Did We Oversleep at Sinai? The Psychological Lessons of Shavuot
- Rochelle Steinwurtzel, Psy.D
- 6 days ago
- 1 min read
Being a Jewish psychologist these past few years has involved some of the hardest professional experiences of my life. A sense of betrayal. Incredulity at watching a field I love move away from nuance and toward myopic binaries. A feeling that the psychological community, which is supposed to hold complexity, was itself collapsing it.
What ultimately helped me was recognizing how deeply Jewish ritual and communal frameworks overlap with established psychological principles of trauma recovery, resilience, and post-traumatic growth. At a moment when many Jews experienced profound relational and institutional rupture after October 7th, these traditions became not merely symbolic, but psychologically organizing. Tonight, I want to explore that overlap — and leave you with something practical you can carry forward.
As humans, we often make meaning through history and story, so I found myself turning to Jewish ritual as a framework for understanding this moment. I began thinking about Shavuot — the holiday commemorating the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai — and came across an essay by Dr. Leslie M. Gutman highlighting how deeply the holiday reflects the psychology of transition, vulnerability, and transformation.
Shavuot is a holiday filled with contradiction.
Despite counting eagerly toward the revelation at Sinai, the Jewish people famously overslept on the very morning they were meant to receive the Torah. God, according to the tradition, found them sleeping.
I’ve always been fascinated by that image. How does an entire people oversleep on the day that defines them? Was it fear? Ambivalence? The anxiety that comes before profound change?
