Shavuos is a very short holiday. Even for those who stay up all night, it still seems to disappear in the blink of an eye. When any holiday finishes, we can fall into a “postpartum depression” as we to try to hold onto that yom tov and apply what we gained to our lives.

Parshas Nasso is the longest parsha in the Torah. Not only that, but towards the end of the parsha, we are challenged to stay tuned in as the Torah seems to repeat itself over and over. The Medrash Rabbah on Parshas Nasso is also the longest Medrash. (The Zohar on this week’s parsha, while not the longest, contains some of the most noteworthy sections – known as the “Idra Rabbah”.) What is the reason that Nasso, the Parsha following Shavuos, is so long?

The Chasam Sofer (Moses Schreiber 1762–1839) asks a fascinating question: Why do people overextend themselves in trying to find a beautiful lulav and esrog? We don’t find with other mitzvos that people work so hard in order to find a coveted specimen. The Chasam Sofer explains that as Sukkos is the first seasonal holiday of the year, we put our all into it, in order to show that this is how we would really like to fulfill Mitzvos all the time. Though we can’t always be super achievers, at least immediately following Yom Kippur we overexert ourselves. The Chidushei HaRim (Yitzchak Meir Rotenberg-Alter 1799 –1866) explains that similarly, after we receive the Torah, we are supposed to show that we are infatuated with it, so we will be happy with the megadose that is given to us on the next Shabbos, Parshas Nasso. I would like to give an example of what this idea means. I am sure we each have a friend who has a favorite joke, anecdote, or story that he is forever repeating. And, no matter how much it annoys those around them, he still repeats it with as much gusto on the 100th time as the first, and sometimes with even more gusto! If one were to ask him, “Don’t you get bored with that story?” he would answer, “No, I LOVE it!” So too when we are given extra work with our shtayim mikra v’echad targum, we should be excited even though the challenge (being long and repetitious) is great.

I once heard a story about the Chazon Ish (Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz 1878 –1953) that expresses this idea. He was learning gemora and he came to a section that was two blatt long, full of drashas going back and forth between two different opinions, and it seemed like some type of mathematical ping pong trying to get to a final resolution. The person standing there watching the Chazon Ish was amazed that he learned these words with the same amount of enthusiasm as those gemaras which discuss more intriguing topics. When the Chazon Ish was asked, “How are you able to learn these less interesting gemaras with such enthusiasm?” he answered, “It is Torah!!!”

If we could walk away from this Shabbos with a smile on our faces because we had an opportunity to learn more than any other week, then, perhaps, to at least to a small degree, we will have applied the lesson of the excitement of the kabalos haTorah we had just a few days ago.