MAY 25 • 2023 | 43
T
he festival of Shavuot is a
mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Here is how Shavuot is described
and defined in parshat Emor: “From
the day after the Sabbath, the day you
brought the sheaf of the
wave offering, count off
seven full weeks. Count off
50 days up to the day after
the seventh Sabbath, and
then present an offering
of new grain to the Lord
… On that same day you
are to proclaim a sacred
assembly and do no regular
work. This is to be a lasting ordinance
for the generations to come, wherever
you live.” Leviticus 23:15-21
These are the difficulties. In the first
place, Shavuot, “the feast of weeks,”
is given no calendrical date: all the
other festivals are. Pesach, for example
is “on the fifteenth day” of the “first
month.” Shavuot has no such date. It
is calculated on the basis of counting
“seven full weeks” from a particular
starting time, not by noting a date in
the year.
Secondly, as long as the New Moon
was determined on the basis of
eyewitness testimony (i.e. until the
fourth century of the Common Era),
Shavuot could have no fixed date. In the
Jewish calendar, a month can be long
(30 days) or short (29). If Nisan and
Iyar were both long months, Shavuot
would fall on 5 Sivan. If both were
short, it would fall on 7 Sivan. And
if one were long and the other short,
it would fall on 6 Sivan. Unlike other
festivals, Shavuot is (or was) a moveable
feast.
Thirdly, the point at which the
counting of days and weeks begins is
signaled in a profoundly ambiguous
phrase: “From the day after the
Sabbath.” But which Sabbath? And what
is the reference to a Sabbath doing here
at all? The previous passage has talked
about Pesach, not the Sabbath. This
led to one of the great controversies in
Second Temple Judaism. The Pharisees,
who believed in the Oral Law as well
as the Written one understood “the
Sabbath” to mean, here, the first day
of Pesach (15 Nissan). The Sadducees,
who believed in the Written Law
only, took the text literally. The day
after the Sabbath is Sunday. Thus, the
count always begins on a Sunday, and
Shavuot, 50 days later, also always falls
on a Sunday.
The fourth mystery, though, is the
deepest: what is Shavuot about? What
does it commemorate? About Pesach
and Sukkot, we have no doubt. Pesach
is a commemoration of the Exodus.
Sukkot is a reminder of the 40 years in
the wilderness. As our sedra says: “Live
in booths for seven days: All native-
born Israelites are to live in booths
so your descendants will know that I
had the Israelites live in booths when
I brought them out of Egypt. I am the
Lord your God.”
WHAT IS SHAVUOT ABOUT?
In the case of Shavuot, all the Torah
says is that it is the “Feast of the
Harvest” and the “Day of First-fruits.”
These are agricultural descriptions, not
historical ones. Pesach and Sukkot have
both: an agricultural aspect (spring/
autumn) and a historical one (Exodus/
wilderness). This is not a marginal
phenomenon, but of the essence. Other
religions of the ancient world celebrated
seasons. They recognized cyclical time.
Only Israel observed historical time —
time as a journey, a story, an evolving
narrative. The historical dimension of
the Jewish festivals was unique. All the
more, then, is it strange that Shavuot
is not biblically linked to a historical
event.
Jewish tradition identified Shavuot
as “the time of the giving of the Torah,”
the anniversary of the Divine revelation
at Sinai when the Israelites heard the
continued on page 44
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
A Double Celebration
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH