This coming week we will celebrate the holiday of Shavuot. The Talmud (Pesachim 68b) states: Rabbi Eliezer says: “On a Festival a person must either eat and drink or sit and learn the entire day.” Rabbi Yehoshua says: “Divide the day, half of it for eating and drinking and half of it for the study hall.” Rabbi Yoḥanan says both of them derived their opinions from the same verses: One verse says, “It (the festivals) shall be an assembly for the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 16:8), which indicates that the day is set aside for Divine service, and another verse says, “It shall be an assembly for you” (Numbers 29:35), which indicates a celebratory assembly for the Jewish people. Rabbi Eliezer holds that the two verses should be understood as offering a choice: The day is to be either entirely for God or entirely for you. Rabbi Yehoshua holds that one must split the day into two, half of it for God and half of it for you. But Rabbi Elazar said: “All agree with regard to Atzeret, the holiday of Shavuot, that it must contain the element of ‘for you,’ meaning that it is a mitzvah to eat, drink, and rejoice on that day and cannot be spent only studying Torah. What is the reason? It is the day on which the Torah was given.”

This seems counterintuitive. If any day is ripe for all-day study, sacrificing one’s own desires for Torah, it is Shavuot, the day we received the Torah, yet the Talmud says just the opposite. What is the conceptual reasoning behind this?     

The story is told in the Talmud (Shabbat 88b) of Moshe going above to receive the Torah, which is in the angelic realm, and bringing it to human beings. The angels vehemently oppose the transfer. The angels argue that as imperfect as humans are, they are bound to violate the Torah. Moshe argues back and points out that the Torah rightfully belongs in the realm of the human since almost everything in the Torah is physical—honoring one’s parents, keeping the Shabbat, not stealing, etc.   

Perhaps this Talmudic passage can shed light on why Shavuot is a holiday that requires physical pleasure. The purpose of Torah is not to exist in a perfect spiritual state but to guide us in living a holy and straight path within this challenging world of the physical.  

This idea may also be the key to why, as a rule, leaven was never brought as a sacrifice in the Temple—except on Shavuot. The main offering on this day was the shtei ha’lechem, leavened wheat formed into two loaves. The Rabbis tell us that leaven, chametz, symbolizes physical desire and self-involvement. It has the same ingredients as matzah but is richer and puffed up. Shavuot, though, is the day for such an offering, the day we celebrate the physical as a vehicle, through the use and guidance of the Torah, toward sanctity.