As we work on Shavuot to reconnect with our spirituality through text study and prayer, we can also work to reconnect with our roots in the natural world.
The harvest festivals – Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot– have long been highlights of the Jewish calendar. In recent years these holidays have taken on an additional layer of meaning as Jews across the world reclaim and reconnect to our agricultural roots. Sukkot has become an occasion to talk about food access issues, asking who among us is unable to enjoy an abundant harvest, and to promote sustainable solutions. We imbue Passover and the spring renewal it marks with a celebration of our environment and the seasons, and food justice seders are cropping up across North America.
Yet, of the harvest festivals, Shavuot is the one that has least retained – or returned to – its origins as a holiday that marks the changing of the seasons and is deeply tied to the environment. Shavuot remains an occasion for late-night study and Talmudic debate, a celebration for intellectuals – and, of course, for cheesecake and blintzes. Today, most of us mark Shavuot as the “anniversary” of the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, forgetting the original meaning of Shavuot as the demarcation between the grain harvest and the fruit harvest. And we do so even as, throughout the year, our societies violate the teachings of Torah and irreversibly alter the natural patterns on which humanity has depended for millennia.
We miss a unique opportunity, and ignore many of the biblical commandments we are celebrating, if we neglect to connect Shavuot and its agricultural roots, and to elevate the environmental teachings of Torah to a level comparable to the most often repeated phrases of Torah.
Luckily, the connection between the two meanings of this holiday is so innate that the leap from our modern Shavuot celebrations to the harvest tradition is not a long one – in fact, it is no leap at all. Our Torah is replete with prescient environmental lessons, from the commandment in Genesis 2:15 “to till and to tend” our world, both using and guarding our resources in equal measure, to the words of Deuteronomy 22:8 that command the building of a parapet for protection around the roof of every new house, teaching us the precautionary principle that so informs our modern response to environmental threats.
Deuteronomy reminds us as well that if we love God and abide by Torah, the rains will come in their proper season and food will grow; but if we deny these teachings and commandments, we will face the wrath of an angry God, including the “shutting of the heavens” so that the rains will cease and the ground will be barren, threatening the very survival of all earth’s inhabitants.
It is this teaching that we so clearly violate with the unsustainable industrial and agricultural practices that are warming our world to dangerous levels and throwing the seasons out of balance. The scourge of food insecurity, exacerbated by climate-driven drought and natural disasters, is already beginning to strike with the changing seasonal and rainfall patterns in Kenya and Ethiopia, unprecedented heat waves in Russia and deadly flooding in Pakistan.
The Torah that we celebrate on Shavuot is a lesson on living in harmony with our world and all the creatures that inhabit it, and if we deny this truth on Shavuot and year-round, we risk the losing the rains and the harvest that sustain us all.
It is not too late to act for a better and more sustainable future, just as it is not too late to bring these traditions back into our Shavuot celebrations. So how can we make Shavuot a harvest festival again? Moving from the ancient words of Torah to the world around us today, Shavuot comes at a time when most of us in North America are well attuned to the changing season as we eagerly anticipate the arrival of summer. Following what we hope were plentiful April rains, we see everything in bloom around us and (despite the allergies that leave many of us sneezing and wheezing) are thankful for the beginning of warmer weather and all the benefits that come with it. And it’s not just the greenery; as we know from the ancient days of the Shavuot celebration, this is a time when we begin to collect the fruit of our agricultural labors.
So why not reclaim Shavuot as a day not just for studying Torah but also for applying our ancient texts and Jewish values to the challenges of our modern world? As we work on Shavuot to reconnect with our spirituality through text study and prayer, we can also work to reconnect with our roots in the natural world. It could be as simple as studying outside, taking a moonlit walk or bike ride to appreciate our local environment or having a Shavuot meal that highlights the seasonal food that the spring rains allow to grow.
The seven weeks of the Omer connect Passover to Shavuot, reminding us that, while Passover brings redemption from slavery, it is not until Shavuot, when we receive the Torah, that our lives become imbued with deeper meaning. So this Shavuot, let us remember the key lessons of Torah, reminding us all of the need to live sustainably, and celebrating that to do so is as deeply Jewish as Torah. What better way to mark this harvest festival and honor so many of the commandments throughout the Torah that we celebrate receiving with this holiday?
Rachel Cohen is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.