Many writers have noted the anomaly latent within the Torah’s description of the festival of Shavuot. Although we celebrate this occasion as primarily Zeman Matan Torateinu, the anniversary of our receiving the Torah, the Torah itself makes no mention of this aspect of Shavuot. Instead, the Torah focuses exclusively on the agricultural theme of Shavuot, as the celebration of the wheat harvest. Sefer Shemot (23:16, 34:22) describes Shavuot as the harvest festival, and in Sefer Vayikra (23:9-22) speaks of this day as the culmination of the fifty-day period that began with the omer offering on the second day of Pesach. Shavuot thus appears in the Torah as strictly an agricultural festival, without any historical or commemorative component. It seems odd, at first glance, that the role of Shavuot as celebrating the seminal event of Matan Torah would earn no mention in the Torah.
Rav Yaakov Ariel, in his Mei-aholei Torah, explains how this anomaly may convey an important message regarding the nature of Torah and Torah observance:
The festival of Shavuot is the festival of the harvest of the first wheat in the Land of Israel. It is not the festival of the giving of the Torah as an abstract, intangible concept; it comes to commemorate the prosaic life in the Land of Israel, the life of hard work and creativity, which reaches its peak at the harvest. Just then, at the most grueling moments of backbreaking labor, in the glorious moments of gratification when a person fills with pride over his achievements – specifically at these moments comes the test of Torah life in the land.
The festival of Matan Torah is described in the Torah as the festival of the harvest in order to emphasize the relevance and applicability of Torah as a practical guide for real-life experiences. Torah life is most vividly expressed specifically in the harvest, when engaging in the pursuit of one’s livelihood, struggling with nature to harness its forces for the benefit of oneself and mankind. It is here where the Torah calls upon a person to recognize his responsibilities to the Almighty, and where it imposes its obligations and restrictions. Rav Ariel adds that for this reason the Torah concludes the section dealing with Shavuot (in Vayikra 23:22) with a reiteration of the farmer’s charity obligations: “And when you reap the harvest of your land, do not completely eliminate the corner of your field, and do not collect the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the foreigner.” In the context of Zeman Matan Torateinu, the Torah emphasizes that Torah observance is expressed most manifestly in the harvest, when the farmer denies himself a percentage of his hard-earned produce and leaves it for the poor as the Torah demands.
Thus, the Torah deliberately omitted any reference to the historical background of Shavuot to focus our attention on the day-to-day implementation of the Torah’s laws and ideals, rather than confining them to the realm of the abstract. We received the Torah for the purpose of establishing ourselves as a nation in our ancestral homeland that strictly observes its laws and exemplifies its values. The Torah therefore describes Shavuot in strictly agricultural terms, thereby emphasizing the importance of implementing Torah in daily life, rather than perceiving it as only an abstract spiritual entity.
Courtesy of Yeshivat Har Etzion - www.etzion.org.il