The Torah by Word of Mouth

 

 The festival of Shavu‘ot, which starts tonight, commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. It is marked with special celebrations and readings in synagogue, and many Jews stay up all night to devote themselves to studying the Torah.

 

Surprisingly, however, the Torah’s own description of Shavu‘ot presents it as 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).

 

Why should the Torah have stressed the agricultural side of this festival? The obvious answer might be that nearly one hundred percent of ancient Israelites were farmers; they plowed and harvested their ancestral lands, and the wheat harvest was certainly an occasion for celebration.

 

As for the giving of the Torah, that event was indeed connected to this festival, but you had to be a careful reader to notice why. The Torah recounts (Exod 19:1) that “on the third new moon after the Israelites’ departure from Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai.” Since Shavu‘ot falls on the sixth day of that same third month, it seemed likely that the two events occurred in close proximity to one another. And the fact that Shavu‘ot falls on the sixth day of that month—whereas the other festivals fall in the middle of the month, on the fifteenth day—might suggest that the odd dating of Shavu‘ot was designed deliberately to match the day of the giving of the Torah.

 

But beyond this is a greater lesson about the Torah. It consists of two parts, the “Written Torah”—the very words on the its pages—and the traditions and interpretations that accompanied those words. Those traditional understandings are known collectively as the Torah she-be’al peh, the “Oral Torah,” because they were designed to be passed on along with the Written Torah by word of mouth, from generation to generation. To think otherwise would be, from a Jewish standpoint, a form of literalism—one might say fundamentalism— that is quite alien to Judaism.

 

Indeed, the special prayers of Shavu‘ot repeatedly describe it not as an agricultural festival, but as “the time of the giving of the Torah,” and if you think about it, you’ll realize that this description contains a hidden message. At its heart is the idea that the words of the Written Torah tell only half the story.

 

Mo‘adim leSimhah (Happy Festivals)