As a famous Jewish comedian used to kvetch, \u201cI don\u2019t get no respect.\u201d I feel we treat Shavuos similarly. In Temple days, how would you compare the Holy of Holies to a Jerusalem tavern down the street? Silly question, yes? Then why does Shavuos get such minor league attraction?<\/p>\n
We got the Torah! The cradle of Western civilization! So, some of us go to shul (compare it to Yom Kippur attendance) and we study, or nap, through the night over an open Chumash. We eat dairy and read the Book of Ruth. No bugles blare and no rabbis make two-hour presentations.<\/p>\n
Even books designed to explain Judaism\u2019s beauty give it short shrift: 10 pages to the Jacob\/Esau rivalry, a page and a half to this modest holiday. I\u2019m only a scribbler, not a sage, but I don\u2019t get it. Then, there\u2019s the fact that our reception of the Torah is combined with a harvest celebration. What\u2019s the connection? The relationship between barley and Torah seems odd. Maybe one is food for the body, the other for the soul. Are we trying to economize on holidays? Two for the price of one?<\/p>\n
And why do we read the Book of Ruth, which is a tract featuring intermarriage \u2013 a practice loudly condemned by dozens of statements in the Torah? It seems to be written by someone who favored fraternization with our deadly enemies, the Moabites. Remember that the path to the Promised Land goes through Moab. We fought our way through it. How did this book get chosen? Did they take a vote on Purim after a day of gorging on the grape?<\/p>\n
The Book of Ruth is a book in which everyone is gentle, even the Moabites. Everyone is supportive of their fellow characters. If it were a play, this story would run for years on Broadway.<\/p>\n
Ruth, a Moabite, is loyal to her mother-in-law, Naomi. Her first husband, Naomi\u2019s son, has died. Naomi \u2013 remember, a Jew \u2013 strategizes with Ruth to win the heart of Boaz, also a Jew. A famine stalks the land. Perhaps the agricultural setting explains the use of the holiday as a harvest celebration, but not its connection with the Torah. I consider this every time I think of Shavuos, one of the three special occasions, along with Sukkot and Pesach, when all Israel flocked to the Temple. With the destruction of the Temple, I think we lost the grandeur of Shavuos.<\/p>\n
They shouldn\u2019t have named it Shavuos, Hebrew for weeks. Indeed, seven weeks after Pesach comes Shavuos. Like in a Jewish wedding ceremony \u2013 seven times the bride (Israel) circles her groom (the Creator), thereby remembering and reenacting our covenant. We rest on the seventh day and, for seven years, the land must lie fallow. Even today, that ancient poetic number still glows with luck \u2013 from the sublime to the ridiculous, the seven wins initially for the dice shooter and excites the roar of the winners.<\/p>\n
I can see it now. It\u2019s 1000 BCE and the annual meeting of the Israelite holiday commemoration committee. \u201cWe need a special day to honor and commemorate that fateful day when God gave us the Torah,\u201d said the chairman. A chorus of agreement rocked the room. Done. Then that guy in the back of every room (yes, he was around even then) shouted, \u201cYeah, but what about the grain harvest?\u201d Puzzled, the committee men looked at each other in bewilderment. The grain harvest?<\/p>\n
The chairman spoke: \u201cLook, we got enough holidays now \u2013 nobody\u2019s working. Let\u2019s save a holiday and throw it in with Shavuos. [And they hadn\u2019t even made Tu b\u2019Shevat yet!] After all, the grain harvest lasts seven weeks, and the Holy One gave us Torah seven weeks after we paraded out of Egypt. We\u2019ll make Shavuos celebrate both events, thereby economizing on holidays. Done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shavuos, for all its importance, doesn\u2019t get its due. No big feasting, no dramatic breast-beating, no triumphant chauvinism; only the satisfaction that more than three millennia ago in the darkest of the dark ages we were chosen to receive from the Hand of God a solemn covenant that we would be a light of civilization to the nations of the world.<\/p>\n
No matter how many weeks after Pesach it falls, let\u2019s face it: \u201cWeeks\u201d doesn\u2019t do it justice. They should have called it Yom Torah or something like that. If I were a member of the holiday naming committee, I\u2019d have called it Independence Day.<\/p>\n
Ted Roberts<\/strong> is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a famous Jewish comedian used to kvetch, \u201cI don\u2019t get no respect.\u201d I feel we treat Shavuos similarly. In Temple days, how would you compare the Holy of Holies to a Jerusalem tavern down the street? Silly question, yes? Then why does Shavuos get such minor league attraction? We got the Torah! The cradle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[781],"tags":[3777,218,1220],"class_list":["post-12636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","tag-book-of-ruth","tag-judaism","tag-shavuot"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}