We learn the Torah all night on Shavuout to emphasize that Torah scholarship is a meritocracy. It does not matter your background, what is important is what you do with the he gifts that God gave you.
Now for a quick devar Torah.
As we know, Thursday night begins Shavuot, and many people have the custom of staying up all night learning Torah. It’s actually a very strange custom when you think about it. You stay up all night, and by Friday you’re exhausted. So where does this custom come from, and what is the point behind it?
The custom of Tikkun Leil Shavuot really develops in the 16th century in Safed among the kabbalists. It is based on a Midrash that says that on the very morning the Jewish people were supposed to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai — the most momentous event in human history — the Jews overslept. Moshe had to go around waking everybody up to prepare to receive the Ten Commandments.
So the kabbalists said: we are going to show our excitement to receive the Torah by doing the opposite. Instead of sleeping, we stay awake all night learning Torah.
But there is something much deeper going on here.
When Jews gather to learn together, they are building community. People go from synagogue to synagogue hearing different classes, meeting friends, discussing ideas, arguing, debating, learning. Torah is not meant to be isolated. Judaism is a religion of study, discussion, and community.
And it also teaches another very important idea: Torah is a meritocracy.
Kingship is inherited. Priesthood is inherited. But Torah belongs to everyone. A person can come from the humblest background and still become one of the greatest Torah scholars. Hillel was so poor that he sometimes could not even afford admission to the study hall, so he listened from outside — and he became one of the greatest sages in Jewish history.
I once heard a rosh yeshiva from Tels say that he did not grow up religious at all. He even joked that pork was a major food in his home growing up. Yet he became a major Torah scholar and eventually a rosh yeshiva. Torah does not ask where you started. It asks what you did with the tools God gave you.
That is one of the great messages of Shavuot: the Torah belongs to every Jew.
And there is another lesson. Judaism is not supposed to be mechanical. The ideal is not simply doing mitzvot automatically because “that’s what we do.” The Torah wants us to learn, to understand, to ask questions, to know why we do things. Because if we understand the mitzvot, then we can pass them on to the next generation in a meaningful way.
When a child asks, “Why do we do this?” the answer should not simply be, “Because that’s what we do.” We should be able to explain the meaning, the values, and the purpose behind it.
That is really the importance of staying up all night on Shavuot. We are showing that receiving the Torah matters to us, that learning matters, that understanding matters, and that God gave us the Torah so we could become better people and build a better society.
Something to think about.
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