Torah, barley and Ruth

By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF

As a famous Jewish comedian used to kvetch, “I don’t get no respect.” I feel we treat Shavuot similarly. In Temple days, how would you compare the Holy of Holies to a Jerusalem tavern a few blocks down the street? How would you compare Yom Kippur to the Fast of Gedaliah? Silly questions, yes? Then why, among the holidays, does Shavuot get such minor league attraction?

TORAH! We got Torah, the cradle of civilization. And some of us go to shul (compare it to Yom Kippur attendance) and we study, or nap, through the night over an open Chumash and we eat dairy and read the Book of Ruth. But no bugles blare and no rabbis make two-hour presentations. Even books designed to explain Judaism’s beauty give it short shrift. (Ten pages to the Jacob/Esau rivalry. A page and a half to this modest holiday.)

I’m only a scribbler, not a sage, but I don’t get it. And our reception of Torah is also combined with a harvest celebration. What’s 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?

And why do we read the Book of Ruth, which, of course, is a tract on integration – a principle loudly condemned by dozens of statements in 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 into the canon? Did they take the vote on Purim after a day of gorging on the grape? It is a book in which everyone is gentle – even the hated Moabites. Everyone is supportive of their fellow characters. It would run for years on Broadway. Ruth is loyal to her mother-in-law, Naomi. Naomi – remember, an Israelite – strategizes with Ruth (a common habit also of modern women) to snatch the heart of Boaz, a Jew. A famine stalks the land. The agricultural setting explains the use of the holiday as a harvest celebration, but not its connection with Torah. Again, ask your Rabbi. Maybe he can clarity this mystery.

I consider this oversight every time I think of Shavuot – one of the three special occasions, along with Succot and Pesach, when all Israel flocked to the Temple. With the destruction of the Temple, I think we lost the grandeur of Shavuot.

They shouldn’t have named it Shavuot – weeks. Weeks – seven weeks after Pesach comes along Shavuot. Like in our wedding ceremony – the seven times the bride, Israel, circles the groom – our Creator, thereby remembering our covenant. We rest on the seventh day; and for seven years the land must lie fallow. Even today – from the sublime to the ridiculous – the seven that wins initially for the dice shooter and excites the roar of the winners. Seven, that ancient poetic number that still glows with luck.

I can see it now. It’s 1000 B.C.E. and the annual meeting of the Israelite Holiday Commemoration Committee. “We need a special day to honor and commemorate that fateful day when G-d gave us Torah,” said the chairman. A chorus of agreement rocked the room. Done. Then that insignificant little guy in the back of every room (yes, he was around even then) shouted, “Yeah, but what about the grain harvest?” Puzzled, the committeemen looked at each other in bewilderment. The grain harvest?

The chairman spoke. “Look, we got enough holidays now – nobody’s working. Let’s save a holiday and throw it in with Shavuot. (And they hadn’t even made Tu B’Shevat 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’ll make Shavuot celebrate both, thereby economizing on holidays. Done,” said the chairman.

If this explanation doesn’t intellectually satisfy you, check your rabbi. This scribbler has never understood the association of the harvest and Torah. Maybe they are combined because they’re both gifts from G-d that makes the heart of humankind glad. And by the way, you might also ask your Rabbi why we read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot – a book that seems at least to condone intermarriage, Yes, the setting of the story is the barley harvest. But is that enough? I hope you have a smart rabbi.

My obvious point is that Shavuot – for all its importance – among the world of Jewry, doesn’t get its due. Probably because unlike Pesach, it offers no feasting. Unlike Succot, we build nothing. Unlike Yom Kippur, no dramatic breast-beating. Unlike Chanukah and Purim, there is no triumphant chauvinism. It has no symbols; 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 G-d a solemn covenant that we would be a light of civilization to the nations of the world.

But seven or three or eight weeks after Pesach. “Weeks” doesn’t do it justice. They should have called it Yom Torah or something more descriptive of the stature of the event. If I as a member of the holiday naming committee, I’d call it our “Independence Day.”