Shavuos (שבועות) — The Festival of Weeks

Core definition

Shavuos — the festival of the Giving of the Torah, fifty days after Pesach — is named, the maamarim teach, not for the counting of weeks alone but for the three readings of "u'veshmo tishavei'a" (Devarim 10:20): seven, oath, and satiety. It is the festival on which the Torah — the revelation of the Essence itself — was given, and on which that giving is renewed each year [15881/maamar_028 :: Overview; 58841/maamar_039 :: Overview].

How the Rebbeim develop it

Why is the festival of the Torah's giving called "Shavuos"? The answer unfolds through the three readings of "u'veshmo tishavei'a." Seven: Malchus is always in tefillah-connection to the Ohr Ein Sof above worlds, and through the seven blessings of the Shema the seven supernal levels are drawn into "His name." Oath: the oath draws blessing from beyond change — "I, Havayah, have not changed" — available even when the generation is unworthy, and gives the soul strength against the yetzer hara and the animal soul. Satiety: fulfilled desire, the essential ratzon above reason [15881/maamar_028 :: Overview].

"Mashbi'in" — the adjuration of the soul ("I adjure you... be a tzaddik") — is read in the same threefold way: seven (the neshama yeseirah, the soul's Shabbos, the encompassing chayah and yechidah), oath (strength to be "a tzaddik"), and satiety (fulfilled desire; the essential ratzon above reason). Shavuos is therefore named for seven, oath, and satiety — the soul's adjuration and the festival's name illuminating each other [15881/maamar_028 :: Overview].

A second Shavuos maamar asks what "making" applies to Shavuos — "va'asisa chag Shavuos" — when the festival has no special mitzvah-action of its own. The answer: the saying of the Torah's letters — the Sefirah-counting speech and all Torah speech — is Shavuos's asiyah. Around this the maamar develops the renewal of the Torah: general, on Shavuos, and particular, daily — by man and "from above" — and why an essential drawing like Torah still needs constant, fundamental renewal [19801/maamar_024 :: Overview].

The deepest Shavuos teaching concerns how the Torah was given. Why was the Torah — whose giving was the revelation of the Essence itself — given through the name Elokim, the name of judgment and tzimtzum? The answer: tzimtzum is not the opposite of the Essence's revelation but its condition — the future's perfection of the Essence is drawn through today's avodah of removing hiddenness through Torah and mitzvos [58841/maamar_039 :: Overview]. The maamar traces three times of perfection: Adam before the sin; Dovid, whose joyful preparation brought the full moon of Shlomo's Mikdash; and Mashiach — when man's intellect will grasp Divinity as ingrainedly as it now grasps physicality [58841/maamar_039 :: Overview]. At Matan Torah all revelations were given — including the "new Torah" of Mashiach: "a new Torah shall go forth from Me" — not a changed Torah but a new interpretation according to the fiftieth gate of Binah, revealing the reasons of the mitzvos [58841/maamar_039 :: Overview].

Key distinctions

Related concepts

Matan Torah, Sefiras HaOmer, the Neshama Yeseirah, Mashbi'in (the soul's adjuration), the Fiftieth Gate of Binah, Mashiach's "new Torah."

Sources