Boulder Jewish News Arts, Culture, Events, Lifestyles, Holidays, Synagogues, Education
Learning to Walk Forward
This Hebrew year we began a new column with Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz, who is offering a 12-part column exploring the spiritual and psychological wisdom of each Hebrew month. Drawing from Torah, Kabbalah, Mussar, and seasonal awareness, each installment will highlight core themes, practices, and reflections to help ground us in sacred time. Join us on this monthly journey through the Jewish calendar.
The Hebrew month of Sivan is best known as the month of Shavuot, the festival that marks the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai. In the Jewish imagination, Sivan is the month when revelation enters history. The Israelites stand at the mountain, hear the Divine voice, and receive a path for living.
According to Sefer Yetzirah, the ancient Book of Formation, each Hebrew month is part of a larger pattern. Every month is connected with a Hebrew letter, a tribe of Israel, a zodiac sign, a sense, and a part of the body. Sivan is connected with the Hebrew letter Zayin -ז, the tribe of Zevulun, the zodiac sign of Gemini, and the sense of walking. This does not reduce the month to one meaning. It gives us a symbolic map. It helps us ask how time moves through language, body, community, and spiritual practice. For Sivan, that map points us toward Torah, movement, and the way we walk forward.
We might expect the month of Torah to be connected with hearing, study, speech, or memory. Instead, Sefer Yetzirah points us toward the foot. Torah is not only something we hear. It is the way in which we make choices about how we act in the world. It is something we walk. Walking is a simple human act. One foot moves, then the other. We shift our weight. We find balance. We move through space. We do not arrive all at once. We make progress step by step. This is akin to the placement of Parashat Mishpatim after the receiving of Torah. The first thing we receive after revelation are 53 social laws, that are concerned with how we treat each other, how we bring revelation into relationship.
This is a helpful way to understand the giving of Torah. Torah was not given so that human beings could remain fixed in place. Torah was given to help us move forward with more awareness. It gives us a way to ask: Where am I going? What kind of person am I becoming? Are my steps taking me toward greater honesty, compassion, responsibility, and holiness? Without some guiding wisdom, we can confuse movement with progress. We can be busy and still be walking in circles. We can react to life without growing through it. We can repeat old patterns and call it change. Sivan reminds us that real progress needs direction. Torah gives us that direction.
This month’s embodiment is also important. In Jewish symbolic language, the right side is often associated with the spiritual, expansive, or heavenly dimension. The left side is more connected with the physical, practical, and earthly dimension. If Nisan, the month of liberation, is associated with speech and the right foot, then Sivan brings that freedom down into the body. It asks: Now that we have been freed, how shall we walk? This is an important question. Leaving Egypt is only the beginning of freedom; it matures when we integrate into our behavior and how we live. The choices we make. The Exodus gives us release. Sinai gives us responsibility. We are not only freed from something. We are freed toward something.
There is a beautiful connection between walking and leadership. Speech can lead others. Walking leads the self. A person can speak well and still stumble inwardly. Sivan teaches that before we can guide others, we have to look at the path beneath our own feet. Are we walking with integrity? Are we walking with sincerity? Are we walking in a way that others can trust?
A verse in Proverbs says, “One who walks with sincerity walks securely.” Sincerity gives steadiness. It does not mean perfection. It means that our outer steps and inner life are not split apart. We try to live in alignment. We make corrections when needed. We keep moving.
This is also connected to mercy. Sivan is the third month, and in the inner language of the sefirot, the third heart-quality is often associated with beauty, balance, and compassion. Torah is sometimes misread as a system of rules alone. At its deepest level, Torah is a path of formation. It shapes a human being over time. It teaches us how to hold discipline and mercy together. That may be one of the most practical teachings of Sivan. Growth is not always dramatic. Revelation does not always arrive with thunder and lightning. Sometimes revelation comes as the next honest step. A phone call we need to make. An apology we have avoided. A commitment we are ready to keep. A habit we are ready to change. A practice we return to, even after losing our way.
Sivan asks us to receive Torah not only as an inheritance, nor only as a sacred text. It asks us to receive Torah as a way of walking. The question is not only, “What did our ancestors hear at Sinai?” The question is also, “How will I walk differently because of what I have heard?” As we enter Sivan, we can ask ourselves one clear question: What is the next right step? Not the perfect. May you walk with kindness, clarity, and wisdom.
Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz
Check out Shulchan.net for more information about R’Charna’s offerings
Here is a list of Rabbi Charna’s monthly columns in the series:
