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 beginning of the barley harvest and the Exodus from Egypt.
During this period we have counted the Omer on a daily basis, leading up to the pinnacle of festivals, Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, which celebrates the wheat harvest, as well as the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
This gift of Torah was so difficult that, according to Jewish teaching, other peoples turned it down first and it was only offered to the Jewish people as a last resort.
Rather than remaining a pink elephant, however, this gift has often been regarded as the elephant in the room for the Jewish people. ‘If you are the chosen people, why ….’, followed by a litany of tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people since Sinai, not least at the present time.
But, as I write, two e-cards have arrived from friends in Israel, depicting two aspects of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks. The first is a picture of a sheaf of wheat. The second depicts the children of Israel receiving G-d’s Torah at Sinai.
In the last few decades, a new festival, Yom Yerushalayim, inaugurated by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, has been inserted between Pesach and Shavuot. It takes place exactly a 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 people 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, let us go up to 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 shall 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 reason the Torah was given in the desert, in no-man’s land; so many of the Torah’s messages are relevant for everyone. In similar vein, Isaiah proclaims that the Temple itself is ‘a House of prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7).’
Everything is vague. We are not told in 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 factor in preparing to receive the gift of Torah. Unity does not however mean uniformity. It means working together towards the same goals.
The book known as BaMidbar, ‘in the desert’, in Hebrew, Numbers in English, is always read on the Shabbat between Yom Yerushalayim and Shavuot. Here G-d tells Moses to ‘take a head count of the entire assembly of the children of Israel (Numbers 1:2).’ Why do this now? One of the reasons given is that counting every single person individually makes every single person realize that they are of special worth, that they ‘count’ in the big scheme of things. Every person has something to offer and no-one should feel left out.
The Haftorah accompanying this first reading from Numbers takes this counting idea even further. Hosea Chapter 2 recounts that though the children of Israel has sinned, and will continue to sin, their negativity can morph into positivity. From degradation, Israel will move towards security and spiritual greatness. Through the covenant, even though it may be broken in countless occasions, Israel will nevertheless be bound to G-d in love, righteousness and faith for all time.
And that is when ‘the number of the children of Israel will become like the sand of the sea, which can 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 sea? It trickles through our fingers imperceptibly, but is necessary all the same; it represents quality rather than quantity and is often taken for granted. Sand is ‘there’ and cannot be defined. The Jewish people, like the sand of the sea, are therefore a paradox.
And this is where Ruth comes in, the third aspect of this festival of harvest and Sinai. Ruth is one of the great heroines of history. She rejects her past and throws in her lot with the Jewish people. Ruth is the model for conversion, for the desire not simply to become a better person, but to reconstitute your whole being so that your individuality is now on a new plane altogether. That is what we are supposed to do at Sinai and Ruth shows us the way.
In the Book of Ruth read at Shavuot, this is what Ruth, the Moabite, now in dire straits, says to Naomi, her mother-in-law: ‘Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people are my people, and your G-d is my G-d. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried (Ruth 1:16-17).’
Ruth might have been forgiven for living a life 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 sea’, imperceptible but always there, taking life as it comes, and stubbornly sticking to the Jewish people through thick and thin, just like sand after a swim in the sea.
No wonder Ruth the convert has been painted by Rembrandt and used as the role model for one of Mancunian Elizabeth Gaskell’s greatest novels of the same name.
In Jewish teaching, Ruth is regarded as the greatest of all Jewish women, because she made the greatest leap of faith. And this is why Ruth, the lowliest of people, is celebrated as the pinnacle of the Sinai story. She teaches that there is hope for us all. Whatever our background, whatever our difficulties, we are still counted in. And when all is said and done, it is vulnerability that redeems and the leap of faith that saves.
