SHAVUOT
Shavuot is the holiday at the end of the counting of the Omer, 50 days after Pesach starts at the end of the grain harvest on the sixth of Sivan. Shavuot was one of the three pilgrimage holidays in the Bible when our ancestors went and renewed their community with the divine, their fellow tribespeople of Israel and the more than human world. As such, there is both an historical/theological meaning of the holiday which has become the main focus of the holiday in our times, and an agricultural meaning which my comments seek to start to reclaim. I’ll offer a few brief comments on the historical-theological meaning first.
Nowadays we usually celebrate Shavuot as the time of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. We sometimes engage in all night study borrowing from the Kabbalists and we eat dairy, for some obscure reason that isn’t well understood.
The idea of Shavuot as the time of the giving of the Torah is completely post Biblical. All of the references to Shavuot in the Bible are agricultural. It’s called the “Festival of harvest” (Exodus 23:16) and the “Festival of Weeks of the first fruits of the wheat harvest” (Exodus 34:22). Leviticus doesn’t name the festival, but offers a long description)that starts with the counting of the Omer, the period between Pesach and Shavuot with an elevation offering of the first sheaf of barley and concludes with an offering of two leavened loafs of bread (Leviticus (23:9-17) It’s called the day of first fruits (Numbers (28:26) and again a festival of weeks referring to the span of the grain harvest in Deuteronomy (16:9-10). The connection with the revelation at Sinai is NOT Biblical but is Rabbinic. Strassfeld dates it from sometime after the destruction of the second Temple in 70CE (Strassfeld p.71).
The Biblical descriptions focus on the offerings brought to be sacrificed, mainly the insistence that the holiday marks the end of the grain harvest as represented by the demand that there be two loaves of leavened bread from the new wheat brought forward.
Once the Temple was destroyed in 70CE, we had a choice about how to proceed. We could have maintained a sacrificial system that wasn’t linked to the one Temple in Jerusalem. This would have been decentralized either in local sacred spots where sacrifices had been offered prior to the construction of the Temple, or through other spots made sacred by our intentions, akin to our current synagogues. But instead the Rabbis decided to let the sacrificial system simply collapse.
Equally, we could have chosen to create some new way of expressing our gratitude for the successful grain harvest. After all, the destruction of the Temple didn’t change the Ancient Israelite ecosystem or agriculture. Farmers and everyone who likes to eat absolutely still had the felt need to say thank you for a successful grain harvest—that seems obvious to me. So how was that felt need embodied? This seems lost.
I want to look at two more characteristics of Biblical observance before we turn to how we might celebrate Shavuot today if we are reclaiming the Biblical and agricultural aspects of the holiday.
One of the interesting things is that the loaves of bread offered are explicitly supposed to be leavened. I argued about Pesach that we eat matzah as an act of sympathetic magic because we need the heavens to dry up and for no rain to fall so that the grain can dry and we can harvest and store it. I construe the commandment to have leavened bread here as a statement that it is OK if it starts to rain now that the grain harvest is done. It’s not likely to rain, but it would be fine if it did. Rain between Shavuot and Sukkot would be weird, but not harmful as would rain be between Pesach and Shavuot.
Shavuot was one of the three pilgrimage holidays in ancient Israel. Pilgrimage festivals in general serve a really important social function of knitting together the community. The pilgrimage from home to Jerusalem creates a liminal time and space, a betwixt and between experience, to use Victor Turner’s phrase, where people can step outside of their usual roles, relationships and ruts. It’s a chance to deepen and renew our relationships to the community and to the divine. It’s also a chance to give thanks for our blessings that come from the more than human world. Here the thanks would be for a completed grain harvest because the rain ceased when it was supposed to cease.
There were three pilgrimage festivals in Ancient Israel and they were intimately tied to the rain cycle. Why? Because water is life and the land of Israel’s agriculture depended upon rain from the heavens, rather than irrigation from a mighty river. Pesach marked the hoped for and much needed end of the rains so the grain could dry, be harvested and stored without molding. Shavuot marked the end of the grain harvest and the need for dryness. Sukkot marked the hoped for end of the dry period and was marked by the great pleading for rain that the people might live. Today both Pesach and Sukkot are celebrated for extended periods of time, but Shavuot has become this one or two day holiday, if it is observed at all. Why? Because we’ve lost the agricultural connection to the holiday that made it so central to our ancestors.
How might we celebrate Shavuot today? I offer a range of thoughts and some of them even include working with the historical/theological meaning of the holiday.
Reclaiming the pilgrimage tradition of Shavuot could enhance the possibility of revelation. Following my own experience and the teaching of Reb Zalman Schacter Shalomi which I heard from R. Zelig Golden, revelation is an ongoing possibility. Pilgrimage could enhance the conditions for the possibility of having a revelation by taking us away from our everyday lives, especially if it is a pilgrimage with a community of pilgrims committed to the possibility of revelation and spiritual transformation. I’d love to be part of a group that goes to a sacred place and truly, deeply, express our gratitude for the gifts we have received in our lives while we dance to sacred music and drums that would enhance the possibility of entering trance and receiving a revelation. The expression of gratitude would reclaim our ancestral expression of gratitude for a successful harvest. We might also do this at night, participating in the tradition of staying up at night that originated with the Kabbalists.
Another approach is to reclaim the offering of two leavened loaves of bread. The Kabbalists of Safed believed that Shavuot was a chance to celebrate the union of male and female with God as the groom and Israel as the bride (Strassfeld p.75). They believed, as I read them, in the cosmogonic power of this sexual union—that is they believed that the sexual union of God and Israel recreated or maintained the world. Leaving aside the heteronormative orientation and the problematic assumption of God as male, what I would like to reclaim is the celebration of eros and sexual union in creating and maintaining the world. How to do that is something I struggle with personally, and I completely believe we should think towards this.
A third way to celebrate Shavuot today is to reclaim the agricultural aspect of the holiday. In the ecosystem in which I live in the Mid-Atlantic of the United States, Shavuot occurs at a time when we are mostly done planting. Sure come summer I will plant some fall harvest greens and the like, and next week I will plant a few more radishes as I do every few weeks, but all of the grain planting is done as are most of the vegetables. I think it is appropriate to perform a ritual of thanksgiving for the opportunity to be part of our beautiful planet and have the chance to get our hands dirty and plant our crops.
If you live in a Mediterranean ecosystem akin to Israel or California, then I might look to find some new grain from plants that have just been harvested and make bread from the new grain. Hold up the loaves and offer thanks—the equivalent of our ancestors bringing two leavened loaves made out new grain to the temple.
Shavuot is a holiday of gratitude for a successful harvest. It teaches us to cultivate gratitude and show our expression with the fruits of the earth without which we could not live.
