Martin H. van den Bergh

Shavuot is traditionally associated with the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. However, the Torah itself does not describe it as Zeman Matan Toratenu, the time of the giving of our Torah. Instead, it refers to Shavuot by three names: “the festival of the harvest,” “the festival of weeks,” and “the day of the first fruits.” Rabbi Sacks notes that identifying Shavuot with the giving of the Torah is a rabbinic interpretation found in the Talmud (Pesachim 68b).

​

Rabbi Sacks explains that Shavuot’s three names and its Temple sacrifices reflect the promise of the land given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The wheat harvest celebrated on Shavuot is linked, through the counting of seven weeks, to the barley harvest brought on the second day of Pesach. These first harvests also mark the Israelites’ beginning to eat the produce of the land, which, as Rabbi Sacks writes, “made the Israelites vividly aware that the wilderness era had ended.” Once they entered the Promised Land, the manna ceased, and they began to eat the land’s crops, especially barley and wheat.

​

In Temple times, Shavuot was marked by unique sacrificial offerings and by the special Shtei HaLechem (Two Loaves) made from the new wheat harvest, which are still recalled today in the Maftir and Musaf. In post-Temple times, greater emphasis came to be placed on Shavuot as the season of the giving of the Torah. As a result, our observances today focus mainly on the giving of the Torah, while still remembering Shavuot’s connection to the wheat harvest.

 

One of the central readings of Shavuot is the Book of Ruth, which links the giving of the Torah and our acceptance of the covenant with God to the harvest. It reminds us that human beings need both spiritual and physical sustenance: we are nourished spiritually by the Torah and physically by the food God provides. On Shavuot, we thank God for both—for the gift of the Torah and for the grain of the Land.