It happens quite often. By the time we’re into the first week of June, people kindly wish me a “Happy Fathers’ Day.” My response is always the same, “I’m blessed; in the Lapin home every day is Father’s Day.” And I do everything I can to ensure that the same is true for Mothers’ Day.
This coming Sunday night welcomes the start of the Biblical festival of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, and the anniversary of God giving the Torah to His people as they gathered at Mt. Sinai. I sometimes try to guesstimate to the nearest order of magnitude how many Jews around the world will be observing one of the chief customs of Shavuot by studying the Torah (the Hebrew Bible) in large joyful groups all night until sunrise on Monday. It is certainly many more than 100,000, but nowhere near as many as ten million. Regardless of the methodology, I always arrive at a figure closest to one million.
That’s quite a crowd willing to give up a night’s sleep to celebrate the arrival, 3,337 years ago, of the very book they are studying. There’s only one problem: nowhere in its text does that mysterious ancient volume specify the date on which to celebrate Shavuot. The Torah is precise about the date of every single Biblical festival with the sole exception of Shavuot. How can we not know the date on which God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses?
Look for yourself. The beginning of Exodus chapter 19 tells us that Israel arrived at Mount Sinai in the third month after the Exodus, which occurred on the fifteenth of the month of Nissan. The next month is Iyar, followed by Sivan, and this Sunday night begins the sixth day of Sivan, the date on which Shavuot falls. But nowhere in the Five Books of Moses will we find that date mentioned.
Exodus 34:22 tells us that the First Fruits should be offered on Shavuot but mentions neither the date nor that this was the momentous day on which God gave the Ten Commandments. Leviticus 23:15 informs us that this elusive festival of Shavuot occurs seven weeks after Passover, but again, unlike all the other festivals listed in Leviticus 23 for which exact dates are provided, no date is given for Shavuot. Remember Fathers’ Day. In the Lapin home there is no date for Fathers’ Day because every day is Fathers’ Day. Get the idea? No date is provided because every day is the day of receiving the Ten Commandments.
Take a glance at this verse:
In the third month of the Children of Israel’s exodus from the land of Egypt, on this day they entered the Sinai Desert. (Exodus 19:1)
On which day? “This day” means today. Whichever day you happen to be reading these words. This is an example of how the Written Torah and the Oral Torah complement each other. The Written Torah implies that although, obviously, God gave Israel the Torah on some specific day, the date isn’t vital. We are to relive the excitement of its arrival on every single day of our lives. Every day is ‘this day’.
The Oral Torah, however, whispers, “Between you and me, the date is the sixth day of the month of Sivan, and I tell you this, not that you’ll forget the Torah on the other 364 days of the year, but in order that you’ll have a date for all of you to get together and celebrate as a family.”
The downside of having specific dates for Fathers’ Days or Mothers’ Day is that only on one day a year do many of us remember our parents and honor them. That lavish lunch is easy. The great moral challenge is to feel and act as we should towards our parents every single day of the year. Likewise, with Scripture. In the absence of a stated official date marking the occasion of receiving the Torah, we are reminded that every day is Torah Day.
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