Shavuot: Wherefore Art Thou?

 Shavuot appears as a conundrum.

Of all the three ‘foot festivals’, it is the only one whose date is not to be found anywhere in the Torah. In fact, according to the introduction to Rabbi Sacks’ Shavuot machzor/prayer book, he explains that:

‘Nowhere does the Torah say that we should celebrate it on such-and-such a day in a specific month. Instead it says: “And you shall count seven complete weeks from the day following the first day of the festival, when you brought the omer as a wave offering….And you shall proclaim on that day – it shall be a sacred assembly for you: you may not perform any laborious work” (Vayikra 23:15-21). The text in Devarim is even less specific: “Count for yourselves seven weeks; when the sickle begins to cut the standing grain” (16:9).’

He continues by informing us that, until our calendar was fixed in the fourth century CE, the chag could fall on three different days, depending on whether in any given year:

‘Nisan and Iyar were both short months of twenty-nine days, or both long, of thirty days, or one was long, the other short. If both were long, Shavuot fell on the fifth of Sivan. If one was long and one short, it was celebrated on the sixth, and if both were short, it occurred on the seventh. This makes it difficult to understand how it could be a commemoration of any historical event, since events happen on particular days of the year, while Shavuot did not.’

Secondly, we don’t know where the events that we recall on Shavuot, namely Matan Torah, the giving of the Torah to the Israelites, actually took place.  Was the mountain in modern day Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia? There are as many theories as there are possible locations.

Thirdly, nowhere in the Torah does it connect the giving of the Ten Commandments to the festival itself! We know that it took place fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt, but as I wrote, we aren’t sure when. The obfuscation of this connection led to numerous arguments later on down the historical line with various groups arguing vociferously as to when Shavuot should be celebrated. Depending on whether you were a Pharisee or Saducee, Bethusian, Samaritan, a member of the Qumram sect of the famous Dead Sea Scroll or a Karaite, you would find yourself recounting the given of the Aseret Hadibrot (the Ten Commandments or more accurately ‘statements’) on a different day!

This didn’t occur on any other festival and the fact that we uniformly celebrate Shavuot today in Israel on sixth Sivan and in the rest of the world on the seventh as well, attests to its durability and otherworldliness quality. And notice that I haven’t even mentioned cheesecake!

Whether or not the Torah was gifted to us on the fifth, sixth or even seventh of the month doesn’t stop us appreciating an event that took place exactly 3,333 years ago today, tomorrow or even on Tuesday. That we don’t know exactly where it transpired is also not particularly relevant. Every Jew, however connected or disconnected with our heritage knows that, thousands of years ago, somewhere in a distant desert, something transformative happened to our ancestors and our nation. An event that would change the course of world history. A gift that ‘keeps on giving’ to the world’s three monotheistic religions.

The Torah was given to the Jews (or Israelites as they were known then) and then transmitted to the ‘Seventy Nations’.

On a personal basis, at least in my direct family, Shavuot has a distinctive place. My own connection with the chag takes place thousands of miles away from the deserts, to the beautiful city of Paris, where my parents first met, exactly sixty one years ago this evening (the first night of Shavuot).

Let me explain.

Last week, I received a phone call from a volunteer at Jewish Care who gleefully informed me that, to my surprise, my mother had, over the last few years, dictated her life story to another volunteer. This memoir was complete and must have been finished shortly before her passing. Not only that, it also contained family photographs.

You can imagine my surprise and joy to find out about this, although to be fair, I think my mother probably told me about the project a while ago and I’d completely forgotten. This news came as though the sun were bursting through a very dark and rainy sky, bringing with it a warmth that I have not been able to feel for quite a while.

My mother described her life before, during and after the war and included in her memoirs were a detailed retelling of how she met my father.

She had journeyed to Paris from her home in Antwerp to spend Shavuot with friends. On the first evening that she arrived, my father, who was a cousin of these people was also there and they met for the first time. The two of them spent ten days walking around the romantic city of Paris and my father (along with a chaperone who was his cousin) acted as her tour guide, visiting many famous locales including the Notre Dame Cathedral. As an architect, he was extremely knowledgeable and wanted to share his expertise with such a pretty young lady! When the holiday was finished, they returned to their respective homes and that seemed to be the end of it. However, on her birthday which was 26^th June, she received the most beautiful bouquet of yellow roses (yellow was her favourite colour) and lo and behold, they were married by the Chief Rabbi of Antwerp on 29^th October 1961.

They spent their honeymoon aboard the Queen Mary sailing from Southampton to New York, although they had to contend with a storm at sea, so most of the time was spent on the upper deck. I arrived on the scene quite a few years later.

Shavuot is the festival when Gd established his covenant with us, the Jewish people. It is the anniversary when He, the bridegroom chose us, as his bride. The Chupah took place at the foot of Mount Sinai and the Torah was his Ketubah. Moses was the perfect Rabbi, conducting the service and preparing the Jewish people for the eternal marriage that still exists between our creator and our nation. How could I not appreciate the significance of my parents’ meeting over this particular festival? What started at Sinai, continued in Antwerp and although my mother is no longer with us in a physical form, her legacy, like the Torah that was given to us, will be with our family forever.

Wherefore art thou Shavuot? Right here in my heart.

Chag Sameach to you and your families.

Parshat Bemidbar: 5781 And All That

 If I cite the names W.C.  Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, I could vouch that very few of my contemporaries will be aware of the tome for which they are justifiably famous.  Making its debut in Punch magazine, it was published in book form by Methuen in 1930.

You might be better versed and know that I am referring to ‘1066 And All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates’

I must confess that I have never read the book although I was familiar with its title due to seeing it in my parents' library, amongst the numerous books that I'm going to have to sort out very shortly.  This is not a task that I am particularly anticipating.

I refer to that particular title because, looking back from the vantage point of mid-May or alternatively, eight months into the Jewish year I think I can say relatively fairly, that this year of 5781, has been nothing short of horrific.

Need I mention the nightmare that is still Covid, which has taken the lives of so many? Then, the loss of numerous Torah Giants, including Rabbis Steinsaltz, Lamm, Rabinovitch and Twersky.  And if that weren't unimaginable enough, our beloved, irreplaceable Rabbi Sacks.

Adding to the despair, I am still trying to come to terms with the loss of my own mother, just over a month ago.  As I write these words, Israel is in flames, quite literally, with rockets and riots, deaths and destruction.  '5781 And All That' is anything but a parody but it is and will no doubt be memorable for all of the wrong reasons.  So what comfort can this week's parsha provide?

Two months before he passed away last November, Rabbi Sacks ztl saw the publication of his final book: 'Judaism's Life Changing Ideas: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible'.  Though modest in size, its contents were anything but, as our leader's thoughts were collated from his weekly 2017-18 (5778) ‘Covenant and Conversation’ booklet. 

Each week's Dvar Torah imparted the kind of wisdom that only its author could impart.

We are about to embark on the fourth book of the Torah, known to some as 'Numbers' and to others as 'Bemidbar - In the Desert'.  Rabbi Sacks begins with the following:

‘The books of Exodus and Numbers have striking similarities.  They are both about journeys.  They both portray the Israelites as quarrelsome and ungrateful.  Both contain stories about the people complaining about food and water.  In both, the Israelites commit a major sin: in Exodus, the golden calf; in Numbers, the episode of the spies.  In both, God threatens to destroy them and begin again with Moses.  Both times, Moses' passionate appeal persuades God to forgive the people.  It is easy, when reading the book of Numbers, to feel a sense of déjà vu.  We have been here before.’

‘Where the books differ’, he continues, is to realise that ‘there is a difference’.  Whereas:

‘Exodus is about a journey from, Numbers is about a journey to.  Exodus is the story of an escape from slavery.  Exodus means just that: departure, withdrawal, leaving.  By contrast, in the book of Numbers the people have already left Egypt far behind.  They have spent a prolonged period in the Sinai desert.  They have received the Torah (as we will read on Monday) and built the Sanctuary.  Now they are ready to move on.  This time, they are looking forward, not back.  They are thinking, not of the danger they are fleeing from, but of the destination they are travelling towards, the Promised Land.’

Reading these words, I stop and think about what I and we have been through in the last year-and-a-half.  In the deepest darkest months when Covid was creeping up on us at every turn, we held onto the belief that things had to get better.  They would probably get worse, but they had to improve.  Didn't they?  Then the vaccine came along and we deigned to believe that spring and its promises could not be too far away.  We hoped.  We prayed.  We held onto something, however slight, however fragile.  The hope, Hatikvah, that things would get better.

 

And here we are, in the depths of yet another crisis, watching the people we care about running for their lives, not from the plague, but from their neighbours.  The destination that we were travelling towards seems to have vanished like a mirage in the desert and we are walking backwards, towards Egypt. 

The first verses of Bemidbar tell us that:

‘(1) On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: (2) Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.’

Rashi infers something beautiful from these introductory Pesukim:

‘Because they were dear to him, He counts them every now and then: when they went forth from Egypt He counted them (Exodus 12:37), when many of them fell in consequence of their having worshipped the golden calf He counted them to ascertain the number of those left (cf.  Rashi Exodus 30:16); when he was about to make His Shechinah dwell amongst them (i.e.  when He commanded them to make a Tabernacle), He again took their census; for on the first day of Nisan the Tabernacle was erected (Exodus 40:2) and shortly afterwards, on the first day of Iyar, He counted them.’

In ‘5781 And All That’, it may seem that we, like our ancestors, are walking in the wrong direction but somehow, we have all been here before and despite all of our travails and missteps, Gd still decides to count us and demonstrate how special we are to Him, because every Jew matters, full stop.  Every Jew who survived Covid and every Jew who didn’t.  Every Jew who prayed alone.  Every Jew who didn't pray.  Every Jew who looks at the situation in Israel and cries.  Every Jew who doesn't care about what is happening.  Every Jew who survives a terrorist attack and every Jew who doesn’t.  Every Jew who acts in a way that embarrasses the rest of us.  Every single one of us is counted and valued by Gd.  When Rabbi Sacks tells us that we on a journey 'to', he knows that there will be countless challenges on our way.  He knows that some of us won't make it.  He and my mother left us before they could complete their journeys.  But his words, our Torah, our heritage, our future are assured, however blinded we are by the events that envelop us.

As he concludes with his Life-Changing Idea (#34):

‘Remember your destination.  This will help you to distinguish between an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted’. 

As he writes:

‘The Israelites, in their journey.  made a series of mistakes.  They focused too much on the present (the food, the water) and too little on the future'.  When they faced difficulties, they had too much fear and too little faith.  They kept looking back to how things were instead of looking forward to how they might be...they knew how to leave but not how to arrive.  They experienced exodus but not entry.’

I believe that we need to hold onto these thoughts as we navigate the choppy waters of '5781 And All That' because every nightmare has to end.  Every storm has to cease and whatever happens and however long it takes, eventually the sun will reclaim the sky. 

Shabbat Shalom and stay safe.