Inspiration: The act of taking in something indescribable, ineffable, impossible to see, touch, or explain, and turning it into something profound that can be shared with and enjoyed by others.

No, that is not the definition from Merriam-Webster. But it’s all I’ve got when it comes to the question of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses.

The truth is that although I am a rabbi and I believe the Torah is amazing and special and Divinely inspired, I don’t believe that God wrote it.

I believe it was a person, or more likely people. People who were wide-eyed, creative, and just mad enough, to create something astounding, something that we humans needed to make sense of a complex world. A roadmap to help us figure out how to be fully human, how create functional communities, and how to deal with the vagaries of being human.

It is both particular to one group of people and universal—designed to teach Jews how to be Jewish, and to teach all of us how to behave.

It gave us the seven-day week and the idea of a weekly day of rest and reflection. It taught us how to be holy, beginning with loving one another.

And, almost comically, it tells the stories of dysfunctional families who consistently failed to set a good example for the rest of us.

I am astounded by the depth and wisdom of Torah, despite often being befuddled by it. Every year when we come to the passages about the red heifer (Numbers 19:1-10) or the trial of the sotah (Numbers 5:11-31) I wonder, “Why?? What is this meant to teach me?” And every year I come up short.

But year after year I keep reading, keep studying, keep questioning, keep opening my mind a little more.

Tonight is Shavuot, the holiday that comes seven weeks after Passover and commemorates God giving the Torah to the Children of Israel. Given, we are taught, in the wilderness, so no one nation can claim it.

Jewish folklore says that the souls of every Jew—those living then or now or tomorrow or ever—stood together at the foot of Mount Sinai. It’s a sweet idea. I have friends who will say in the days leading up to Shavuot, “See you at Sinai!” Converts to Judaism are often told at their conversion ceremony that their soul was there too, because they have always had a Jewish soul.

Fittingly, Shavuot is one of the four occasions during the year when we recite the Yizkor prayer, remembering loved ones who have died. The solemn recitation is a reminder that generations upon generations of Jews have held both the Torah and each other dear.

Being Jewish has never been easy. It is frightening to be overtly Jewish in a world where hatred simmers and boils over into deadly violence.

Tomorrow morning during the Yizkor service I will reflect on the lessons that my parents instilled in me: To always stand up for the little guy, to spend my life in service to community, to support charities and vote my conscience, and to always remember that I am a Jew.