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