Weekly Torah Reading: Shavu‘ot, June 12, 2016

 

The Giving of the Rest of the Torah

 

 

 As everyone knows, the festival of Shavu‘ot commemorates the giving of the Torah. Year in and year out, we mark the day with special celebrations and readings in synagogue; some Jews stay up all night to devote themselves to studying the Torah.

 

The only trouble is, the Torah mentions nothing of all this. In the Torah, Shavu‘ot is an agricultural festival. It is preceded by the “bringing of the ‘omer,” the first sheaf of ripened barley that marks the beginning of that year’s harvest: the ‘omer is brought to the Temple and lifted up (“waved”) in a gesture of thanksgiving. Thereafter, seven weeks are to go by (49 days), and immediately at the conclusion of those seven weeks comes the festival of Shavu‘ot (so called because the word itself means “weeks”). It marks the ripening of the major crop, the wheat harvest, which is why it is also called the Festival of First Fruits (Num 28:26).

 

There is nothing in the Torah’s various references to Shavu‘ot to suggest that it has any connection to the giving of the Torah. In fact, there is nothing in the whole Bible to suggest such a connection. Of course, celebrating the giving of the Torah in the third month (Sivan) may not be far off. The Torah recounts that “on the third new moon after the Israelites’ departure from Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai” (Exod 19:1). It’s not altogether clear if the highlighted expression means “on the first day of the third month of the year” or “on the first day of the third month after their departure,” but if it is the former, then some date in that third month would seem reasonable for the time of the giving of the Torah. Still, saying it happened precisely on Shavu‘ot is a bit disturbing in the absence of any corroborating evidence in the Torah.

 

Or is it? To a certain way of thinking, this festival is a perfect expression of a great truth about Judaism. The written words of the Torah never tell the whole story. Instead, Judaism holds that from the very start, the written text of the Torah was accompanied by interpretive traditions that are referred to collectively in Hebrew as the Torah she-be’al peh, the things that were to be passed on orally from generation to generation. To think otherwise is a form of literalism—one might say fundamentalism— that is quite alien to Judaism.

 

You can’t get very far in Judaism without recourse to these oral traditions. (By the way, they’re called “oral” because they were indeed passed on orally for a time, but eventually they were committed to writing in books such as the Mishnah and Talmud as well as in various collections of midrash.)

 

So, for example, Rosh ha-Shanah is not mentioned as such anywhere in the written Torah; it is known only as the “Day of Trumpet Blasts,” and the Torah makes no mention of it as the “Day of Judgment” or the opening of a period of repentance and introspection. Nor would you learn much about how to keep Shabbat just by reading the written Torah, and the same would go for what exactly you can or can’t eat during Passover. Ditto for the details of celebrating Sukkot and other holy days.

 

Indeed, there is scarcely a verse in the Torah’s laws that was not transmitted with some accompanying tradition of interpretation—and sometimes the traditions are quite at odds with the literal meaning of the text. The Torah’s famous assertion “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is explained in the Babylonian Talmud as meaning that if someone causes another person to lose sight in one eye, the offender is required to offer monetary compensation—but certainly not to pay for his act with the loss of his own eye. In other words, “An eye for an eye” really means “Not an eye for an eye.”

 

In fact, coming back to Shavu‘ot, our tradition stipulates that, while the Torah seems to be saying that the counting of seven weeks is to begin “on the day after the Sabbath,” what it really means is “on the day after the first day of Passover.” And this, too, embodies the same lesson: the words alone are not enough.

 

So we enjoy Shavu‘ot as the great festival that is, but if you think about it, you’ll realize its hidden lesson. Its very nature demonstrates what it really is in Judaism, the day of the giving of the rest of the Torah.

 

Mo‘adim le-simhah! (Happy festival!)