ר"ע תיתד תונויצל ינויערה גוחה ,םולשו זוע
Though Judaism is deeply rooted in the day-to-day traffic of the mundane world, it also contains a profound and radical sense of otherness -- the idea that the core of reality is something human beings can only rarely glimpse, let alone touch. Shavuot, The Feast of Weeks, illustrates how the two dimensions are essentially one.
Called in the Torah the Feast of the First Fruits (chag habikkurim) and Pentecost (lit. the fiftieth day) in Greek, Shavuot is also known in Talmudic literature as atseret "conclusion," and as the Time of the Giving of Our Torah (zeman matan toroteinu).
While the festival celebrates an era when a sheaf of produce was brought to the Temple to be consecrated by the priests, this meaning had already lost its primacy by the time the Talmud was written down, some four hundred years after the Temple service ceased. By then, most exiled Jews no longer relied on the land for their livelihood, and the major cause for celebration was not agricultural but theological. The giving and receiving of the Torah was far more weighty than waving a sheaf of corn in the Temple.
Yet many peculiarities attach themselves to the festival. Apart from its plethora of names, it is uniquely lacking in a date, a fact that hastened the departure from the Jewish people of a sect of literalists who argued that the festival was held fifty days after the end of Passover and not, as the rabbis argued, fifty days after the conclusion of the first day of Passover. To modern sensibilities this is a niggardly reason to split a nation. But behind the debate over a text is another one, effecting power: who determines these things? Why should the rabbis be given preference in their interpretation of Scripture, or as sole spokesmen for the oral tradition -- which they claimed was given on Mount Sinai alongside the ten commandments?
It is the rabbis, and not the Bible, that fix the giving of the Torah on Shavuot. Though there is a scriptural basis in Exodus 19, the Torah never explicitly states that this was the actual date. The confusion over the festival's date is echoed in the events accompanying the Torah-giving, when the people "saw the voices"(Exodus: 20;15). Rashi adds: "they saw what was heard and heard what they saw." What, therefore, was the actual content of this hallucinatory, son-et-lumiere encounter? And how, if at all, does this experience relate to Shavuot? Can we today still receive this exotic Torah?
Sinai demands a strict code of morality on basic issues -- murder, theft, idolatry, adultery, etc. But it is also other-worldly, rooted in a cosmic awareness of God. It has to be approached with care, a sense of risk, and mostly with love.
When the sages wished to convey the sense of awe appropriate to the events at Sinai, they depict it as a day of marriage. Ecstacy, balanced by a fear of offending the object of our love, is the key mode. "Do not awake my love until she desires it." So quote the sages from that most triumphant of ecstatic works, the "Song of Songs." The encounter on Sinai is that between lovers in their most intimate moments. What greater proof of love is there than the confusion of the senses, which reveals our total dependancy on a force outside ourselves?
On Sinai, the Almighty pronounces ten 'commandments' (lit. words). According to the Midrash, the children of Israel were so overwhelmed by the words that after only three they asked Moses to receive the rest on his own (Ex. Rabba 89). For lovers, three words are enough.
And what words were these? Anochi Hashem Elokekhah. This is usually rendered as a statement of authority:"I am the Lord your God." For the ecstatic mind, however, the meaning is profounder, more precious. It is a declaration of love, of commitment. A marriage. "I am yours." Azeret is not so much a conclusion as a realization, a consummation. This is why Shavuot has no date. Can we put a time to our most intimate moments? Surely they remain with us for ever, above and beyond time, sustaining the rest of our lives even in the darkest situations. Perhaps, too, this is why the location of Sinai is significant: it was in a desert, open and free to everyone. If Shavuot has no date neither does it have an address. It is celebrated at the end of the sefira -- the counting of the Omer -- for it is in a time and place beyond counting, where no numbers can reach. It is an ending with no end. To be worthy of receiving Torah, we must be prepared to go beyond ourselves, beyond our 'civilized' norms, as did Moses' father-in-law Jethro, who left the luxury and verdure of his native Midian for the bone-dry wastes of the Sinai desert, because he had heard that God was giving the Torah on Sinai. From this Midianite priest, we learn a profound lesson: to hear Torah is an act of love. Love cannot exist if we retain our surface protection, our narrow egos. In the words of the Talmud, love shakes us out of our habitual routines.
In the scroll of Ruth, which we read on this day, we are taken beyond ourselves, beyond the narrow world of one people. It opens up to the daughter of a despised race, the Moabites, in order to show that Torah is not confined. It can reach anyone and anywhere, even inside the gates of the enemy.
There is a kabbalistic source that identifies the souls of Ruth and Abraham. Both came from homes of idol worshipers. In shifting from one mode to another both had to forget their past. Abraham was charged with leaving his house, his country, and his birth place for an unidentified destination. He did not object. He put out of his mind that which was no longer relevant to his spiritual development. Similarly with Ruth. One of the key points of her story happens when her mother-in-law directs her to the field of her kinsman, Boaz, in order to collect the sheaf left behind by the harvesters. Although this is only designated as the harvest droppings, it is the very same 'forgotten sheaf' of which the Torah commands an owner of a field to leave for the poor (Deuteronomy 24:19).
The Torah, so obsessed elsewhere with remembering -- the Sabbath, Amalek, the Exodus from Egypt, the creation -- here makes a mitzvah out of forgetting, not in the usual sense, but rather a conscious not-remembering. Only then can the unseen be revealed and the unknown become tangible. Only then can the other become part of ourselves.
Mordechai Beck is a writer and artist; some of his recent etchings from his "Ushpizin" are now on view at the Tel-Aviv Museum of the Bible.
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