Leviticus chapters 21 through 24
Down for the Count
In this week’s reading, the Torah commands the people of Israel to bring the first sheaf (‘omer) of the new grain harvest to the Temple. This is to be done, the Torah says, “on the day after the Sabbath”—which, in our tradition, refers to the day after the start of the Passover festival. This week’s reading then further commands that, starting from that day, we are to count off seven weeks (Lev 23:15). On the day after this counting is complete, another festival is to occur, appropriately called Shavu‘ot (“weeks” in Hebrew).
Readers may have heard of the ancient book of Jubilees, an anonymous work written in the second century BCE—and one that reveals a lot about what was on the minds of Jews in that turbulent century. One of the more surprising aspects of Jubilees is how it handles the whole matter of counting off those seven weeks between Passover and Shavu‘ot.
In Jubilees, there is no mention of counting weeks or days. The book implies that this is all a huge misunderstanding. Instead, after recounting the great flood in the time of Noah, Jubilees invents an incident not found in Genesis: Noah and his descendants all swore oaths never to consume the blood of sacrificial animals. A sacred day was established to commemorate those oaths, Shevu‘ot. This word is spelled slightly differently in English from “weeks,” Shavu‘ot, but in Hebrew the spelling is the same. So, Jubilees argues, people who think the name of this festival is “Weeks” are just wrong. It’s really the “Festival of Oaths,” and there is no counting off of weeks at all.
Why was this book out to eliminate the counting? Actually, this was very consistent with the overall ideological stand found in Jubilees—and frankly, among some Jews today as well. Jubilees did not like the idea of any human role in things sacred, not only in determining the date of Shavu‘ot, but in other matters as well. So, for the same reason, Jubilees warns against people who “will carefully examine the moon” and use it to determine the months—as we do with the Hebrew calendar—since this also required human intervention, first in having human witnesses spot the new moon and then having those humans testify in a rabbinical court as to what they saw. Only after this could the start of the new month be publicly proclaimed—by yet other human beings.
The Hebrew calendar also required human authorities to add a second month of Adar from time to time, at irregular intervals. “How awful!” one can almost hear the author Jubilees say. “The calendar I advocate is virtually automatic. God has arranged everything in advance. Every month has 30 days, along with four additional days at the year’s four quarters—no human meddling involved.” (An additional day at year’s end—two days every four years—rounded out the year, so as to perfectly match the solar year of 365.25 days.)
Our rabbis, on the contrary, gloried in the fact that God had given us humans a role in determining when each month started. The Torah, they said (appropriately reinterpreting Deut 30:12), is no longer in heaven, where it began: it is now in the hands of our sages to interpret and put into practice. This of course doesn’t mean that Judaism can be a do-it-yourself religion, given to revision by whoever wants to change it. What it does mean is that in many matters, what came from God has been given over to mere human beings to interpret and apply.
So in the same spirit, Jews thank God on the first day of every lunar month for having sanctified the people of Israel and thereby given them the authority to determine when each new month begins. Think about it: we could have been given the smooth-running, automatic calendar of Jubilees: no witnesses, no second Adar at different intervals, no public proclamations. But far from adopting such a calendar, Judaism gloried in the human role it had been given. So, as it also says in this week’s reading, “These are the Lord’s festivals, sacred occasions that you will proclaim” (Lev 23:4).