So today is the first day of the two day Jewish holiday of Shavuot. That means, for congregational rabbis, cantors and staff, these are big workdays with full services both days. But, except in the Orthodox communities, most Jews do not go to the synagogue on Shavuot, do not stay home from the office, and perhaps do not even know that it is Shavuot. Why this is the fact is something that Jews talk about. I guess you could speculate that people talk about why they don’t celebrate Shavuot so that they don’t forget that they aren’t celebrating one of the three major festival holidays of the Torah. But you’d need a special kind of mind to unravel that special kind of thinking.

Growing up, I knew nothing of Shavuot. At some point, I learned that there was such a holiday, but that was all. I then learned that, at least in the Reform movement, the rabbinical leaders were frustrated that they couldn’t get any of their congregants to recognize Shavuot, and that is why they invented the rite of Confirmation for middle school age children – the culmination of their religious school training. In those days, there were no bar or bat mitzvot in the Reform tradition for boys at 13 or girls at 12, so a Confirmation service at 15 or so was seen as a way to recognize passage into a form of adulthood and, at the same time, if it was scheduled for Shavuot, it would create a way to recognize the holiday of Shavuot. I don’t think it was a great success in this regard.

I have lived a fairly Jewish life now for 80 years, and I don’t think that I ever attended a Shavuot service. This year will be no exception. Our 2 1/2 year old grandson attends a Jewish pre-school which is closed for Shavuot today, and we have him with us all day, so at least now I am forced (not in a gun-at-your-head way) to recognize the holiday. But that will be it.

But I did listen to a lecture on the holiday, sponsored by the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies one night last week, and presented by Rabbi David Silber, founder of the Drisha Institute in New York. Here is the link to a video of the lecture if you are interested:

I found it interesting. Here are some of the points that I recall (with a little review):

1. While the holiday is celebrated as the day that the Jews convened at Sinai and received the Torah (not only the Ten Commandments) from God through Moses, the Torah doesn’t talk about this; it states that the pilgrimage holiday of Shavuot celebrates the Jews entering the promised land after 40 years in the desert. The connection with the Torah came later, as a rabbinic position. (If I had to guess, I would guess that the other two pilgrimage festivals, Passover and Sukkot did very well, but no one came to Jerusalem on Shavuot – so, just like the Reform Jews of the 20th century needed a hook to get people to participate, so did the rabbis of old and, as to all but the Orthodox who do whatever the Rabbi wants, no one paid any attention.)
2. The meeting at Sinai leading to the giving of the Torah contained three elements: (1) revelation – God was present; (2) the giving of the Commandments, the rule of how to live; and (3) the Covenant between God and the Jewish people.
3. This was actually God’s 3rd Covenant – the first given to all the people of the world of the Flood and Noah’s survival – that He would never again destroy humanity, and the second, giving to Abraham, saying that He will become the father of a great nation who will have the land of Israel, but that this would only occur after his descendants would be strangers, and slaves, and abused. And that this is what happened to the Israelites in Egypt.
4. That the rabbis say, as written in the Haggadah for Passover, each Jews should act as if he himself were redeemed by God from Egypt, and that this was necessary because those Jews who were actually redeemed really would rather have stayed in Egypt than wander in the desert so long, and that only Jews who had never been in Egypt could appreciate what it meant to be free because they were no longer in that interim, wandering stage.

Well, you can take all this as gospel (so to speak), or with a grain (or more) of salt, but at least I hope you find it interesting and important culturally, if not religiously. And maybe this is enough and you don’t have to listen to Rabbi Silber. Because if you do listen to him, you may discover that what he said, and that what I think he said, have little in common.