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Memory of the Revelation

Pentecost - The Feast of Shavu'ot or Pentecost For the Jewish tradition, above all the rabbinic one, the feast of shavu'ot or Pentecost is the celebration of the memorial of the extraordinary event which occurred on Mount Sinai in the third month after the exodus from Egypt (cfr Ex 19, 1-9). On the one hand, God who reveals himself to Israel asking him to freely receive his word and his commandments, on the other Israel who answers by accepting the orders received: "All that the Lord has said, we will heed and do" (Exodus 24, 7). An extraordinary event: in which God reveals himself not as strength, power or energy but rather as personal love which elects and delivers himself to human freedom and in which Israel decides for God and becomes his partner and people of the covenant. Shavu'ot, for the rabbis, helps to remember and make relevant this event where God and Israel commit themselves to a pact of love and fidelity like that between the bridegroom and his bride. This was wanted by some teachers for whom the marriage between God and Israel is celebrated on Mount Sinai, and from this comes the shalom: the fullness of the Messianic good and the happiness of the world.

It means "weeks" and implies the number seven, because the feast is celebrated "seven weeks" after Easter: "Beginning with the day after the sabbath, the day on which you bring the wave-offering sheath, you shall count seven full weeks" (Leviticus 23, 15). The term "pentecost" has the same meaning. In Greek, it means "fiftieth", day being understood, with respect to Easter day understood as the first day. Even though, as appears from these texts, in the written Torah, the feast of Pentecost has an agricultural character, and with time it has slowly become viewed in a historical perspective, taking on a new meaning. No longer only a celebration of God as giver of the fruits of the earth but rather God as giver of the Torah and of the revelation to Israel. Even though it is hard to give an exact date to when this "passage from the naturalistic to the historical dimension" occurred, it is certain in any case that from the rabbinic age on, the feast of Pentecost is linked almost exclusively to the gift of the Torah, as still today can be read in the "qiddush": "Blessed are You, Lord our God, who has chosen us from all the people and You have lifted us above all the tongues by sanctifying us with your commandments. Lord our God, because you love us, you have given us meetings for joy, feasts and times for jubilation and this feast of the weeks: time of the gift of our Torah, holy convocation for love".

In the written Torah, in Exodus 23, 16, it is spoken as "chag ha-katzir, feast of the grain harvest": "You shall also keep the feast of the grain harvest with the first of the crop that you have sown in the field". While in Numbers 28, 26, as "yom ha-bikkur Pentecost - The Feast of Shavu'ot or Pentecost

Pentecost - The Feast of Shavu'ot or Pentecost

im", "day of the first fruits": "On the day of first fruits, on your feast of Weeks, when you present to the Lord the new cereal offering, you shall hold a sacred assembly, and do no sort of work". Up until the destruction of the temple (70 A.D) this will be the prevalent dimension of the feast, to which the Mishnah will dedicate the treatise "Bikkurim", where the rich and charming ritual is described.
In the oral Torah, instead, the feast is remembered by the name of "atzeret" or "conclusion", for two reasons: because the feast of "shavu'ot", at the agricultural level, concluded the cycle of the offer of the first fruits begun with the barley harvest and with the feast of the "mazzot" (unleavened bread); above all because, at the historical level, it concludes the meaning of Easter the completion of which is in the gift of the Torah.
Finally, in the liturgy Pentecost is celebrated as "zeman mattan Toratenu, time of the gift of our Torah. This is a denomination which is paradoxical for us in which the Law given by God to Israel is not lived as burden but is celebrated as gift.

The feast of Pentecost has a constituent link with Easter which the written Torah has already recalled and underlined: "Beginning with the day after the Sabbath, the day on which you bring the wave-offering sheaf, you shall count seven full weeks, and then on the day after the seventh week, the fiftieth day, you shall present the new cereal offering to the Lord. For the wave offering of your first fruits to the Lord, you shall bring with you from wherever you live two loaves of bread made of two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour and baked with leaven." (Leviticus 23, 15-17.
This link is resumed and confirmed by the liturgy with the rite known as "sefirat ha-omer which consists in pronouncing a benediction each day in the period separating "pesach" from "shavu'ot", subtracting each time the days which approach the feast of Pentecost. Thus Maimonide explains the importance and the sense of this rite of omer: "(To arrive at shavu'ot) we count the days which separate us from the preceding feast of Easter in the same way that one who is expecting a great friend on a set day counts the days and also the hours. The reason for which we, between the anniversary of our departure from Egypt and the anniversary of the gift of the Torah, count the days which pass from the offer of omer is this: because the gift of the Torah is the purpose and the object of the exodus from Egypt".
The gift of the Torah which God makes on Mount Sinai to Israel is not a moment following the liberation from Egypt (first God leads them out and afterwards he offers the Torah) but it is the internal reason and the same motivating intention: God leads them out of Egypt in order to give them the Torah. The exodus from Egypt is not an end in itself but it is desired for Sinai. In it Israel passes from dependence under the Pharaoh to obedience to God; from living for themselves, which is slavery, to living according to God, which is freedom; in a word: from slavery to service.

Feast of "mattan Torah", donation or gift of the Torah, Pentecost is the most important key to interpreting in order to understand what the Torah is for Judaism: not law which takes away human freedom but divine gift which introduces it in subjectivity. "Why, the Masters ask themselves, is Israel compared to a dove in the Scriptures?". A wise man answered this question as follows: "When God created the dove, it returned to its creator and complained: Oh, Lord of the universe, there is a cat which is always following me and wants to kill me and I have to run all day with my paws that are so short. So God had pity on the poor dove and gave it two wings. But soon after the dove came back again to its creator and cried: Oh, Lord of the universe, the cat continues to run after me and it is so hard for me to run with the wings on. They are heavy and I can't stand it anymore with my paws which are so short and weak. But God smiled and said: "I didn't give you wings so you could carry them, but so the wings could carry you". Thus it is for Israel as well, concludes the commentator; when there are complaints about the Torah and the commandments, God replies: "I didn't give you the Torah so it would be a burden for you to carry it, but so the Torah would carry you".
The Torah does not deprive mankind of his autonomy but guarantees it and the divine heteronomy does not place human autonomy in discussion, rather it is the only thing which establishes it.

Translated from LXX with "nomos" ("law"), the content and the sense of the Torah is to indicate to mankind how to live according to God. It is "teaching of life", which indicates and traces the paths on which to walk so that the individual and the community will reach the fullness of goodness and will live in justice and peace.
The term Torah in a strict sense corresponds to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible which contain the basic principles regulating Israel's actions with regard to God and neighbor. In a broader sense the Torah indicates the whole written Bible and the same oral Torah (Mishna, Talmud, Midrashim, etc.), without which the comprehension of the written Torah is inadequate. For Judaism both the written Torah and the oral Torah have equal importance, both were given to Moses on Mount Sinai and both are aimed at the practice or "halakah", to indicate to man and woman how to walk ("hik" in Hebrew means "to walk") according to God.
According to the oral Torah the number of the commandments contained in the written Torah are 613: 248 positive ("you shall do") and 365 negative ("you shall not do"). 248 correspond to the members of the human body, 365 to the days of the year: a way of saying, with the symbolic play of figures, that the divine commandment involves the totality of human subjectivity, in time and space. The heart of these 613 precepts or regulations are the ten commandments which enjoy a particular statute and because of this they are called Decalogue, literally the ten words.

- reading of the "parashah" ("excerpt of the Torah"): Exodus 19-20, within which is found the Decalogue (Exodus 20, 1-17); Pentecost - The Feast of Shavu'ot or Pentecost

- reading of the "haftarah" ("prophetic excerpt"): Ezekiel 1-3, 12: the vision of the chariot: symbol of the splendour with which God has revealed himself by giving the Torah to Israel;
- the scroll of Ruth, the Moabite who, choosing the people of Israel to be her people, is the model of one who "takes refuge under the wings of the Lord" (see Ruth 2, 12);
- the "tiqqun": which means "edification", "reparation", "correction", "improvement". This is because, for the Jewish tradition, the world was created by God imperfect and is waiting to be completed, so during the night of Pentecost the Jews read the Torah in order to bring Creation to completion. As God created the world by means of the Torah, so his children improve it by co-creating it and doing this over again through the study of the Torah. For this reason people gather, during the night, in the synagogues or homes and, in ways varying from community to community, study the written Torah and the oral Torah.

- "Why are the ten commandments aimed at the individual and not all the people? So that each person in particular must say to himself: "The Torah was given to me, so that I will observe it":;
- "Why was the Torah given in the desert and not in the land of Israel? Why did the other peoples not say: "It was given to us and not to them" and why did Israel not think: "We have the right to the Torah but not you";
- "The convert is dearer to God than all the Israelites present at Mount Sinai. In fact it is the convert who, although not being a witness to the lightening, the thunder and the sound of the trumpet which accompany the revelation, took upon himself the yoke of Heaven, meaning the Torah. Is there anyone else who can say that he is dearer to God than him?".

For the Christian scriptures the day of shavu'ot coincides with the descent of the Holy Spirit of the Resurrected One on the apostles: "When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim." (Acts 2, 1-4).
The account of the descent of the Spirit is linked profoundly with the story of the revelation of God on Mount Sinai both at the level of language and symbols (the "wind", the "fire", and the "tongues") and at the level of content and theology: the spirit which Jesus gives on the strength of his death and resurrection is the power of Love with which God loves and calls to love. In the event of the Spirit what happens and what is reproduced is the power of the voice which revealed itself on Mount Sinai as Law of love. The Christian Pentecost is not an outgrowing of the Jewish Pentecost but the taking on and radicalisation of its meanings.