Today is Day 49 of the omer, making seven weeks. This pre-Shavuot thought is an amalgam of thoughts contributed by several participants in “Fablog: the Omer”:
While matzah and Easter egg dye fill store shelves together for weeks, the omer, Shavuot and Pentecost (from the Greek for “fiftieth day”) do not seem to have found their place in U.S. popular culture. We do not (yet?) have Sinai-themed store displays or Apostles-speaking-in-tongues party supplies.
Perhaps this is a result of May/June calendars over-crowded with graduations, etc. Or maybe popular culture has absorbed Passover and Easter as “happily ever after” holidays — freedom! re-birth! all’s well, now! — overlooking the fact that both celebrate beginnings, not ends.
One Redemption to Another
Amy Brookman shared these passages from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ commentary in The Koren Siddur — First Hebrew/English Edition (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2009):
[from the Introduction, "Understanding Jewish Prayer"]
The fact that Jewish faith was written into the prayers, rather than analyzed in works of theology, is of immense significance. We do not analyze our faith: we pray it. We do not philosophize about truth: we sing it…. We do not talk about God. We talk to God.…Greece gave the world tragedy; Israel taught it hope. A people, a person, who can pray is one who, even in the darkest night of the soul, can never ultimately lose hope.
[in commentary to the morning prayers]
The Shema ends by speaking about redemption in the past. In the Amida we pray for redemption in the future. Connecting past and future is “truth” – our faith in God and in His covenant with us.
The Shema, with its past redemption theme, leads directly into the Amidah, in which we pray for future redemption, without even an intervening “amen.” Similarly, Shavuot is determined based on the counting which begins on the second night of Passover. The (just barely past) redemption of Passover leads directly to Shavuot, which is experienced during the omer as a redemption still to come.
New Approach to God
Irene Bleiweiss wrote earlier in the omer about the progression from the barley sacrifice of Pesach to the two loaves of fine flour on Shavuot, noting that we need to “…take small but consistent steps to move ourselves forward.”
Joseph Soloveitchik* says that the progression from barley to fine loaves represents a move from the miraculous, but temporary, provision of manna in the desert to the longer-term hard work of an ordinary harvest (p.205). Similarly, moving from Passover to Shavuot means shifting to an awareness of God in everyday life (p. 206-207):
The holiday is…called _Chag Shavu’ot_, the holiday of natural weeks. It is, for us, _chag matan Torah_ [festival of giving Torah] because the purpose of the Torah is to help us live within the natural world, and to find God within that world.
The offering on Shavu’ot is characterized as a _minchah chadashah_ [a new gift] because it represents a new idea. The _korban musaf_ [additional sacrifice] on Pesach represents the miraculous deliverance from Egypt. The _shtei ha-lechem_ [two loaves] constitute a _minchah chadashah_, a new approach to finding God….
…the celebration of the Torah teaches us to use our intelligence in order to find God in the mundane and in the ordinary.
No doubt we’re better off without those Sinai-themed store aisles. We do need the progression from Passover to Shavuot, though.
Without it, we’re stuck forever in a juvenile “happily ever after” approach to life — where everything is going to work out fine “as soon as [fill in the blank].” We never get to making those small steps forward or to figuring out how to live in the new relationship established at Sinai.
Even Sinai is not the end of the journey, of course. Barring on the onset of Messianic times, we will continue to need a connection with past redemption and the promise of future redemption to help us manage for the long haul.
May our progression through the omer and Shavuot help us all, individually and collectively, leave behind expectations of manna and focus instead on the harvest ahead… and on God’s presence in that mundane undertaking.
Chag Shavuot Sameach
a joyful festival of Shavuot
*Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on Pesach, Sefirat ha-Omer and Shavu’ot. David Shapiro. Jerusalem: Urim, 2005.
