News

Lessons from Shavuot: Finding a Path Through the Wilderness

Author

Rabbi Heather Paul

Date

May 20, 2026

“May I be empty
and open to receive the light
May I be empty
and open to receive   

May I be full 
and open to receive the light
May I be full 
and open to receive”

The holiday of Shavuot celebrates a moment of receiving. After wandering through the vast, empty desert, the Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah — the great revelation after liberation, the moment our tribes became a people.

The commentaries on this moment are remarkable for how broadly they describe the receiving of the Torah. 

• The Midrash Tanchuma teaches that the Torah was given in the wilderness because “just as the wilderness is ownerless, available to all, so too the words of Torah are ownerless, available to all.” 
• Another midrashic text, Shemot Rabbah, goes further, teaching that “not only those who were in the wilderness stood at Sinai, but also the souls of all future generations.” 
• The 19th-century Hasidic master Sefat Emet wrote that the divine voice was heard differently by each person, “according to their capacity,” and that the giving of Torah was both a singular moment and an ongoing, living one.

Together, these teachings say something radical: we were all there. Each of us received a message that was both personal and communal, belonging not to one person or one group, but to all of us, for all time. And each time we interpret, innovate, or uncover something new from within our tradition, we become part of the great unfolding story of Sinai.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, in conversations with graduating seniors facing what I can only describe as their own wilderness: the uncertainty of life after college.

A memory from my own time of wandering keeps coming back to me.

In June 2008, I had just finished a master’s degree in history at UC Santa Cruz. My plan had been to pursue a PhD and become an academic historian. But somewhere along the way, it became clear that wasn’t the right path. I didn’t know what else to do, and I was terrified. I was applying for jobs frantically, feeling lost in that wilderness, my story wide open.

Around that same time, a beloved rabbi was leaving Santa Cruz Hillel, where I’d been involved throughout my time as an undergrad and in graduate school. A committee asked me to help with the search for a new staff member. 

Then, after we’d interviewed a couple of candidates, one of the committee members turned to me and said, “Heather, why haven’t you applied for this position?”

It was my Sinai moment — a moment of personal revelation within the communal.

I had never considered working for Hillel. But the more I sat with the question, the better it felt. Hillel had always been a reliable, loving space for me, no matter what else was happening in my life. Why not give back to something that had given me so much, and create that kind of space for others? When I look back now, I realize that Hillel was also there for me in that moment, offering a path forward. 

Like Moses at the burning bush, it wasn’t just that I happened to be in the wilderness. I had to have the courage to own the uncertainty before the path forward could reveal itself.

That was 18 years ago. I’m still working for Hillel, now as a rabbi, a teacher of Torah.

This story has become part of my own Torah, a moment I return to when I’m facing a new wilderness, or sitting with a student who is facing theirs. When we’re feeling lost, it’s tempting to narrow our vision, to reach for the familiar because the unknown is frightening. But Shavuot reminds us that we are all standing at Sinai, each receiving the divine voice according to our own capacity. Sometimes it arrives through a friend or mentor who sees something in us we couldn’t see in ourselves.

As Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l taught, the divine broadcast is eternal; “the question is whether we have our receivers turned on and tuned to the right frequency.”

The Kabbalists also taught us to read the Hebrew word “midbar,” wilderness, as “midaber,” to speak, to tell, to create worlds with our words. Revelation is not only about what we receive. It’s about how we respond.

Many of my students, especially the graduating seniors, are standing in their own wilderness right now. With Shavuot approaching, I encourage all of you to tune in. Notice who is standing with you at Sinai. Open yourself to whatever message comes through. Torah belongs to all of us, and the messages and the teachings are still guiding each of us through our own personal and shared wilderness.

What is the message meant for you? And what will you do when you receive it?

Rabbi Heather Paul is the senior Jewish educator at Illini Hillel.

The post Lessons from Shavuot: Finding a Path Through the Wilderness appeared first on ĚÇĐÄvlogl.

News

Creating a Ritual Toolkit to Support Students Through Challenges and Joy

Author

Rabbi Heather Paul

Date

January 21, 2026

As Jewish students return to campus this semester, many of them are carrying joy, stress, grief, hope, and uncertainty — often all at once. And as Hillel professionals, we are often called to support students through these moments, not by fixing what’s hard, but by helping them feel like they belong and they are cared for. 

Jewish ritual offers a powerful framework for this work: it gives shape to complex emotions, creates a time to pause during moments of intensity, and helps students navigate transitions with intention. By building flexible ritual “toolkits” — collections of practices, objects, and approaches we can adapt as needed — we are able to respond creatively to both joyful and challenging moments, supporting students’ mental health and well-being in ways that are deeply Jewish and deeply human.

In the fall, I had the chance to bring my ritual toolkit to the table during a campus tashlich ritual I was leading for students. We planned to walk together to a creek at night, journal, and meditate at picnic tables, then cast stones and leaves into the water as a way of letting go. But just before we left, it began to rain. No one was walking to a dark creek in stormy weather.

Ritual educator Rabbi Marcia Prager teaches that “ritual doesn’t mark change; it makes change.” Jewish ritual helps us name what we are experiencing and move through it — especially in moments of emotional intensity. Rituals externalize what’s happening inside us through water, words, light, movement, and sound. For students navigating stress, grief, anxiety, and uncertainty, rooting those emotions in an external ritual can help center and anchor them.

Some rituals are also meant to be repeated. They draw strength from tradition and memory. But even though repetition can be challenging when circumstances force change, Jewish students continue to seek out rituals, both ancient and modern, to help process change and challenge.

Back on campus, I pivoted. I remembered that I had dissolving paper in my office — one of my favorite ritual tools. My colleague filled a bucket with water. I laid a mandala tapestry on the floor, placed the bucket in the center, circled the chairs around it, dimmed the lights, and added jars of twinkle lights. It wasn’t the creek at night. But it was beautiful.

We sang a niggun, a song without words. I led the same guided meditation and journaling I had prepared. Then I passed out the dissolving paper. Students wrote down what they wanted to release — intrusive thoughts, self-doubt, beliefs that were weighing them down. We sang again, took a collective breath, tore the paper, and dropped it into the water.

As the words dissolved, silence fell. Some students cried. Watching the negative thoughts that no longer served them disappear felt deeply healing. We walked outside together in the rain and poured the water onto the grass, laughing as rain mixed with tears — a release and a renewal.

In our debrief, we talked about water in Jewish traditions such as tashlich and mikvah, of letting go and beginning again. Like the many Jewish leaders and thinkers before us, the rainy weather we encountered made space for innovation. Once I let go of what was “supposed” to happen, the ritual became something new and deeply supportive for students’ emotional well-being.

Having dissolving paper on hand made a difference. After all, when we equip ourselves with flexible ritual resources, we can respond creatively to students’ mental health and spiritual needs in real time.

Havdalah is another powerful ritual I have turned to, especially in moments when students are holding both joy and sorrow. Havdalah is a ritual of transition — a bittersweet goodbye that honors what was sacred while helping us step forward. It engages all five senses, through the touch and the light of the candle, the smell of the spices, the sound of the prayers,and the taste of the grape juice or wine. It grounds us in our bodies and helps us tolerate complexity. Even the braided candle teaches us to hold multiple experiences at once, as it twines together many strands of wax into one brighter light.

After Simchat Torah this past fall, I brought a Havdalah candle into a student space to talk about the return of the living hostages in Israel — joy woven together with grief for those who did not return alive. We created a paper weave, writing words and feelings on strips of paper and braiding them together. “Why can’t I trust this peace?” one student wrote. “Relief riding grief,” wrote another. The woven paper mirrored the candle and the emotional reality students were carrying.

Ritual, a powerful spiritual technology, gave these students the space to process complex emotions – and Hillel professionals have the privilege to incorporate ritual for reflection, connection, and healing. Sometimes that means innovating when plans fall apart. Sometimes it means expanding an existing ritual with a new element. And sometimes it means keeping a well-stocked ritual toolkit so we’re ready to react quickly when students bring us their most joyful and their hardest moments.

A Ritual Toolkit for Navigating Joy and Challenge

Created by Rabbi Heather

Rabbi Heather Paul is the campus rabbi and senior Jewish educator at Hillel at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

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