Category Archives: Shavuos

Bamidbar – No Date, No Place

We read parshas Bamidbar (Bimidbar, if one wants to be didactic) on the Shabbos before Shavuos. The meaning of that juxtaposition might lie in the word by which the parsha is known ((however one chooses to render it).

Rav Yisrael Salanter saw a trenchant message in the fact that Shavuos, unlike Pesach and Sukkos, has no set date. Tied as it is to the beginning of the Omer count on the second day of Pesach, its 50th day – at least when Rosh Chodesh was dependent on the sighting of new moons – could have fallen on the 5th, 6th or 7th day of Sivan.

Rav Yisrael explained that since we know that Shavuos is zman mattan Toraseinu (note zman, not yom, as the holiday may not fall on the date of Sivan on which the Torah was actually given), its lack of an identifiable set day telegraphs the idea that Torah is unbounded by time. On a simple level, that means it applies fully in every “modern” era; on a deeper one, that it transcends time itself, as per Chazal’s statement that it was the blueprint of the universe that Hashem, so to speak, used to create creation.

A parallel message, about space, may inhere in the desert, a “no-place,” being the locus of Mattan Torah. Here, too, there is a simple idea, that Torah is not bound to any special place but rather applies in all places; and a deeper one, that it transcends space itself, which, like time, is in the end something created.

That time and space are not “givens” of the universe, but, rather part of what was created at brias ha’olam (aka the “Big Bang) is a commonplace today, although it wasn’t always so, as philosophers maintained over centuries that there was never any “beginning” to the universe and that space is a fixed, eternal grid.

Yisro – Experience Required

When I was a teenager, I wrote a short poem that went:

All could be lies

For we see with our eyes.

Descartes, as I later discovered, beat me by some three centuries at expressing the thought that our senses necessarily mediate reality for us and thus cannot be relied upon to yield absolute truth.

That idea underlies the Rambam’s approach to miracles, that they cannot, on their own, conclusively prove anything at all. In his words: “…because it is possible to perform a wonder through trickery or sorcery” (Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, 8:1).

Even the plagues in Mitzrayim and the splitting of the sea could not prove anything decisively. (And so, once, when a Christian missionary came to my door to tell me of wonders performed by the object of his veneration, I just smiled and said “That’s very nice” and wished him a good day.)

What then, asks the Rambam, was it that fully convinced Klal Yisrael of Hashem’s existence and role in their exodus from Mitzrayim? His answer: Mattan Torah. (ibid).

As he explains (I paraphrase here), the happening at Har Sinai wasn’t something witnessed but, rather, something experienced. Our ancestors didn’t hear or see Hashem; they met Him intimately. They were imbued with His presence.

Which, I suspect, is the upshot of the words “They saw the thunder and lightning” (Shemos 20:15). The people, Chazal comment on those words, saw what normally can only be heard. Because they weren’t seeing or hearing at all as we normally define those words but rather experiencing the reality of Hashem. The synesthesia indicates that Hashem bypassed their senses entirely and entered their very souls.

Which is why the experience was so traumatic: The very pasuk after the one about seeing sound has the people begging Moshe, “You speak with us… let Hashem not speak with us lest we die.” To use a mundane simile, they had been like overloaded electrical circuits.

But that overload was necessary, if only for the first two dibros. Because it is what established for all generations to come – through the transmission of that experience – the relationship between the Creator and the people he chose to fulfill His mandate and carry His message.

Freedom was granted at Passover. It was defined on Shavuot

An article I wrote about Shavuos appears at Religion News Service, here.

Shavuos – The Matter of Meaning

The average price paid to climb Mt. Everest – for permits, equipment and guides – is between $35,000 and $45,000. And hundreds have died in that exploit.

What impels people to undertake so expensive and dangerous a quest? A misguided search for meaning.

Philosophers argued about what ultimately motivates humans. Nietzsche said power; Freud, pleasure.

Both tapped into something real. The power to, through our choices, change our lives and history, is a manifestation of gevurah, “strength.” In Jewish eyes, though, that doesn’t mean subjugating others; rather, as Ben Zoma in Avos (4:1) defines it, “hakovesh es yitzro,” one who, by force of will, overcomes his nature.

And Freud was on to something too; the Ramchal begins Mesilas Yesharim with the surprising statement that the goal of life is the pursuit of pleasure. Not physical, but rather ultimate, pleasure: “basking in the radiance of the Shechinah.”

The Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard was insightful. He wrote of the human “will to meaning” – the yearning to achieve something truly meaningful as life’s ultimate goal.

Some imagine “meaning” in climbing Everest. Others envision meaningful accomplishment in meriting mention in the Guinness Book of World Records, for, say, the most slices of pizza eaten while riding a unicycle and simultaneously juggling balls.

For those who recognize our divine mandate, though, the ring for which to reach is a spiritual one, achieved through Torah and mitzvos.

All good fortune to the Everest climbers.

Come Shavuos, we look to a different mountain.

Emor — Simple Jews

The Baitusim, a sect in Talmudic times often associated with the Tzedukim (or Sadducees), had a congenial approach to establishing the date of Shavuos, which the Torah describes as the fiftieth day from a particular point (Vayikra 23:15-21).

The Sinaic mesorah defines that starting point as the second day of Pesach (designated by the Torah as “the day after the Shabbos” – “Shabbos” here meaning the first day of the holiday), the day the omer sacrifice was brought. Thus, Shavuos could fall on any day of the week.

But the Baitusim seized on the Torah’s reference to that first day of counting as “the day after the Shabbos” as indicating that the fifty days must start after a literal “Shabbos,” on a Sunday, the first one after the omer, ensuring that Shavuos, too, would always fall on an Sunday.

A Baitusim spokesman defended his group’s position to Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai: “Moshe, our teacher, loved the Jews and… established [Shavuos] after Shabbos, so that the Jewish people would enjoy themselves for two days” (Menachos, 65a).

Hashem, he was asserting, certainly wanted His people to have a “long weekend” each summer.

An enticing thought, perhaps. But not what Hashem commanded. And Judaism is all about doing what He commands, whether it sits well with us or we think we have a better, “improved” idea. It isn’t our prerogative to “reform” divine will.

Our mandate is to be tamim, “simple,” “perfect,” “trusting.” It was, after all, our ancestors’ declaration of Na’aseh vinishma, “We will do and [only then endeavor to] hear [i.e.understand]” that earned us the Torah.

Which declaration, of course, took place, according to the mesorah, on Shavuos.

As Rava told a heretic who ridiculed his alacrity, “We Jews proceed with simple purity, as it says [in Mishlei 11:3], ‘The simplicity of the upright will guide them” (Shabbos 88b).

Notes the Shem MiShmuel: The “seven weeks” that are counted from Pesach to Shavuos are pointedly called sheva Shabbasos temimos – “seven perfect weeks.” Weeks, the word is hinting, for us to grow in what merited us the Torah, our temimus.

Behar – Don’t Serve Servants

“They are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt” (Vayikra 25:55).

Although the Talmud’s comment on the phrase “They are My servants” – “but not the servants of servants” (Bava Kamma 116b) – has a technical, halachic meaning, it also hints at a broader one.

In other words, not only does it say that a Jew cannot own another Jew, it also signals that Jews are not to indenture themselves to causes other than the Jewish mandate. Not to a political party, social cause or personality. A Jew’s exclusive ultimate role is to be a servant of Hashem.

Because the freedom we were divinely granted from Egyptian bondage was not what many consider “freedom” – libertinism, the loss of all fetters. It was a passage from being “servants to servants” – to Egyptians and Egyptian mores – to becoming servants of Hashem. As Moshe, in Hashem’s name, ordered Pharaoh: “Let my people go so that they may serve Me” (Shemos 9:1).

The Hebrew word for freedom, cherus, the Mishna (Avos, 6:2) notes, can be vowelled to render charus, “etched,” as the Aseres Hadibros were on the luchos. “The only free person,” the Mishna concludes, “is the one immersed in Torah.”

True freedom doesn’t mean being retired and moneyed, lying on a beach with sunshine on one’s face and a cold beer within reach, without a care or beckoning task.

In the words of Iyov, “Man is born to toil” (5:7). True freedom, counterintuitively, comes from hard work. Applying ourselves to a higher purpose liberates us from the limitations of our inner Egypts, and is what can bring true meaning to our lives.

Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote:

“I have on my table a violin string. It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end, it responds; it is free.

“But it is not free to sing. So I take it and fix it into my violin. I bind it, and when it is bound, it is free for the first time to sing.”

A timely metaphor, as we progress from Pesach, the holiday of our release from bondage, to Shavuos, the day we entered servitude to the Divine. And when, like on Pesach, we will sing the words of Hallel.

Klal Yisrael’s Second Marriage

It’s intriguing. Three words are used to refer to Yetzias Mitzrayim (yetziah, geirush and shilu’ach; see, for examples, Shemos, 20:2, 11:1 and 8:17).

And they are the very same words used as well to refer to… divorce (see Devarim 24:2, 24:1 and Vayikra 21:7).

The metaphor seemingly hinted at by that fact is that Klal Yisrael became “divorced” from Mitzrayim, to which it had been, in a way, “married,” a reflection of our descent there to the 49th level of spiritual squalor.

But the apparent “divorce” of Klal Yisroel from Mitzrayim is followed by a new metaphorical matrimony. Because that is the pointed imagery of the event that, mere weeks later, followed Yetzias Mitzrayim: ma’amad Har Sinai.

Not only does Rashi relate the Torah’s first description of a betrothal – Rivka’s – to that event (Beraishis 24:22), associating the two bracelets given her by Eliezer on Yitzchok’s behalf as symbols of the two luchos, and their ten geras’ weight to the aseres hadibros. And not only does the navi Hoshea (2:21, 22) describe Mattan Torah in terms of betrothal (vi’airastich li…, familiar to men as the pesukim customarily recited when wrapping tefillin on our fingers – and to women, from actually studying Nevi’im).

But our own chasunos themselves hearken back to Har Sinai: The chuppah, say various seforim hakedoshim, recalls the mountain, which Chazal describe as being held over our ancestors’ heads; the candles traditionally borne by the parents of the chosson and kallah are to remind us of the lightning at the revelation; the breaking of the glass, of the breaking of the luchos.

In fact, the bircas eirusin itself, the essential blessing that accompanies a marriage, seems as well to refer almost explicitly to the revelation at Har Sinai. “Blessed are You, Hashem, … Who betrothed His nation Yisroel through chuppah and kiddushin” – “al yidei” meaning precisely what it always does (“through the means of”) and “mekadesh” meaning “betroth,” rather than “made holy” like “mekadesh haShabbos”).

The metaphor is particularly poignant when one considers the sole reference to divorce in the Torah.

It is in Devarim (24, 2) and mentions divorce only in the context of the prohibition for a [female] divorcee, subsequently remarried, to return to her first husband. The only other “prohibition of return” in the Torah, strikingly, is the one forbidding Jews to return to Mitzrayim (Shmos 14:13, Devorim, 17:16). Like the woman described in Devarim, we cannot return, ever, to our first “husband.”

More striking still is the light thereby shed on the confounding Gemara on the first daf of massechta Sotah.

The Gemara poses a contradiction. One citation has marriage-matches determined by Divine decree, at the conception of each partner; another makes matches dependent on the choices made by the individuals – “lifi ma’asov” – “according to his merits.”

The Gemara’s resolution is that the divine decree determines“first marriages” and the merit-based dynamic refers to second ones.

The implications, if intended as such regarding individuals, are, to say the least, unclear. But the import of the Gemara’s answer on the “national” level – at least in light of the Mitzrayim/Har Sinai marriage-metaphor – provide a startling possibility.

Because Klal Yisroel’s first “marriage,” to Mitzrayim, was indeed divinely decreed, foretold to Avrohom Avinu at the Bris Bein Habesorim (Bereishis 15:13): “For strangers will your children be in a land not theirs, and [its people] will work and afflict them for four hundred years.”

And Klal Yisroel’s “second marriage,” its true and permanent one, was the result of the choice Hashem made – and our ancestors made, by refusing to change their clothing, language and names even when still in the grasp of Mitzri society and culture – and their willingness to follow Moshe into a dangerous desert. And, ultimately, when they said “Na’aseh vinishma,” after which they received their priceless wedding ring under the mountain-chuppah of Har Sinai.

And a fascinating coup de grâce: The Gemara in Sotah referenced above describes the challenge of finding the proper mates. Doing so, says Rabbah bar bar Ḥana in Rabi Yoḥanan’s name, is kasheh k’krias Yam Suf – “as difficult as the splitting of the Sea.”

Yisro – Consecrated Coercion

Last week, I offered the idea, based on the three Hebrew words, shiluach, yetziah and geirush, used to describe both the exodus account and a marriage’s dissolution, of Yetzias Mitzrayim as Klal Yisrael’s “divorce” from Egypt and Har Sinai, as its subsequent “betrothal” to Hashem.

The latter image, in fact, is clear from the Midrash Rabbah (Acharei Mos 20:10), which comments on the words “the day of his marriage” in Shir HaShirim (3:11): This, comments the Midrash, is Har Sinai.

And from the Mechilta D’Rabi Yishmael on Yisro, which quotes Rabi Yehuda as explaining that “Hashem from Sinai came” (Devarim 33:2) conveys the image of “a groom going out to receive his bride.”

The chuppah at a Jewish wedding recalls (“bisachtis hahar,” Shemos 19:17) the mountain lifted over the head of the people at Sinai; the candles borne by parents, the lightning; the groom walking forward to greet his bride, the aforementioned Mechilta.

And the end of the birchas eirusin at a Jewish wedding refers to Hashem as having “sanctified His people Israel through chuppah and kiddushin.” Not “with the mitzvos of chuppah and kiddushin, but through those things themselves – namely, at Sinai.

But the mountain above the people is also understood by Chazal as a threat. Rav Avdimi bar Chama bar Chasa says that “Hashem overturned the mountain above the Jews like a barrel and said to them: ‘If you accept the Torah, good; but if not, there will be your burial’” (Shabbos 88a).

Although that intimidation was mitigated later in history, when, in the time of Esther and Mordechai, the people re-accepted the Torah entirely willingly [ibid], what is the significance of the coercion in the first place?

The answer may lie in Devarim 22: 28-29, where the law is set down in the case of a man who forces himself upon a young woman. He is fined the sum of fifty silver coins but also must (if the woman wishes) marry her and, unlike in any other marriage, cannot ever divorce her.

The implication for Hashem’s relationship with Klal Yisrael should be self-evident.

Galus and Gastronomy

Some people, like pollster James Zogby, see Israeli offerings of hummus and babaganoush as a form of “cultural genocide.” And cookbook author Reem Kassis says that the marketing of hummus as an Israeli food makes her feel that she doesn’t exist.

I can’t say whether hummus was originally an Arab or Israeli delicacy, only that I enjoy it with a bit of olive oil and paprika on a pita. But I have what to say about Jewish cuisine and what it teaches us. You can read what here.

Shavuos – Happy Anniversary

In contrast to Pesach’s matzos and Sukkos’ sukkos and arba minim, Shavuos is unique among the Shalosh Regalim for its lack of any positive ritual-commandment.

That may have to do with the holiday’s association with Mattan Torah.

Because that experience involved no particular action; it was, in a sense, the very essence of passivity, the acceptance of Hashem’s Torah and His will. Hashem was the actor; our ancestors’ response was to receive, to submit to the Creator.

Mattan Torah is famously compared by various Midrashim to a wedding, with Hashem the groom and His people the bride. (Many chasunah minhagim reflect that metaphor: the chuppah recalls the mountain held over the Jews’ heads; the candles, the lightning; the breaking of the glass, the shattering of the luchos.)

And just as a Jewish marriage is legally effected in the kallah’s simple choice to accept the wedding ring or other gift the groom offers, so did Klal Yisrael at Har Sinai create its eternal bond with the Creator by accepting His gift of gifts.

And so, a positive, active mitzvah for the day would arguably be in dissonance with the day’s central theme of receptivity.

Shavuos’ identification with our collective identity as a symbolic bride, moreover, may well have something to do, too, with the fact that the holiday’s hero is… a heroine: Rus, whose story not only concerns her own wholehearted acceptance of the Torah but culminates in her own marriage.

It isn’t fashionable these days to celebrate passivity or submission, even in those words’ most basic and positive senses. But Judaism, unlike fashion, is eternal.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life