Shavuot – the festival of second probabilities

Hebrew scholar and Jewish academic Irene Lancaster unpacks the Jewish perspective of Shavuot – the festival known to Christians as Pentecost. 

It is seven weeks since Pesach, which celebrates the start of the barley harvest and the Exodus from Egypt.

During this era we have now counted the Omer on a each day basis, leading as much as the top of festivals, Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, which celebrates the wheat harvest, in addition to the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. 

This gift of Torah was so difficult that, in accordance with Jewish teaching, other peoples turned it down first and it was only offered to the Jewish people as a final resort. 

Rather than remaining a pink elephant, nonetheless, this gift has often been considered the elephant within the room for the Jewish people. ‘If you’re the chosen people, why ….’, followed by a litany of tragedies which have befallen the Jewish people since Sinai, not least these days.

But, as I write, two e-cards have arrived from friends in Israel, depicting two elements of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks. The first is an image of a sheaf of wheat. The second depicts the kids of Israel receiving G-d’s Torah at Sinai. 

In the previous couple of a long time, a latest festival, Yom Yerushalayim, inaugurated by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, has been inserted between Pesach and Shavuot. It takes place exactly per week before Shavuot, for just as Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah, so Jerusalem is the place from which Torah emanates. 

‘For out of Zion shall come forth Torah and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:3 and Micah 4:2)’. Jerusalem is the centre of the Jewish world. But neither Jerusalem nor Torah are limited to the Jewish people. All individuals are created ‘in G-d’s image (Genesis 1:26).’ Therefore Torah and Jerusalem are relevant to all people. 

‘And many peoples will go and say: ‘Come, allow us to go as much as the mountain of the Lord and to the House of the G-d of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways. And we will walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall come forth Torah and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:3 and Micah 4:2).’

This is the rationale the Torah was given within the desert, in no-man’s land; so lots of the Torah’s messages are relevant for everybody. In similar vein, Isaiah proclaims that the Temple itself is ‘a House of prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7).’

Everything is vague. We aren’t told within the Torah itself the precise date the Torah was given. In the Torah the emphasis is on the agricultural nature of the festival. And in Exodus 19:2, the stress is on the unity of the people: ‘And the Jewish people encamped as one under the mountain.’ Unity is a key consider preparing to receive the gift of Torah. Unity doesn’t nonetheless mean uniformity. It means working together towards the identical goals.

The book generally known as BaMidbar, ‘within the desert’, in Hebrew, Numbers in English, is all the time read on the Shabbat between Yom Yerushalayim and Shavuot. Here G-d tells Moses to ‘take a head count of the whole assembly of the kids of Israel (Numbers 1:2).’ Why do that now? One of the explanations given is that counting each person individually makes each person realize that they’re of special value, that they ‘count’ in the massive scheme of things. Every person has something to supply and no-one should feel disregarded.

The Haftorah accompanying this primary reading from Numbers takes this counting idea even further. Hosea Chapter 2 recounts that though the kids of Israel has sinned, and can proceed to sin, their negativity can morph into positivity. From degradation, Israel will move towards security and spiritual greatness. Through the covenant, regardless that it could be broken in countless occasions, Israel will nevertheless be sure to G-d in love, righteousness and faith forever.

And that’s when ‘the variety of the kids of Israel will turn out to be just like the sand of the ocean, which might neither be measured, nor counted (Hosea 2:1).’ Here Hosea is repeating what G-d originally told Abraham (Genesis 22:17).

What is the sand of the ocean? It trickles through our fingers imperceptibly, but is vital all the identical; it represents quality slightly than quantity and is usually taken with no consideration. Sand is ‘there’ and can’t be defined. The Jewish people, just like the sand of the ocean, are due to this fact a paradox.

And that is where Ruth is available in, the third aspect of this festival of harvest and Sinai. Ruth is considered one of the good heroines of history. She rejects her past and throws in her lot with the Jewish people. Ruth is the model for conversion, for the will not simply to turn out to be a greater person, but to reconstitute your whole being in order that your individuality is now on a latest plane altogether. That is what we’re presupposed to do at Sinai and Ruth shows us the way in which. 

In the Book of Ruth read at Shavuot, that is what Ruth, the Moabite, now in dire straits, says to Naomi, her mother-in-law: ‘Do not urge me to go away you, to show back and never follow you. For wherever you go, I’ll go; wherever you lodge, I’ll lodge; your individuals are my people, and your G-d is my G-d. Wherever you die, I’ll die, and there I will probably be buried (Ruth 1:16-17).’

Ruth may need been forgiven for living a lifetime of quiet desperation, like T.S. Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock’ who ‘measured my life with coffee spoons’, wallowing in self-pity and nihilism. By contrast, Ruth is more like Abraham and Hosea’s ‘sand of the ocean’, imperceptible but all the time there, taking life because it comes, and stubbornly sticking to the Jewish people through thick and thin, identical to sand after a swim in the ocean. 

No wonder Ruth the convert has been painted by Rembrandt and used because the role model for considered one of Mancunian Elizabeth Gaskell’s best novels of the identical name.

In Jewish teaching, Ruth is considered the best of all Jewish women, because she made the best leap of religion. And this is the reason Ruth, the lowliest of individuals, is widely known as the top of the Sinai story. She teaches that there may be hope for us all. Whatever our background, whatever our difficulties, we’re still counted in. And when all is claimed and done, it’s vulnerability that redeems and the leap of religion that saves.