With the holiday of Shavuos right around the corner, it seems appropriate to connect it with the other festivals we observe. It’s unfortunate that Shavuos is the least known of the holidays among the general Jewish public, given that it commemorates the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, although the Torah doesn’t state that explicitly. We can infer the connection from the description of the Israelites arriving at Mount Sinai on Rosh Chodesh Sivan and the three-day purification that follows, coupled with the counting of the Omer – seven complete weeks from the second day of Passover to the bringing of bikkurim (first fruits). Commentators have noted that Shavuos is the only festival which doesn’t have an explicit date on the calendar. The Sages have suggested that the lack of an explicit connection to the Revelation on Mount Sinai represents Hashem’s regarding it as “immodest” to draw attention to the magnitude of the gift of the Torah that He gave us. Thus, Shavuos is described as an agricultural festival.
In fact, Shavuos is also a time of judgment. Not being a Torah scholar myself, I will rely on an article by Rabbi Dr. Avraham Walfish on TheGemara.com published some years ago (“Composing Rosh Hashana as a Day of Judgment”).
The Mishna (1:2) for Maseches Rosh Hashana states that there are four periods when Hashem sits in judgment: Pesach for grain, Shavuos for the fruit of trees, Sukkos for water, and Rosh Hashana for humanity. As Rabbi Walfish notes, the three agricultural festivals explicitly use the word “judge,” while the expression for Rosh Hashana reads, “all who enter the world pass before Him as a battalion, as it says: ‘Who creates together their heart, scrutinizes all their actions.’” (Psalms 33:15). Why this difference?
To begin, let’s consider the Biblical origins of these four occasions. The three agricultural festivals can be readily connected to the judgments being made. Pesach is clearly associated with grains which were affected by the seventh and eighth plagues: In Sefer Shemos (9:30-32), the pesukim read in connection with the seventh plague (hail):
But you and your servants I know that you still do not fear the L-rd G-d, though the flax and the barley have been broken, for the barley is in the ear, and the flax is in the stalk. The wheat and the spelt, however, have not been broken because they ripen late.
And in connection with the eighth plague (locusts) the pasuk says (10:15): “They obscured the view of all the earth, and the earth became darkened, and they ate all the vegetation of the earth and all the fruits of the trees, which the hail had left over, and no greenery was left in the trees or in the vegetation of the field[s] throughout the entire land of Egypt.”
As previously stated, Shavuos is the festival that is celebrated by bringing bikkurim, the offering of first fruits. The relevant pesukim read: “It will be, when you come into the land which the L-rd, your G-d, gives you for an inheritance, and you possess it and settle in it, that you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you will bring from your land which the L-rd, your G-d, is giving you. You shall put [them] into a basket, and go to the place which the L-rd, your G-d, will choose to have His Name dwell there. You shall come to the kohen who will be [serving] in those days, and say to him: ‘I declare this day to the L-rd, your G-d, that I have come to the land which the L-rd swore to our forefathers to give us.’” (Devarim 26:1-3).
Writing on Chabad.org, Rabbi Menachem Posner makes the connection to Shavuos: “Farmers in Israel (and some surrounding lands) would tie strings around the first budding fruits of the seven species of the land of Israel – wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates – and bring them to the Temple beginning on Shavuot, which the Torah calls “the harvest festival, the first fruits of your work,” until Sukkos.
Having connected Shavuos to Sukkos, let’s explore how it is related to its period of judgment. Sukkos, which celebrates the fall harvest, is the prelude to the rainy season. Rainfall is so vitally important to growing the next year’s crops that at Mussaf on Shemini Atzeres we say Tefillas Geshem, the prayer for rain. During Chol Hamoed, there was a special water libation ceremony in the Temple, invoking G-d’s blessing for rain in its proper time. The water for the libation ceremony was drawn from the Pool of Siloam in the City of David and carried up the Jerusalem pilgrimage road to the Temple in a joyful procession. (Incidentally, Doron Spielman’s new book When the Stones Speak describes the archaeological uncovering of the pool and the road as proof that the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, contrary to the fiction peddled by the Palestinians and the United Nations.)
Each night, large crowds gathered in the outer courtyard of the Temple for the Simchas Beis HaShoeivah, the celebration connected to the water-drawing ritual. The leviyim danced with lit torches and singing songs of praise to G-d, using instruments like harps, lyres, cymbals, and trumpets. According to the Mishna, (Tractate Sukkah), “He who has not seen the rejoicing at the Place of the Water-Drawing has never seen rejoicing in his life.”
In contrast to the three pilgrimage festivals, the Torah’s identification of Rosh Hashanah with judgment of humans is much more subtle. As Rabbi Walfish writes:
The Torah’s brief presentation of the festival observed on ‘the first day of the seventh month,’ known to us as Rosh Hashanah, is almost entirely devoid of details clarifying the meaning and purpose of this holiday. The Torah refers to the festival as ‘a day of teruah (trumpeting)’ (Numbers 29:1) and as ‘zikhron teruah,’ a ‘commemoration – or memory – of trumpeting’ (Leviticus 23:24). This could mean many things.
The sounding of trumpets in the Bible expresses a variety of emotions, including joy (Psalms 98:6) and fear (Amos 3:6). Memory here, if it refers to divine memory, may refer to G-d’s mercy (Genesis 8:1), loyalty to the covenant (Exodus 2:24), or administering stern judgment (Hoshea 7:13). Indeed, many of these themes appear in the verses of Zikhronot (commemorations) and Shofarot (trumpeting with the shofar) recited in the mussaf service on Rosh Hashana.
Rabbi Walfish goes on to perform an intensive textual analysis as to how Rosh Hashana came to be identified as a time of judgment. He suggests that this conjunction is hinted at by the next paragraph identifying Yom Kippur as the tenth day of Tishrei, in accordance with the principle that related matters are closely juxtaposed in the Torah.
The identification of the festivals as times of judgment is reinforced by a passage in the Tosefta (third century CE) which reads, “R. Akiva said: The Torah said – ‘Bring an omer of barley on Passover, the period of barley, so that the grain will be blessed for you. Bring first fruits of wheat on Shavuot, the period of trees, so that the fruit of the tree will be blessed for you. Bring the water libation on Sukkot, so that the rainwater will be blessed for you. Say before me the Malchuyot, Zichronot, and Shofarot [benedictions] – Malchuyot, so that you will coronate Me over them; Zichronot, so that your memory will come before Me for good; Shofarot, so that your prayer will ascend before me with trumpeting.’” The last three sets of benedictions are precisely those that accompany shofar-blowing at Mussaf on Rosh Hashana.
There was a dispute among three of Rabbi Akiva’s foremost disciples regarding the timing of the judgment of humanity. As the Tosefta reports it in Rosh Hashana 1:13:
All are judged on Rosh Hashana and their decree is sealed on Yom Kippur – the words of R. Meir.
R. Yehudah says: All are judged on Rosh Hashanah and the decree of each is sealed at its time: on Passover – regarding grain; on Shavuot – regarding fruit of the tree; on Sukkot – regarding water; and the decree regarding man is sealed on Yom Kippur.
R. Yose says: Each person is judged every day, as it says: “You examine him every morning” (Job 7:18).
In the end, it is Rabbi Yehudah’s view, which synthesizes those of his two colleagues, that was adopted. As Rabbi Walfish summarizes it, “R. Yehudah’s view thus provides us with a clear rationale for conflating the judgment of the three pilgrimage festivals with the judgment of Rosh Hashana, found in both the Tosefta and Mishna. Rosh Hashana represents for R. Yehudah divine judgment as a narrowly defined calendrical event (like R. Meir) and the pilgrimage festivals present divine judgment as an ongoing situation conditioned by the realities of mundane existence (along the lines of R. Yose). Together, these two types of judgment produce a balance between the religious need to provide a specific time of year devoted to people’s awareness of standing in judgment before their creator alongside an awareness that G-d judges humanity throughout the year.”
Let us bear this in mind as we approach Shavuos.
