DEFINING YOUR PURPOSE

(For the SoundCloud audio, scroll down)

“People don’t buy what you do – they buy why you do it.” This famous observation by the self-described “unshakeable optimist” Simon Sinek has become a mantra in the corporate world.

Big-brand companies spend fortunes trying to define their “mission,” CEOs obsess over “core values,” while branding consultants build entire careers around helping organizations discover their “purpose.”

But here’s the funny thing: most people already know that purpose matters. The real problem is not discovering purpose — it’s remembering it.

Human beings forget. We forget why we started relationships. We forget why we took jobs. We forget why we moved somewhere, joined something, believed in something, fought for something. Over time, routine takes over, and purpose fades into the background like wallpaper you no longer notice.

Psychologists sometimes refer to this as “habituation.” The extraordinary becomes ordinary simply because it is repeated often enough. You get so used to something that you stop noticing it. The first time you hear a piece of music, you notice every note. By the hundredth time, it has become elevator music.

And guess what? The same thing happens with ideals. In 1973, researchers at Princeton conducted what became one of the most famous psychological experiments in modern psychology. Seminary students were asked to prepare talks on religious and ethical themes — many of them centered on kindness, compassion, and helping others.

On their way to deliver the lecture, they passed a man slumped in a doorway, coughing and clearly in distress. Astonishingly, many simply stepped over him and hurried on. Why? Because they thought they were late.

What the researchers discovered was something deeply uncomfortable about human nature: even people immersed in morality and spirituality can lose sight of their most treasured values when distracted by pressure, deadlines, and routine.

And when it comes to religion, this challenge may be hardest of all. Religious observance can become treacherously mechanical, turning into ritual without meaning and practice without passion.

That danger is especially real in Judaism because Judaism is so structured and so detailed. We pray the same prayers every day. We keep Shabbat every week. We observe the same festivals every year. The rhythm may be beautiful and give us stability, but rhythm can also turn into autopilot.

And perhaps this is precisely why the Jewish calendar contains a festival whose entire purpose is to return us to the moment when we first discovered who we were and why we exist.

Of all the Jewish festivals, Shavuot is the least understood. And that’s a shame, because Shavuot commemorates the single most transformative moment in Jewish history: the giving of the Torah by God at Mount Sinai.

It’s not about redemption, or survival, or victory – instead, it’s about purpose. At Sinai, the Jewish people discovered why they existed. Until that moment, the Israelites were essentially a refugee nation wandering through the wilderness. Yes, they had experienced miracles and escaped slavery in Egypt. But freedom alone is not enough. A people cannot survive without direction.

In fact, one of the great ironies of history is that freedom itself can become destructive when it lacks moral purpose. History is full of movements that successfully threw off oppression, only to descend into chaos because they had no shared moral framework to replace what they had destroyed.

The French Revolution began with soaring rhetoric about liberty, equality, and fraternity, but quickly spiraled into the Reign of Terror, public executions, mob violence, and eventually dictatorship under Napoleon.

In the twentieth century, many newly independent post-colonial states in Africa and Asia won liberation from European rule amid enormous optimism, only to fall victim to corruption, tribal conflict, military coups, or authoritarian strongmen.

Freedom alone was not enough. Throwing off chains is easy compared to building a society guided by responsibility, restraint, and shared values. Without those things, liberty can become unstable, self-destructive, and even violent.

Interestingly, the American experience 250 years ago was very different. The United States emerged from the revolution without collapsing into anarchy or terror, and the reason is not hard to identify.

Although the Founding Fathers insisted on the separation of church and state, they did not believe in separating morality from public life. On the contrary, the American republic was deeply tethered to biblical ethics and religious morality. The founders consistently spoke about virtue, accountability, Providence, and the moral obligations necessary for freedom to survive.

John Adams famously wrote that the Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious people,” warning that it was inadequate for any other kind of society. In other words, American liberty was never intended to mean limitless personal autonomy.

Freedom was meant to operate within a framework of responsibility, ethics, self-restraint, and belief in higher values. That biblical moral underpinning became the invisible architecture holding the republic together, even in a society committed to religious freedom and institutional secularism.

It’s an idea that feels especially urgent right now. We are living through a cultural moment in which freedom is increasingly defined as the absence of restraint, the removal of obligation, and the rejection of any authority beyond the self.

The modern Western world celebrates autonomy almost as an absolute virtue — “my truth,” “my choice,” “my reality.” But a society built entirely around individual appetite eventually begins to lose its cohesion. Shared values erode. Institutions weaken. Public discourse becomes toxic. People become simultaneously more liberated and more lost.

Which is precisely why Shavuot matters so profoundly. Because Shavuot celebrates the moment the Jewish people discovered that freedom alone is not enough. Leaving Egypt was only the beginning. At Sinai, the newly liberated Israelites learned that true freedom requires structure, responsibility, discipline, and moral purpose.

The Torah was not given to restrict human flourishing, but to enable it. Without a moral framework, liberty eventually collapses into confusion and conflict. Sinai transformed a collection of freed slaves into a covenantal nation bound together by shared obligations, shared ideals, and a shared sense of higher purpose.

Because in the end, Judaism was never meant to be a collection of empty rituals or inherited habits performed on autopilot. Shavuot comes every year to remind us that beneath every mitzvah, every tradition, every prayer, and every Jewish commitment lies a deeper question: why are we doing this in the first place?

And perhaps that is the enduring genius of Sinai. It did not merely give the Jewish people laws to obey; it gave them a reason to exist. Because ultimately, it is not what you do that matters most — it is why you do it.