One day of Shavuot or seven?
We have three festive holydays a year: Pesach, Shavuot, and Sucot. Pesach and Sucot are each seven days long. Shavuot is one day only….or is it? It is interesting that the only holyday that is not a week long, is called Shavuot “Weeks”! This is not only because of the weeks of the Omer. The Gemarra associates the name “weeks” specifically with the festival itself[1].
Two patterns overlay the Shavuot theme: a pattern of days and a pattern of weeks. Shavuot is both a single-day festival after 49 days of Omer counting, and also it is the week after seven weeks of Omer counting. From the aspect of Issur Melachah (work prohibition) andKorban Musaf Shavuot is in fact only one day (or two, outside of Israel). But from the aspect of the Korban Chagiga (the festive offering for Yomtov) it is seven days (i.e., if the Korban Chagiga was not brought on Shavuot itself, it could be brought any day up to six days after Shavuot.)[2] Each of the days of the whole week (starting with the first day of Shavuot) has some of the flavor of Shavuot and some of its law.
The Omer itself reflects these same two patterns: we count days and we count weeks. In the time of the Beit Hamikdash these were two separate mitzvot and were counted separately. Today we merge them into one counting[3], saying each day how many days we are counting, and how many weeks. The source for needing to count both days and weeks is in our Parsha, Vayikra 23:15-16.
The weekly seven-pack
There is a difference between the time unit of the week and all other units. Days, months and years (at least solar years) are demarcated by fixed natural phenomena. Days are marked by the revolution of the earth, months by the phases of the moon and years by the revolution of the earth around the sun. But a week is a pack of seven days. You could contemplate a month without days or a solar year without months. But you couldn’t contemplate a week without days. The day and the week are inextricably bound together.
We see this bond between days and a week, in the way Shabbat is presented to us: “Six days shall you work, and on the seventh there will be a Shabbat”. Shabbat is not just a day on the calendar. It requires a build-up. The majestic serenity of Shabbat contrasts starkly with the bustling activity of the six days of work. The Torah does not package festivals with the time that precedes them in the way that it packages Shabbat with the six days of work.
The tension that creates rapture
Festivals are about joy. Shabbat is about rapture. Rapture requires anticipation, build-up and tension. The six days leading to Shabbat are not just about contrast, nor are they a passive time of waiting. The six days are instruments of anticipation designed to enhance the rapture of Shabbat. The Gemarra tells us how Hillel and Shamai and others would anticipate Shabbat each day of the week. Each day of the week they would find a delicacy and put it away for Shabbat, building up the anticipatory tension to add to the delight of the day itself.
If festivals are about joy and Shabbat is about rapture, then Shavuot is about ecstasy – the ecstasy of the merging of G-d and His beloved People. Shavuot more resembles Shabbat than any other festival. Experiencing the ecstasy of Shavuot also needs anticipation, build-up and tension. Just as Shabbat is not determined by a date but by the six weekdays that precede it, so too we are not given a calendar date for Shavuot. Shavuot occurs after we have counted 49 days after Pesach. After seven packs of seven days each, we celebrate Shavuot. Shavuot is the very celebration of the packaging of days into weeks.
The Or HaChayim[4] compares the period of anticipation before Shavuot to the Sheva Neki’im, the seven days of purity that a woman waits after her menstrual cycle to be ready for her husband. That too is a case of a week, a seven day pack, used as a time to build anticipation, and tension to enhance the ecstatic coming together of man and wife.
Often we complain of the monotony of life or at least of some of its phases. We remember the rapture we once experienced: falling in love, our first visit to Israel, or listening to a magnificent concert. Those moments of rapture are available to us whenever we are willing to make them happen. Whenever we are willing to feel the pulse of life, to count up to magical moments and prepare for them with anticipation, we can experience that rapture. We can experience it each Shabbat – if we have done the work during the week. A couple can experience it each month, if they have done the work during the preceding week. And as a nation we can experience it every Shavuot, if we count the Omer not as a chore but as an act of excited anticipation feeling the tension of a humble People about to be betrothed by its beloved King.
Notes:
