A calendar conundrum’s message - The Jewish Standard

“The Torah is 3,340 years old. Its text has been studied and restudied ever since Moses received it and passed it on to us. It has nothing more to tell us, so why lose a whole night’s sleep on the first night of Shavuot studying it?”

That sounds like a fair question, but it is not, and the best way to understand why is to study some Torah. So here goes:

True or false? Shavuot begins at sundown this Sunday.

True or false? Shavuot is the anniversary of the day that God gave us the Torah.

“True” must be the correct answer to the first question because those supermarket calendars hanging on our kitchen walls say it is. It also must be the correct answer to the second question because various prayers we recite—starting with the festival kiddush—say it is.

The only problem is that the answer to both questions is “false” if we go by what the Torah has to say, especially in Leviticus 23, which sets out the calendar for our annual “sacred occasions,” our mikraei kodesh. In addition to the weekly Shabbat, Leviticus 23 lists five annual observances—Passover, Shavuot, the unnamed day we call Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot/Sh’mini Atzeret.

Of these five, Shavuot is the only one for which no date is given. All Leviticus 23 says is that we must begin counting from “the day after the sabbath….You must count until the day after the seventh week—50 days….You shall hold a [Shavuot] celebration on that day….”

Sunday night certainly is the end of those 49 days, but only if we begin to count on the second day of Passover. The Torah, though, says the count must begin on “the day after the Sabbath,” which is always a Sunday, yet Passover does not always begin on a Saturday. It always begins on time, of course, as all our sacred days do (it is the secular calendar that is either early or late). This year, Passover began on a Sunday, which makes Monday the second day. Next year, it begins on a Thursday. So, not only does the Torah not give us an actual date—which it does for the other four—but what it does tell us is as ambiguous as possible.

This ambiguity almost led to a civil war of sorts during the era of the Second Temple. The priestly party, known as the Sadducees, were “strict constructionists” when it came to interpreting the words of the Torah. They took every word literally. For them, the count had to begin on the Sunday following the first day of Passover, which meant that the 50th day always fell on a Sunday. This year, that would be June 8. Shavuot, therefore, could not have a fixed date, which is why the Torah does not supply one.

On the other side were the Pharisees (our Sages of Blessed Memory). They understood that no book of law could ever cover every situation that would ever develop until the end of time, but the Torah had to be forever valid. Our Sages understood, therefore, that we have to dig beneath the words of the Torah’s laws to determine their intent so that we can apply them to new circumstances. In other words, there must be an Oral Torah to complete the Written Torah.

In this case, because the Torah itself refers to festival days as “sabbaths,” our Sages interpreted “the day after the sabbath” to mean the second day of Passover.

Both sides made strong cases, but the Sages’ ruling won out.

Moving on. The Torah in Leviticus 23 and elsewhere supplies reasons for the three pilgrimage festivals—the Exodus and everything connected to it for Passover, the end of the agricultural season for Sukkot, and the end of the barley harvest and the emergence of wheat for Shavuot. In fact, the Torah emphasizes Shavuot’s purpose by the two titles it gives it: “the festival of the harvest” and “the festival of the first fruits.”

The title the Torah does not give Shavuot, however, is “the time of the giving of the Torah.” Our Sages called it that (see the Babylonian Talmud tractate Shabbat 86b), and they did so because it was on that day, the 6th day of Sivan, that God appeared to all Israel on Mount Sinai. The chronology of the Exodus in the Torah from Egypt to Sinai confirms that.

We will return to this. But first, in the list of sacred occasions in Leviticus 23, the Torah says this about the day we call Rosh Hashanah, but the Torah leaves unnamed: “In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a sabbath in remembrance of the sounding of the shofar, a sacred occasion.” (Note that this “sabbath”—small “s”—supports the Sages’ position regarding when the 49-day count is to begin.)

The Torah does not name this “sacred occasion,” which it does for the other four. It could not refer to it as “New Year’s Day” in any case because Exodus 12 effectively gave that title to Nisan, and Leviticus 23 reinforced it by telling us that Passover falls out in “the first month.”

Something the Torah does say about this particular observance—that it is “in remembrance of the sounding of the shofar”—could well be a hint, but if it is, then it points us in a completely different direction. There is only one shofar-related event in the Torah that is worth remembering. That event, however, occurred in the third month, not in the seventh, and on the sixth day of that month, not on the first. (See Exodus 19 and 20.) In other words, it occurred on the 6th of Sivan, meaning it occurred on Shavuot. The sounding of a shofar played an important role in that event.

Here is where we stand:

• The Torah does not give us a date for when Shavuot falls out, and it makes absolutely no connection between Shavuot and the giving of the Torah.

• The Torah does not give us a name for the sacred occasion that falls on the first day of the seventh month, whereas it does name every other sacred occasion.

• The Torah does not specify what it is that we celebrate on this unnamed sacred day, but the hint it supplies points to the event we celebrate on Shavuot, not on Rosh Hashanah.

Is it possible that during the First Exile, after the First Temple had been destroyed, someone fiddled with an original Torah text to prevent the disappearance of Shavuot, a Torah-mandated observance that was entirely Temple-based?

Arguably, the most important elements of Passover and Sukkot do not require the existence of a Temple. People could still eat matzah and conduct a seder on Passover. They could still erect and dwell in booths on Sukkot and wave the four species. Shavuot, however, had no observances attached to it other than bringing its specified Temple offerings and then holding “a celebration” devoid of any ritual component.

An event recorded in Nehemiah 8 suggests that “the first day of the seventh month” was actually the day dedicated to the giving of the Torah. The First Exile had ended, the Second Temple had been built, and the people made this request of Ezra the Scribe, who was both their religious and communal leader. “On the first day of the seventh month,” Nehemiah 8 reports, the people gathered and “asked Ezra the Scribe to bring out [to them] the scroll of the Torah of Moses.” Ezra not only complied, but he also read the Torah to them.

Did they choose that day for their request because that is when the giving of the Torah was celebrated in the days of the First Temple, and they wanted that observance restored now that there was a Second Temple?

In truth, the first day of the seventh month—by whatever name we give it—makes more sense for celebrating the giving of the Torah. As the Torah’s narratives report it, God’s appearance on Shavuot only began the Torah-giving process. It would take nearly the next four months, nearly 120 days, to complete, and the first day of the seventh month comes 112 days after the sixth day of the third month.

Our Sages, when they were confronted with the loss of the Second Temple, firmly linked Shavuot to the Giving of the Torah, and most likely they did so because they also wanted to save Shavuot from disappearing.

The Torah, says Proverbs 3:18, is “a tree of life.” That “tree” may be 3,340 years old, but it is as alive and thriving as ever. Even though its branches have been stripped bare of their leaves thousands of times, new leaves quickly appear that are even more beautiful than the ones that came before. They also carry with them new insights and new understandings that allow the Torah to forever be the living, breathing guide it was meant to be, a guide that will always be able to deal with new situations and to overcome new challenges.

Even after 3,340 years, the Torah demands to be studied because it has much to teach, and always will, and the first night of Shavuot is a perfect time to devote to doing that. Thanks to my King’s calendar, I will be doing that on Sunday night.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.

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