SHAVUOT:

Humility and Blessings

by Rabbi Neal Joseph Loevinger
COEJL Board Member

Jewish environmental thinking brings together strands of traditional Jewish theology and key points of contemporary environmentalism; among those strands is the recognition that we have to move from thinking of the Earth as a mere resource for human benefit to something that is fundamentally not "ours" to do with as we please. Some call this the ethic of stewardship, drawing a distinction between a steward and a master: the steward recognizes that he is not the owner, but one appointed to guard and protect something precious. Stewardship implies humility, thoughtfulness, and self-control, which any environmental thinker would agree are qualities that our society needs to rebalance its relationship with the Earth we live on.

In Jewish thought, the Earth belongs to God, as stated succinctly in the Torah portion Behar:

"But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me." (Leviticus 25:23)

In Behar, the context for this theology of the Earth is the cycle of "shmittah," or sabbatical years, in which the land lies fallow and debts are forgiven. The sabbatical year is a powerful symbol of living humbly upon the land, but it's not the only place in the Torah that this idea appears. With that in mind, let's turn to the cycle of spring holidays, beginning with Passover and ending with Shavuot, the "Feast of Weeks."

In the Torah portion Emor, we are told that in the early springtime, we are to bring the "first sheaf of the harvest" to the priest, who will "elevate" or "wave" the sheaf before God, which then releases, as it were, the rest of the crop for human use. (Cf. Leviticus 23: 9-13.) Then we count off seven weeks of the "omer," or bundle of barley stalks, until we get to the holiday of the "first fruits" of summer, which we now call Shavuot.

On Shavuot, there is another "elevation" ritual, in which the priest waved the agricultural offerings on the altar of the Temple. On this holy day, the offering is not just raw stalks of barley, but loaves of bread, along with animals:

"The priest shall elevate these - the two lambs - together with the bread of first fruits as an elevation offering before the Lord; they shall be holy to the Lord, for the priest. On that same day you shall hold a celebration; it shall be a sacred occasion for you..." (Leviticus 23:20-21)

For Rashi and other traditional commentators, the "waving" of the agricultural offerings is to assure God's favor and avoid destructive winds and rains; just as the barley stalks or loaves of bread are waved up and down, back and forth, the winds and rains which sweep over the land should only be for blessing, and not destruction. Now, this might seem like a kind of magic, or a pre-modern theology which draws a direct connection between our rituals and the weather, but Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the leader of German Orthodoxy in the late 1800's, sees the "waving" as symbolic of the idea we discussed earlier- that the Land and its blessing belongs to God alone:

"Referring to this "waving," it says in the Talmud (Menachot 62a): that thereby injurious winds and damaging downfalls [lit: "dews"] are kept away from the seeds and fruit. The blessing of the fields of the Land of Israel is not dependent soley on physical influences. The physical prosperity of the soil itself is dependent on the unselfish renunciation of its products, and devoting them to the purposes of a God-serving life as directed by [God's] Torah." (Hirsch, Commentary on the Torah)

For Hirsch, the Land is prosperous when the people of Israel recognize that our tenancy upon the Earth is for the purpose of fulfilling God's commandments, and any blessing that the Land produces is only part of this greater scheme. Yet I think there is a more universal message in his words:

the vitality of the Earth, anywhere, is indeed dependent on humankind becoming "unselfish." We must learn to feel that we are but stewards for future generations, who depend on our unselfishness regarding a planet already overtaxed with resource extraction and depletion.

The rabbis of the Talmud saw the wave-offerings of Passover and Shavuot as being linked to the winds and rain; this idea is not so far-fetched when one considers the effect that global warming has on weather patterns across the planet. If we learn to see the Earth as the Lord's, perhaps we can live more humbly upon it, in a relationship of blessing and sustainability. The symbols and rituals of the holy days are times of reflection upon this relationship between people, God, and Earth. Our ancestors lifted up the blessings of the Land in order to thank the One who blessed them; we too must lift up the Earth itself, from being inert resources to that which we hold most dear, as stewards and guardians, for God, for ourselves, for all other species, and for all future generations.

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