The Memorial Day weekend is a time when we remember and honor the dedication and sacrifice of those who gave their lives in the service of our country. Coincidentally, this past weekend observant Christians and Jews both marked special occasions on their respective religious calendars. Jews, this past Friday and Saturday, observed the festival of Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks) celebrating the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai to Moses and the newly liberated Israelites. On Sunday, Christians in the western church tradition marked Pentecost, which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit to the apostles when they were gathered together to observe Shavuot following the crucifixion, There are parallels between the two traditions: Pentecost is derived from the Greek word for the number 50 and is observed seven weeks after Easter; the date of Shavuot is determined by counting off day by day seven weeks from the second day of Passover.
Shavuot is mentioned in the Torah as one of the three pilgrimage festivals, when the Israelites were commanded to gather at their central sanctuary. The theme of the festival, however, is not the revelation of the Ten Commandments and the Torah but rather gratitude for the gifts of the harvest. Indeed, “festival of the wheat harvest” and “festival of first fruits” are alternate names used in the Torah to denote the holiday. The spring grain harvest began around Passover time with the gathering of the barley crop and concluded on Shavuot with the harvesting of wheat. On Shavuot two loaves of bread baked from the newly harvested wheat were presented on the altar in the sanctuary.
The association of Shavuot with the giving of the Torah is based on Exodus 19, where it is noted that the arrival of the Israelites at Sinai occurred in the third month following the Exodus from Egypt. A few passages in early noncanonical and sectarian Jewish texts hint at a linkage of Shavuot and revelation, and the Christian Pentecost may reflect a knowledge of that tradition, but it is not until the third century CE that a rabbi quoted in the Talmud explicitly remarks that Shavuot is when the Torah was given. The description of Shavuot in the traditional prayer book as the “time of the giving of the Torah” first appears in the ninth century.
The shift in the festival’s meaning from harvest celebration to commemoration of an event in Israel’s sacred history may be attributed to a number of factors – among them the destruction of the Temple, the emigration of large numbers of Jews from the land of Israel to the Diaspora, and the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism centered on prayer, study of Torah, synagogue and family rather than on Temple, sacrificial offerings and priesthood.
Passover celebrates freedom. At the seder meal, we lift our wine glasses and praise God, who has brought us “from slavery to freedom, from sadness to joy, from darkness to light.” The message of Passover is that we are meant to be servants of God alone and not of other humans. Shavuot teaches us that freedom is not absolute and that there are constraints and limits that are necessary in order to fashion a just, moral and compassionate society. My personal freedom does not confer on me the right to harm, oppress, enslave or exploit others. The rabbis noted the similarity of the Hebrew word for freedom, cherut, to the word meaning “engraved,” charut, in Exodus 32:16. The tablets of the Ten Commandments that Moses received on Sinai are described in that verse as “God’s writing engraved upon the tablets.” Juxtaposing those two Hebrew words, the rabbis derived the lesson that true freedom could be attained only by a commitment by the individual and by society to the moral teachings of Torah.
This is an important and necessary message but also a dangerous one. Demagogues and tyrants have been known to twist the concept of “true freedom” to justify repression and dictatorship. Religious extremists likewise exploit it to encroach on what should be personal choice in matters of faith and ritual.
I leave it to the scholars of political philosophy to grapple with these complicated issues of freedom and its limits and conclude by affirming that freedom is to be cherished, especially in these troubled times, but that we must not desist from our pursuit of justice.
Rabbi Barry Marks is rabbi emeritus of Temple Israel in Springfield.
