4 | MAY 18 • 2023 

essay
Revelation that Changed the Jewish People
W

ith the conclusion 
of Passover last 
month, we now 
find ourselves in the period 
of the Jewish calendar known 
as the Omer, 
the 49-day span 
between the 
Exodus from 
Egypt marked 
on Passover and 
the giving of the 
Torah celebrated 
on Shavuot, 
which begins this year on 
Thursday evening, May 25.
Jewish tradition considers 
these two holidays inextricably 
linked, the seven weeks between 
them seen as an incremental 
process of purification from the 
defilement of slavery to a state 
in which the Israelites were able 
to receive the Torah. In this 
sense, Passover and Shavuot are 
bookends, each representing a 
stage in the process of freedom.
But what if Passover and 
Shavuot are actually opposites 
— not compatible but in 
tension with one another? This 
is what Rabbi Shimon Gershon 
Rosenberg, known as Rav 
Shagar, argues in his homily 
“In the Name of the Father.
” 
Rav Shagar was a student of 
Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and a 
widely read spiritual leader in 
the religious Zionist movement 
focusing on postmodernism 
and traditional Judaism. He 
died in 2007 at the age of 57.
Shagar’s essay is built on the 
work of French philosopher 
Alain Badiou, and specifically 
his notion of the “event” — an 
occurrence so unprecedented 
and revolutionary it changes 
everything. Shagar wants to 
contrast the event that is the 

giving of the Torah with the 
mere “enlightenment” (he’arah) 
of Passover. The enlightenment 
that is the Exodus might be 
extraordinary. It might even 
be miraculous. But it is not 
unique. Nothing new came into 
the world with the Exodus; it 
merely rearranged what already 
existed.

A UNIVERSAL EVENT 
Revelation, however, is an 
event. The giving of the Torah 
introduces something that has 
never before existed, and thus 
shakes the very foundations of 
existence.
For Shagar, the event of 
revelation introduces the 
universal into the particular. 
Passover is about the particular 
— the formation of ethnos, or 
the Jewish family. This is why 
the Passover seder is framed 
around the relationship between 
parent and child. Shavuot is 
categorically different — it is 
not about the experience of 
a particular people emerging 
from slavery but about the 
encounter of that people with 
the Divine.
As I understand Shagar, he 
is suggesting that revelation 
changes everything. But while 

Badiou suggested that the 
event changes everything by 
destroying what came before, 
Shagar suggests that what 
existed before the event is not 
destroyed but transformed by 
it. Put another way, Passover 
can survive Shavuot. But for 
that to happen, Passover must 
incorporate the universal into 
the particularity of the Jewish 
story of freedom from slavery. 
For Shagar, failing to do that 
would be a failure of the Jewish 
covenant with God. If all Jews 
bring to the word is that they 
are a distinct people, they have 
introduced nothing new.
In some ways, this is 
the perennial challenge of 
Judaism: how to incorporate 
the universal nature of God’s 
revelation at Sinai within the 
particularity of the Jewish story. 
Judaism, according to Shagar, 
must embrace the universality 
of the event by absorbing it 
into the past. But the past will 
always be reluctant to comply. 
The familial home where the 
story of the Exodus is annually 
retold is comforting. The event 
of revelation is discomfiting. 
It rips the familial from its 
roots and demands more than 
retelling the story of a people. 

It demands moving beyond the 
ethnos.
This is only possible with the 
introduction of something that 
is totally new. This may be what 
the Midrash meant when it 
taught that the ultimate purpose 
of Sinai is not the giving of 
the Torah, but the subsequent 
giving of a “new Torah.
” That is 
how the sages understand the 
prophetic view of redemption.
Thus, Shavuot is not (only) 
the culmination of Passover, 
but (also) its subversion. The 
danger (or perhaps hazard) of 
Passover is remaining mired 
in the ethnos, in the familial 
comfort of the Exodus, without 
the event in which God enters 
the world and introduces that 
which is utterly new. This is 
the moment where everything 
changes irrevocably, where the 
tradition is both introduced and 
overcome: That is matan Torah 
— the giving of the Torah. 

Shaul Magid is the Distinguished Fellow 

in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. 

A version of this essay appeared in My 

Jewish Learning’s Recharge Shabbat 

newsletter.

JWV Memorial Day 
Cemetery Services

On Sunday, May 28, honor our 
Jewish War Veterans of blessed 
memory. The Jewish War Veterans 
Department of Michigan will hold 
a service in the Veterans Sections 
of Machpelah Cemetery on 
Woodward, south of Nine Mile, in 
Ferndale at 10:30 a.m. led by Rabbi 
Michael Moskowitz of Temple Shir 
Shalom, and at Hebrew Memorial 
Cemetery on Gratiot, north of 14 
Mile, in Mount Clemens at 1 p.m. 
led by Rabbi Jennifer Kaluzny of 
Temple Israel. 

PURELY COMMENTARY

Shaul Magid
JTA

