On the festival of Shavuot, we commemorate the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, a cornerstone of Jewish history and a foundation of the Jewish people. We refer to it in our prayers as Zeman Matan Toratenu — the time of the giving of our Torah. Yet, curiously, in the Torah itself, there is no mention of this occasion as the day on which the Torah was given. The Torah's account of Shavuot is almost entirely agricultural. It commands us to begin counting from the second day of Pesah, from the reaping of the barley crop, and to continue for seven full weeks (Lev. 23:15). At the culmination of that count, we celebrate the festival called Shavuot, which simply means "weeks."
The Torah tells us that on this day, we are to bring a wheat offering in the form of two loaves — the shete ha-lehem (ibid. 23:17). This offering, brought to the Temple, is the sole ritual that marks Shavuot in the Torah. There is no mention of Mount Sinai, of revelation, or of Torah. The festival, as presented in Scripture, is rooted firmly in the land and its produce.
Why does the Torah present Shavuot in such material and earthly terms, while the tradition of our sages insists that it is the anniversary of the giving of the Torah? The answer requires us to revisit our assumptions about the Torah and about ourselves.
Consider the book of Ruth, which we read on Shavuot. Its narrative revolves not around law or prophecy, but around famine and harvest, kindness and survival. The central scenes involve Ruth gleaning wheat, Boaz protecting her access to the field, and the slow movement from hunger to sustenance and ultimately, thriving. It is, at on the surface, a love story. But at a deeper level, it presents love as true belonging. It speaks of the vital human connection to land and peoplehood. Why do we read such a tale on the festival of Torah? Because Torah emerges not above the earth, but from within it.
When God created Adam, He formed him from the dust of the earth — adamah (Gen. 2:7). The very name Adam means "of the earth." This connection is is definitive of the human condition. We are not separate from the earth. We are it. Our flesh, our bones, our intellect, all derive from the materials of this planet. The Torah reinforces this again and again. When God enters into covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He does not promise Torah, but land. A land that will sustain, produce, and nurture. The ultimate expression of arrival in that land is the bringing of its first fruits—the bikurim to the Temple and declaring, "I have arrived”, essentially to say, the promise has come to fruition and I am here as testament to it.
The Torah does not distance itself from the physical world; it sanctifies it. Even the Shema, the daily declaration of Jewish faith, speaks in agricultural terms: If you listen to My commandments, the rain will fall, the crops will grow, and you will eat and be satisfied. The covenant is bound to the cycles of the land.
Shavuot, then, presents Torah in its true context. It is the culmination of counting from the barley to the wheat, of moving from potential to fulfillment. The Torah is not a disembodied code; it is the instruction manual for being human — Adam — of the adamah.
The Midrash notices something remarkable about creation: God commands, "Let the earth produce fruit trees that bear fruit" (Gen. 1:11), but the earth produces only "trees that bear fruit." Something is missing. The sages teach that what was meant to be was trees whose very wood tasted like their fruit — complete integration of source and product. Only one tree fulfilled this command: the etrog. Its bark tastes like its fruit, it never falls from the tree, and it does not spoil. It exemplifies integrity.
Eve, in her encounter with the tree of knowledge, commits a subtle but profound error. She speaks of the fruit as separate from the tree. God had only ever spoken of the tree itself; Eve introduced a distinction. This dis-integration mirrors the broader human tendency to separate mind from body, fruit from tree, self from earth. But Torah seeks to heal that divide.
The entire narrative of Adam and Eve can be read as a cautionary tale about dissociation. Once they eat of the tree, they hide, ashamed of their nakedness, sensing a rupture. God asks, "Ayeka?" — Where are you? Not because He lacks information, but because they have lost their coordinates. They no longer know where they belong.
Torah, in this reading, is the map back to those coordinates. It is the path to integrity, to reintegration of the self with the world, of human with earth, of fruit with tree. It is not merely a book; it is the tree of life. Etz Hayim hi la-mahazikim bah — it is a tree of life to those who grasp it (Proverbs, 3:18).
On Shavuot, we bring bread — two loaves — as an offering. Bread is the ultimate symbol of human partnership with the earth. No one finds a loaf growing on a tree. It is the result of planting, harvesting, grinding, mixing, kneading, and baking. It is the fruit of intelligence applied to earth. In offering bread, we declare that we have begun to return to the garden, that we understand our role as cultivators, as stewards, as partners in creation.
The Torah demands that we acknowledge our place in the world. If it becomes merely intellectual, detached from body, from ground, from life, then it fails. If our Torah study is only of the mind and not of the hands and heart, we have not touched the Tree of Life.
To be human is to be of the earth and to become conscious of that fact. The Torah was not given in the heavens, but on a mountain of stone, to people who were told to count from barley to bread. This is what we celebrate on Shavuot: that the Creator of the universe gave us a guide to live within the world — wisely, fully, and integrally.
The story of our people is the story of survival against all odds. Through exile and dispersion, we have carried one constant: the Torah. Wherever we have lived, we have studied, written, and taught. The Torah has kept us grounded, not in nostalgia, but in reality. It has reminded us who we are, and where we belong.
So when we raise our glasses and say Lehaim! — to Life! — we are remembering the Tree of Life, and the promise it holds: that we may, through Torah, recover our coordinates, and find our way home.