Today we are celebrating Shavu’ot – the Feast of Weeks, also known as Pentecost, because it is always exactly 50 days after Passover. This is a holiday with deep agricultural roots, but after the destruction of the Temple, the rabbis also invested it with the power of the Giving of the Torah, the theophany at Sinai, when G-d is said to have declared the Ten Commandments to the people.

By all accounts, this seems to have been a very awe-inspiring moment – in fact, the people supposedly told Moses they couldn’t stand to hear G-d’s voice. It doesn’t sound like the people have a lot of choice, do they?

In fact, the Talmud imagines that G-d held the mountain over their heads and threatened them with instant death if they didn’t agree to the covenant. Of course, a contract made under that kind of duress could not possibly be binding. They found a way around it, of course – check out Shabbat 88a for all the details.

In our day, many people are not interested in a coerced covenant, either this one or any other. There’s a reason for calls to defund the police! Still, if we are to live together and not kill each other, we have to accept some kind of obligation to each other.

This is where community comes in – if we are willing to be obligated to take care of each other, and not let our selfishness and individualism allow the vulnerable to fall by the wayside (to quote Dr Fauci), we can build the kind of society we want to have. Accepting that kind of obligation freely is what the Torah is really all about, even without having a mountain hanging over our heads.

Do you think we are obligated to take care of each other?