Counting the Omer and preserving the Oral Tradition of Judaism
From the day after the Shabbat, from the day on which you bring the omer offering, count seven complete weeks. Until the day after the seventh Shabbat, count fifty days, and then bring a new offering to God. (Lev. 23:15)
When are we supposed to begin the count? What is this Shabbat upon which the entire count rests? This is doubly important because on it depends the date of Shavuos.
The question is discussed in Menachos 65/66 and there we find that some groups would read the above literally and begin the count on a Sunday, with the result that Shavuos would always fall on Sunday.
However the consensus of the Rabbis in the Gemara, whose tradition we uphold, understood that the imperative is to begin counting from the day following the Yom Tov of Pesach. As such, Shavuos in fact always falls on the 50th day from Pesach, whichever day of the week that happens to be.
This argument about when to begin counting the omer became somewhat of a poster boy for the historical dispute between the literalist sects and the bearers of the Oral Tradition. I want to suggest a reason why that is and why it's important for us, who follow the Oral Torah, to understand this dispute's significance and it's relevance for us today.
Shavuos is itself enigmatic...Pesach and Succos both commemorate a historical event. The Torah clearly links them to the Exodus: the night of Pesach is the anniversary of leaving Egypt, while Succos reminds us of the Clouds of Glory that God created to accompany the Jews in the desert following the Exodus.
Shavuos on the other hand is included with those two in the set of "Three Regalim" - three times when Jews are required to appear in Jerusalem - yet no mention is made of it joining Pesach and Succos in commemorating an event. It is the Oral Tradition that understood Shavuos as the anniversary of the Revelation at Sinai and the giving of the Torah to the Jewish People.
Why does this receive no mention in the Torah itself then? Why in the various mentions of the Pilgrim Festivals does the Torah frame all three as landmarks in the agricultural calendar but gives only Pesach and Succos the added Spiritual/Historical dimension?
Still, there's no question about it - the Oral Tradition does introduce a whole new dimension: Pesach celebrates our freedom from slavery, but we now have to understand that freedom for its own sake is meaningless. Only through adopting the Torah on Shavuos as our binding Law and Constitution would we achieve true freedom.
The Omer count suddenly takes on a new significance as well. It connects Pesach and Shavuos in a way that transcends the agricultural link - it places Pesach squarely in context as merely the beginning of a quest for true freedom, which can only be realised by adopting the Torah. The Ramban goes so far as to liken the Omer period to the days of Chol Hamoed, the intermediate days of the festivals of Pesach and Succos. So the Omer becomes a festival in itself, a time to count and account, to search our souls and ready ourselves for the moment of Truth.
All this has been said before and better than I could say it! However, I want to add something that I think is novel.
Perhaps because it's so trite, people don't seem to point out the other side of the relationship that says that Shavuos is equally dependent on Pesach. Without the energy of Pesach, without the physical freedom and intellectual clarity that we gained through the events leading up to the Exodus and the miracles that we witnessed, there could be no Revelation and no Torah.
Yes, there could be legislation and a legal system based on the rules that the Torah contains but it would not be more than that if applied to a nation of slaves.
Without the physical and intellectual freedom that the Jews gained at Pesach, Torah would lack the essential characteristics that give it it's immense creative and redemptive Power. It would not be capable of rendering man in the Divine Image, less still would it be able to transform a whole nation into a Kingdom of Priests.
These qualities of Torah cannot exist without the interaction of the human intellect with the Word of God. That improbable relationship can only be formed when people are free to think and reflect.
The transformative power of Torah lies in the Oral Tradition. Through the processes of analysis, argument, differentiation and integration, the Divine Will is internalised by the person who performs those processes, and in turn he applies the derived halacha to create a Dwelling for the Shechina - the Divine Presence on Earth.
The ancient literalists failed to grasp this fundamental point. They took the Torah at it's literal word and in an attemt to preserve the purity of Torah, they ironically rendered it irrelevant to human beings. If people would have no part in the development of Torah, then Torah would cease to live within their hearts and minds.
Perhaps that's why these purists could not admit the connection between Pesach and Shavuos that the Omer creates, as it is a clear example of how Torah demands the fullest contribution of the free human spirit in order to be meaningful. That's why they emphasise that Shavuos is an absolute, always beginning on Sunday, no matter what day of the week Pesach falls.
Maybe that's also why the Written Torah leaves out all reference to Shavuos as the day on which the Torah was given, to show that only through the Oral Tradition is this aspect of the day meaningful.
This is important because it's a story of our time. As we engage with new technology that gives intellectual freedom a whole new meaning, we also find those who are increasingly concerned with the purity of the Torah, the preservation of Tradition and all that it stands for.
We just have to be very careful and thoughtful because there is a fine line indeed between being a defender and a destroyer of Tradition. When you become too defensive of the existing body of Tradition, when you assert that certain individual practices and conventions have some absolute value instead of admitting that they may be contingent on time, place, intellect and other factors, when you render Oral Tradition as the Written Law, then you come close to being like those purists of yore who made their Torah so pure that it had nothing to do with people.
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