Shavuot

Shavuоt
Shavuot by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim

Shavuot by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim   Jews and Judaism Shavuot Shavuos  in Ashkenazi usage, (Hebrew: שָׁבוּעוֹת‎, lit. "Weeks"), is known in English as the Feast of Weeks. While it is sometimes referred to as Pentecost  due to its timing after Passover, "pentecost" meaning "fifty" in Greek, since Shavuot occurs fifty days after the first day of Passover, it is not the same as the Christian Pentecost. It is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan (it may fall between May 15 and June 14 on the Gregorian calendar). In the Bible, Shavuot marks the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel (Exodus 34:22) and according to the Jewish Sages, it also commemorates the anniversary of the giving of the Torah by God to the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai in 1312 BCE. Rabbinic writings state that, in addition, the Oral Torah was given to Moses at Mount Sinai, which, according to the tradition of Orthodox Judaism, occurred in 1312 BCE. The Orthodox rabbinic tradition holds that the Written Torah was recorded during the following forty years. The word Shavuot means "weeks", and it marks the conclusion of the Counting of the Omer. Its date is directly linked to that of Passover; the Torah mandates the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover, to be immediately followed by Shavuot. This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the giving of the Torah. On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot, they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God. One of the biblically ordained Three Pilgrimage Festivals, Shavuot is traditionally celebrated in the Land of Israel for one day and for two days in the Diaspora. While there is more awareness of the festival in Israel among secular Jews, generally Shavuot is widely ignored by non-practising Jews. Significance Agricultural (wheat harvest) Shavuot is not explicitly named as the day on which the Torah was revealed by God to the Israelite nation at Mount Sinai in the Bible, although this is commonly considered to be its main significance. What is textually connected in the Bible to the Feast of Shavuot is the season of the grain harvest, specifically of the wheat, in the Land of Israel. In ancient times, the grain harvest lasted seven weeks and was a season of gladness (Jer. 5:24, Deut. 16:9–11, Isa. 9:2). It began with the harvesting of the barley during Passover and ended with the harvesting of the wheat at Shavuot. Shavuot was thus the concluding festival of the grain harvest, just as the eighth day of Sukkot (Tabernacles) was the concluding festival of the fruit harvest. During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, an offering of two loaves of bread from the wheat harvest was made on Shavuot. The one but last Qumran Scroll to be published has been discovered to contain two festival dates observed by the Qumran sect as part of their formally perfect 364-day calendar, and dedicated to "New Wine" and "New Oil", neither of which are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, but were known from another Qumran manuscript, the Temple Scroll. These festivals "constituted an extension of the festival of Shavuot..., which celebrates the New Wheat". All three festivals are calculated starting from the first Sabbath following Passover, by repeatedly adding exactly 50 days each time: first came New Wheat (Shavuot), then New Wine, and then New Oil. Scriptural Names in the Torah In the Bible, Shavuot is called the "Festival of Weeks" (Hebrew: חג השבועות‎, Chag HaShavuot, Exodus 34:22, Deuteronomy 16:10); "Festival of Reaping" (חג הקציר, Chag HaKatzir, Exodus 23:16),[12] and "Day of the First Fruits" (יום הבכורים, Yom HaBikkurim, Numbers 28:26). Shavuot, the plural of a word meaning "week" or "seven," alludes to the fact that this festival happens exactly seven weeks (i.e. "a week of weeks") after Passover.[ In the Talmud The Talmud refers to Shavuot as ʻAṣeret (Hebrew: עצרת‎,"refraining" or "holding back", referring to the prohibition against work on this holiday and to the conclusion of the holiday and season of Passover. Since Shavuot occurs 50 days after Passover, Hellenistic Jews gave it the name "Pentecost" (fiftieth day").