
For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kindred in your land.
Obviously there is a deep problem here: First it says there shall be no need among you, then suggests there might be, then says there will never cease being. What are we to do with this, especially given that it is presented as a rationale for maintaining our observance of Torah?
Dania Rajendra and I wrote elsewhere about the relationship a secure social safety net for all people, the holiday of Shavuot, the book of Ruth, and the messianic era. This conjunction within the holiday is taken to a new layer by the Shabbat reading. It suggests that the demand to strive for economic justice in our societies is constant. There is no time in which this will end; in fact, it is one aspect of our world that is unchangeable.
In Tractate Berakhot 34b, Shmuel shares that the only difference between this world and the days of the Messiah is an end to servitude to foreign kingdoms alone, as it is stated: “For the poor shall not cease from the land” (Deuteronomy 15:11).
The theology of Reform Judaism has, for hundreds of years, held that the Messiah is not coming to save us. It is we who must bring about the messianic age. They believed that this change described by Shmuel had begun for Jews through emancipation in various countries; we were no longer in servitude to foreign kingdoms, we were free to enact the Torah. In the earliest editions of the first American Reform prayerbook, the Union Prayer Book, part of the reading of the Geulah portion of the Shema and its Blessings was translated as such, “And now that we live in a land of freedom, may we continue to be faithful to Thee and Thy word.”
This drives home the Torah underlying the responsibilities we hold in today’s world. So different from that of the ancient Israelites; so different from that of the ancient rabbis, today, we emancipated Jews, are obligated to self-actualize in order to implement the Torah throughout the land.
May we live into existence the purpose of our covenant in this world of freedom, articulated over a century ago by the founders of American Reform Judaism: In full accordance with the spirit of the Mosaic legislation, which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.
