The Mayanot Blog

Written by: Current Mayanot Men's Program Student Jonathan Stebbins Shavuot is the one of three nights a year we stay up all night. On purpose! Loud arguments, gentle prayers, long readings, a nation of words finding its voice. So what was it like to be there? On the ground-reporting 3,300 years ago? “The Day of the Giving of the Torah..”   (deep announcer voice) On this, the most momentous day in history, the Jews OVERSLEPT….. In honor of this occasion, it is a custom, to stay awake all throughout the night learning Torah.  Not to repeat the mistakes of our past. There is much to be derived from the idea of sleeping and our People having overslept. They say the deepest sleep is right before daybreak. Our generation is on the eve of the Redemption. What that means to me, the increase in justice, prosperity, and peaceful revelation are signs of the times, the world in a sense, preparing itself for a new reality. But we’re still asleep, our G-dly core h

My Background: Growing up, if you were to ask friends and family to describe me, they would probably say that I was quiet, shy, creative, kind, or curious, but, aside from maybe my mother, no one would have said that I was spiritual. I was raised in a microcosm of intellectuals, where spirituality was frowned upon and considered impractical and just short of useless. And so I learned, through osmosis, to shut down my spiritual side, to tuck it away somewhere where it couldn’t disturb me or distract me from life. I continued on this path for many years, focusing my precious energy on the “important” things in life, like school, piano lessons, dance class, or Hebrew school, all the while, my spirituality was festering in some dark corner inside, like a forgotten meal at the back of the fridge. As the years passed, it became harder and harder to ignore the smell of my fermenting spiritual self, yet I was stubborn, (another adjective friends or family might use to describe me) a