The Gemara in Masechet Kiddushin (32ha-b) brings Rav Yosef’s ruling that a Rabbi is allowed to forego on the honor owed to him by virtue of his Torah scholarship. Rav Yosef reached this conclusion on the basis of the fact that Hashem Himself waived His honor when He led and guided the Jewish People when they left Egypt. If G-d Himself could forego on His honor, Rav Yosef reasoned, then certainly a Rabbi can waive the honor owed to Him.
Rava challenged this line of reasoning. He said that G-d owns everything, and so He has the authority to forego on His honor. But a Rabbi represents the Torah – and the Torah is not his that he can waive the honor owed to the Torah. We are required to show honor to Rabbis because they represent the Torah – and no Rabbi has the authority to forego on the honor that we must give to the Torah.
But then Rava changed his mind, and conceded to Rav Yosef’s ruling. He said: אין, תורה דיליה היא – “Indeed, the Torah is his.” When a person learns and becomes a scholar, he “acquires” the Torah. It becomes his. Rav proves this from the second pasuk in Tehillim which says about a Torah scholar, בתורתו יהגה יומם ולילה – he delves into “his Torah” day and night. A scholar is considered to “own” the Torah he learned. And so a Rabbi does, in fact, have the right to waive the honor owed to him.
This is a critically important statement, one which encapsulates one of the main objectives of the holiday of Shavuot. It is about making a commitment to “own” the Torah, to build a very personal connection with the Torah. Accepting the Torah means that we do not merely flow with the tide, doing what everybody else does. It means that we make the decision to take the Torah and make it part of our essence, part of our very being.
Our community has so much to be proud of in regard to religious observance. I feel, however, that many of us suffer from what we might call “the everyone disease.” We are too affected by what everyone else is doing. We are too conscious of how people are living their lives, and this can sometimes pull us to act in a way which isn’t right for us, and pull us away from acting the way which is right for us.
Shavuot is the time to establish that תורה דידיה היא – to make the Torah our own. It is a time to make a personal commitment that does not depend on anybody else but ourselves, a commitment to be who we’re supposed to be without considering what other people are doing, or what other people are going to think of us.
It’s often a lot easier to just be like everyone else. It’s easier to just ride along the current, to go along with the flow. But this is not how we are going to achieve. In order to achieve, we need to work hard. And part of that hard work is developing our own selves, being who we should be even if that means being different than the people around us.
Let us try to cure the “everyone disease,” and make the commitment to “own” the Torah, to build a deep, personal connection to the Torah, without worrying about what other people are doing or saying.