Shavuot: The Festival of Oaths

Shavuot — what is the distinguishing feature of Shavuot? None. How, then, are we to mark this day? By a commitment of the self: in the reality of oneself, in the reality of creation, in the reality of the Creator. This is somewhat complicated. It is complicated because, after all, who would want — or who would be able — to furnish proof of his own existence? Must one do so? Does my presence need proofs of its own reality? Could I, in the end, be reduced to total negation, as many nations would indeed wish for the Jewish people? They would like to plunge us into the night. There are, in the reality of time, two great dimensions, and they turn out to be equal to one another when we take the totality of the days and the seasons.

For one half of time we are exposed to full daylight, and for the other we are in total absence: that is the night, the night of ages. In life as in history both phases exist, and our task is to make our presence manifest. Lehagid baboker chasdekha ve’emunatekha baleilot — “to declare Your kindness in the morning and Your faithfulness in the nights”: by day our existence is proclaimed through kindness, through the giving of ourselves; and when we are reduced to the shadows of night, it is then our faith that truly bears witness to what we are. In time, you know, there are four movements. The first is the day, and the day was fixed by the days of creation — the six days of creation plus the seventh day. Just as we saw that there is a structure of seven in space — the four cardinal points plus heaven, earth and the center of gravity — so there are likewise seven points in the structure of time.

They cannot be reduced to one another; it is the whole that makes the unity. The unity is of seven — not of two, nor of three — and this unity of seven established the second unit of time, which is the shavua, the week. But the week is set by neither a lunar nor a solar calendar. The month, yes — the month is set by the lunar cycle; the year, indeed, by the cycle of nature, of creation. The shavua, then, the week, is a time belonging to creation that nonetheless remains independent of the phenomena of creation. We are accustomed, in a sense, to proclaim our reality every morning: shelo asani goy, shelo asani eved […] — “who has not made me a gentile.” But why repeat this blessing every day? Why repeat every single day that He has not made me a slave? Once a week, once a month, once in a lifetime would be enough. But no — because we hold that each day is a new creation. I am never the person of yesterday or the day before; each day I am a different reality of life, and therefore the affirmation of my identity, of my nature, of my potential, is never equal to that of yesterday or the day before. That is the day. The month is something I determine. The day is independent of my will — although nowadays we have found ways of neutralizing day and night. But the month is something I consecrate: it is a call to renewal, a deliberate one, not something I undergo but something I demand. And finally the year: we know very well that the year ends with its curses; we need to aspire to something else, to erase certain things and to start over. Yes, there are things that were not foreseen in creation. What was not foreseen in creation? Sin was not foreseen in creation — though a great many things were.

Nor was repentance, for if there is no sin, there is no room for repentance. So sin is the doing of man, and repentance too is something for which man felt an intense need; and the one who gave repentance its particular brilliance is King David — and we shall see that there is a connection between the festival of Shavuot and King David. Now let us return to Shavuot, the festival of weeks. Tradition did not retain Yom HaBikkurim, the day of the first fruits; it did not retain Chag HaKatzir, the festival of the harvest; the day of Matan Torah, the day of the giving of the Torah, is almost passed over in silence. But Shavuot — the count of the weeks, of the seven weeks separating the Exodus from Egypt from the giving of the Torah on the fiftieth day — that, yes. What, then, is the meaning of Shavuot? We have said that Shavuot is connected to the seven days of creation: sheva. But sheva, seven, also gave birth to shevuah, which means oath, and this is stated clearly in the covenant concluded by Avraham and Avimelekh. He set apart the seven ewes for the conclusion of the covenant, and the place where the covenant was made was named Be’er Sheva: “Therefore he called that place Be’er Sheva, for there the two of them swore” — because there both of them took an oath. So here seven, sheva, has been joined to shevuah, oath, which would mean that Shavuot does not simply mean the festival of weeks, but the festival of oaths. The oath that HaKadosh Barukh Hu makes, by which He commits Himself toward Israel — namely, that He will never exchange this people for another. And the oath that the people of Israel makes with G-d in this covenant, the covenant of Sinai — namely, that it too will not forsake Him.

It will remain bound to its Creator by means of the Torah. But to remain bound by means of the Torah — what does that mean? There is a profound meaning here, namely that shevuah… — there is some talking in the background that disturbs me. I was saying that for the verb of swearing — when I say “I take an oath, I swear” — ani nishba is a nif’al; it is not an active verb. As you say ani shomer, “I guard,” and ani nishmar, “I am guarded.” In principle I ought to say “I swear” in the active form, should I not? Yet no: one says nishba, like nishmar. Why? Because I am moved by the truth; I am moved by my own reality as a creature. I did not decide on my coming into the world; that was decided independently of me.

So my own reality belongs to me only insofar as I am willing to take it in hand. I came into being, at the origin, through those who made the decision to bring me into the world. And in fact, if the reality of the world is that of G-d — since the whole of creation is the expression of the divine will — then everything in this creation calls for my will to adhere to it and to regard myself as one element within the whole of this creation. I could be a passive element; I could, on the contrary, be an active element. But in any case I already belong to a shevuah. I already belong to a given oath — the very oath of creation, which took place independently of me.

And we know very well that when G-d wished to create man, the ministering angels rose up in protest. In the name of what? In the name of the virtues indispensable to maintaining the equilibrium of the world: truth, coexistence. Each of them could say: “Man is nothing but falsehood; man is a contentious, quarrelsome creature; the world will not be able to stand.” HaKadosh Barukh Hu was truly going to endanger His world by creating man. Hesed was in favor of man; Gevurah, rigor, was not — rigor did not want man to be created. And what did HaKadosh Barukh Hu do? He cast truth to the ground and created man in that very moment, while the ministering angels stood astonished at this gesture of G-d casting His seal of truth to the ground — for the seal of G-d is truth. And He replied: “I have decided that truth shall not be imposed from above, with nothing to do with human beings; I want truth to be the work of man.” That is to say, it is man who will draw truth out of the darkness of this world — and this will indeed be the Oral Law.

The Written Law does not move; it is there, uncompromising; one cannot touch it. The Oral Law, by contrast, is debated. And so, what is Shavuot? Shavuot is when man carries out his own creation. He no longer wants to remain within the week of a creation independent of him, one made without his knowledge. No — he creates himself, he gives himself a reality of his own; and ever since the Exodus from Egypt he has been counting his shavua, his structure of seven in time. This is all the more significant because this structure of seven is not tied to that of creation — for in that case we would have had to begin counting the days from Sunday.

Yet we do not count the days from Sunday but, as we say, from the day after Pesach. And everything depends on whether Pesach falls on a Monday or on a Tuesday. It is always from the day after Pesach: this is the structure of our time, of the discovery of our reality — and the discovery of our reality depends only on the reality that encompasses the whole of us. For the day, as I told you, is a unit of time of creation; the month, and likewise the year, is a cycle of nature. And the shavua — what is the week? The week is when one undertakes something and brings it to completion. To completion: Atah kidashta et yom hashevi’i — “You sanctified the seventh day,” takhlit ma’aseh shamayim va’aretz, “the purpose of the making of heaven and earth.” So with the week, I am each time completing a process of being, which I bring to its own reality, and then I begin another. I begin another — but what, after all, am I aiming at? I am aiming at the totality: kol. What does kol mean in Hebrew? It is “all.” […] Kol, in numerical value, twenty plus thirty: fifty.

The final purpose is not counted; it is not part of the count. The final purpose lies outside the count because it is the goal, what I wished to attain. The count of the weeks, of the forty-nine days, brings me […] to this takhlit, to this final project, in which I am mekabel et haTorah — in which I am integrating the Torah, receiving the Torah. For the Torah has been given; one must learn it, take it upon oneself — and how to do so, that is the whole secret of Chag HaShavuot. You know that our Sages instituted the recitation of the Shema twice a day, once in the morning and once at nightfall.

And this recitation of the Shema corresponds to the minimal study of Torah. That is to say, one who has no time to discover himself through the Torah will discover himself in Shema Yisrael. And as you know, in the reshit, in the first fruits, everything else is contained; the rest is merely an evolution of the first fruits. The embryo, the source — that is reshit, and reshit is not counted, because it is a totality; it will simply spread out all its components and reveal its true scope. What matters on the day of Shavuot, then, is to bind oneself to this reshit, to be attached to the first fruits: the Torah, which is called reshit; Israel, which is called reshit; creation, which is called reshit; the bikkurim, which are called reshit. To give a meaning, a quintessence, to everything we do, so that our project reaches fulfillment — veyimalé khevodo et kol ha’aretz, “may the whole earth be filled with His glory” — so that we have an overall vision of the whole unity.

You know, there is a custom of closing one’s eyes when reciting the Shema. Why? The answer is very simple. Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad — “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.” This is another vision of the world. Before the Shema we have a fragmented vision: the various elements of creation, which we do not know how to join together into a whole. Once we have recited Echad, we open our eyes onto a world of Echad. Now Echad is customarily translated “one,” but that is not its primary sense. No: one is the unification of all the elements. Within the one are all the other numbers; the whole is included in this “One,” in this Echad.

You know, within the matrix of the Shema there are two phases. The first is to affirm G-d’s presence in this universe — in the whole of this universe, through all its components: He is Echad; He is Echad whether He manifests Himself through kindness or through rigor; He is Echad. How many letters are there in the verse Shema Yisrael? Twenty-five. But as soon as we have proclaimed this unity of G-d, there is a second phase, which enjoins us not to separate any element whatsoever. This is important — very important — because of what the melekh, the king, is called […]: ahavah and echad. Ahavah — he is the one who loves; and echad — he is one: he is the one who gathers together all the elements of the people.

There is a difference in Hebrew between moshel and melekh. The moshel is the one who governs by coercion: that is dictatorship. The melekh is chosen — the one chosen by the people — and the one who chooses him is obviously as important as the melekh, because the melekh owes him, is indebted to him for his recognition. To see to it that no element leaves the kingdom of G-d: this is the second commandment, which the Rambam lists in his Sefer HaMitzvot, and which teaches that to dissociate any element from the whole is tantamount to idolatry. Now, to say that Shavuot is a day on which we ourselves will recognize our king, recognize ourselves in him, and try to ensure that no element remains outside — to integrate the whole, to have this overall vision: that is why the day of Shavuot is associated with the birth of King David as well as with his death. The date of King David’s birth, however, we do not know.

But from the day of his death we deduce that of his birth, because it is accepted that the life of the righteous is a whole. It is a complete cycle, running from birth to death, which is a new, a second birth: a structure of seventy years. Such was the life of King David — a life given to him by whom? A life given to him by Adam HaRishon. Adam HaRishon had the generations spread out before him — the generations passed before him, with the chosen figures of each generation. He saw that King David had only a life of three hours. He asked why, and said: “I will give him seventy years of my life.”

Seventy years of the life of Adam HaRishon, then: it is Adam HaRishon who […] King David. King David is the king of Israel, the acknowledged king of Israel — he and Shlomo. It has been said […] that he occupied the throne of G-d. […] because what he sought in his reign was to gather together all the stray sheep, all the lost elements. And that is the reason why King David […] — because access to the Torah, in order truly to assimilate it, requires extraordinary help from HaKadosh Barukh Hu. Unless HaKadosh Barukh Hu grants us wisdom and the capacity to understand,

we would long remain impervious to the teaching of the Torah. And what eases one’s access to the Torah? Prayer. Va’ani tefillah — the one who said of himself “I am prayer” is King David. And King David composed five books of Tehillim, which are the counterpart of the five books of the Torah: they provide their complement. Now David — where does he come from? He comes from tum’ah, from impurity, the most repugnant kind. You will remember the daughters of Lot, who conceived by their father. And the chutzpah, the insolence, goes so far that Lot’s daughter says: “This child is Moav — he is from my father, from the father,” a child of incest. And Ruth is a Moabite, she is from Moav — and it is she who is the ancestress of King David.

When King David seeks to trace back his ancestry, he finds himself among the benot Moav, the daughters of Moav — those who tried to dissolve the Jewish people through intermarriage, when Bilaam, in the name of universal values, wanted the Jewish people to melt into the mass. Yet the Jewish people has had an overall view of the entire universe, of the whole of humanity; but it does not want to become a cog in the machinery, inside which it would indeed risk being strangled by the mass. Above all, quality must be affirmed before multiplication and quantity are pursued at any cost. That is the meaning of the census in Bamidbar. What is Ruth’s strength? It is the converting power of the Torah, which […] reached the sha’arei binah, the gates of understanding, the gates of discernment.

That is to say, it caused the light to shine seven times more than the light of day; and that is why on the day of Shavuot we recall the presence of Ruth, who is from Moav. Moav has a numerical value of forty-nine. Just as there are forty-nine degrees of purity […] — just as there are forty-nine sha’arei binah, gates of understanding, gates of wisdom — there are likewise gates of foolishness, of idiocy. This, then, is Ruth’s faculty […]: her name is due to the fact that she saturated HaKadosh Barukh Hu […] — not with words of Torah, but with prayer. And to reach the profound values of the Torah we need this prayer, which has within it the power to overturn everything and to transform curse into blessing.

If I were to sum up: Shavuot is the festival on which man defines himself in relation to the reality of G-d — Anokhi Hashem Elokekha, “I am Hashem your G-d.” It is also the day on which he realizes that the best way to situate himself in the world lies in this global view of a whole, whereby the world is not fragmented but, on the contrary, a very well-structured puzzle — the whole question being to know how it is assembled. We stand before a puzzle that has come apart, unstitched […]; it must be reconstituted, and once we have reconstituted it we will see far more clearly. But for that one must recover one’s dignity of being — and the dignity of being, the dignity of life, comes through what HaKadosh Barukh Hu Himself regarded as His mishpat […], as His law, His own way of functioning.

So then… we are benei melekh […]. In that case we are, at that moment, the children of the king, the children of the prince. To find ourselves again at Ma’amad Har Sinai, in that assembly ke’ish echad belev echad — “as one man with one heart” — at Ma’amad Har Sinai: that is the goal of Shavuot. Shavuot is a re-creation of the people which, in the image of the seven years of shemittah multiplied by seven — forty-nine years of shemittah — leads to the Jubilee, leads to total liberation from every reduction of being to slavery, and to a return to the original matrix. There may be moments of straying, there may be sin; but there is repentance. And the one who was the master builder of teshuvah is King David — ne’um hagever hukam al, “the words of the man raised on high”: the discourse of a man, an illustrious man, who placed himself above — above […], above this rigor of study, this rigor of the Torah — and who made it possible, through prayer, to rediscover the secrets of the Torah.

So if you have any questions, with pleasure.