So according to you, basically, the Festival of Atzeret and the day of the giving of the Torah are really two different events, with different dates, though they are close together, and it is simply more convenient to mark them together.
And after all, from the perspective of the Written Torah, we are commanded to celebrate only Atzeret, by refraining from labor and offering the two loaves. The second event was overlaid onto that day at a later stage.
So today, although we keep the commandments that apply nowadays at this time (refraining from labor), we are emptying it of its inner meaning. We are not occupied with its essential content, but rather with the content of the giving of the Torah, which happened on another day. The Torah reading in Yitro, staying up all night learning, eating dairy foods, and decorating the house with greenery are not connected to the Festival of Atzeret, but to the day of the giving of the Torah.
Does that make sense?

In my view, yes. What is the problem? Atzeret has no particular laws or character apart from the labor prohibitions and the offerings. So its character was taken from the giving of the Torah.

With God’s help, 10 Sivan 5779

According to the Rabbis, the Torah was given on the sixth of Sivan. But even according to Rabbi Yosei, who holds that the Sinai revelation actually took place on the seventh of Sivan, still, according to him, “Moses added one day on his own understanding.” The revelation was delayed by a day because the recipients were not yet ready, but from the standpoint of the Giver, the Torah was already poised to be given on the sixth of Sivan. As I recall, this is how the Maharal explains it in Tiferet Yisrael.

The Maharsha on Shabbat says that the addition of the day by Moses, as a “fence around the Torah,” expresses reverence, which is the essence of the Sinai revelation: “so that His fear may be upon your faces.” It thus emerges that we already attained that reverence on the sixth of Sivan, when Moses made a “fence around the Torah.”

Along similar lines, I suggested that “the giving of the Torah” to Israel means that authority was given to the sages of Israel to interpret the word of God according to their understanding and judgment. That is exactly what happened according to Rabbi Yosei on the sixth of Sivan: Moses exercised his own judgment and interpreted “for the third day,” which God had said, to mean “a third day whose night is included with it.” The ability of the sage to interpret the Torah based on his own reasoning is the clearest expression that the Torah was “given” to Israel, and that occurred on the sixth of Sivan, according to Rabbi Yosei.

This also seems to be the Torah’s intent. When the Torah establishes a festival on the day of the Exodus from Egypt and a second festival that falls on one of the days of “the third month,” it is hard to assume that this is accidental. It makes sense that the second festival hints to the Sinai revelation that took place near it. The physical freedom from Egyptian bondage was marked from the outset as leading to “when you bring the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” The “I will bring out” and “I will save” reach completion in “I will take you to Me as a people, and I will be your God.”

There is here a process parallel to the Jubilee: on the fiftieth day, as in the fiftieth year, the children who had become distant return and reunite with their Father in heaven. Freedom from bondage, liberation from subjugation to strangers, becomes through an ordered process “freedom for” a mission: that the people receive the task of being “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” God’s representatives in the world.

And in parallel, the omer permitted the new grain in ordinary life, while the new meal-offering on the Festival of Weeks marks renewal in the sacred as well.

With blessings,
Shatz

Precisely according to your words, wonderful as they are in themselves, we should have celebrated on the seventh, the day that was added based on Moses’ own reasoning.

Maybe that is why instead of celebrating, we engage in acts of repair to atone for that sin—that we do not use the power given to us to add from our own understanding?

With God’s help, 10 Sivan 5779

To Boaz — greetings,

Tikkun Leil Shavuot really does express the idea because of which Moses added a day on his own understanding, reasoning that a “day” should have “its night included with it,” that preparation for the day begins at night.

In any case, the seventh of Sivan also gets some recognition: in the Land of Israel as Isru Chag, and outside the Land as the second festival day of the Diaspora, to the delight of lovers of “halakhic creativity” 🙂

With blessings,
Shatz

To Shatz,

Look closely and note that even the celebration of halakhic creativity is ultimately called Isru Chag?

But in the Jerusalem Talmud (Avodah Zarah 1:5), the day after the festival is called “the son of the festival”; the addition comes from love, like a son who is the continuation of his father.

With blessings,
Shatz

To Shatz,

I almost read about myself, “princes stopped in words,” and with a cry on my lips, “My children have defeated Me” (and note specifically “My children,” like a father’s love for his son, giving him room to act within His Torah as his heart desires) “My children have defeated Me” — from which we learn the power of the children to disagree with their Father in heaven, as in Bava Metzia 59b.

But at the last moment I remembered that in the time of the Jerusalem Talmud, sanctifying the month by witnesses had not yet been abolished, and at the time this passage in the Jerusalem Talmud was written, it must be that Shavuot fell on the seventh of Sivan, so they indeed rejoiced on that day and on the day after it because they had added a day on their own understanding.

With God’s help, 11 Sivan 5779

To Boaz — greetings,

Since we mentioned the significance of “the day after,” it is worth noting that the covenant-making ceremony was, according to Nachmanides on Exodus chapter 24, after the Sinai revelation (following the view of Rabbi Yosei son of Rabbi Yehudah in the Mekhilta).

According to Nachmanides, the Sinai revelation was on the sixth of Sivan, and on that very day Moses tells the people “the words of the Lord and all the ordinances,” and the people say: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” The next day, the seventh of Sivan, “the Book of the Covenant” is added, which Moses reads in the ears of the people, and they declare: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will hear.”

In contrast, according to Rashi (following the first tanna in the Mekhilta), the recounting of “the words of the covenant and the ordinances” to the people, and the following day’s reading of “the Book of the Covenant,” took place on the fourth and fifth of Sivan, and the people’s commitment, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will hear,” preceded the Sinai revelation.

It is interesting what Rabbi Yosei, who holds that the Sinai revelation took place on the seventh of Sivan, would say. Would he agree with Rabbi Yosei son of Rabbi Yehudah that the reading of the Book of the Covenant and the saying of “we will do and we will hear” were on the eighth of Sivan, or would he hold that chapter 24 took place before the Sinai revelation, like the first tanna in the Mekhilta?

In any event, from the combined material in parashot Yitro and Mishpatim, it emerges that the process of Israel’s receiving the Torah was a complex and ongoing process that began at the start of the third month and continued at least until the seventh of Sivan, when Moses ascended the mountain for the forty days of receiving the tablets.

And perhaps the Torah intentionally does not wish to define clearly the “time of the giving of our Torah,” because it is a complex and ongoing process, and it depends to a great extent on our willingness to open ourselves to receiving the Torah.

The Festival of Weeks as described in the Torah is first and foremost a festival on which we give to God. We bring a “new meal-offering” from the fruit of our labor; we bring to God, and to the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, our freewill gift, as it is written: “And you shall make the Festival of Weeks for the Lord your God, according to the measure of the freewill offering of your hand.”

Exactly which stage in the process of the giving and receiving of the Torah occurred on this date, the Torah leaves somewhat ambiguous, because in truth “the time of the giving of our Torah” does not depend on a particular date, but on the time when we open our hearts and willingly offer ourselves to receive the Torah, and according to “the measure of our willing heart,” the gates of Torah open and it is given to us.
,
With blessings,
Shatz

To Shatz,

Your final lines deserve to be the conclusion. Indeed, the Torah is above time, for it is known that it was created before this world, 974 generations earlier, and time is among the created things, as Nachmanides wrote. On the festival I thought that maybe for this reason the Festival of Weeks is called Atzeret, because on it time stops.

With great appreciation

With God’s help, 11 Sivan 5779

To Boaz — greetings,

The term “Atzeret,” by which the sages refer to the Festival of Weeks, can be interpreted in two ways:

A. The conclusion of a festival, just as in the Torah the seventh day of the Festival of Matzot and the eighth day of Sukkot are called “Atzeret”; so too the Festival of Weeks is the conclusion of the seven weeks of the harvest, which begin with the waving of the omer at “when the sickle is first put to the standing grain” and conclude with “the Feast of Harvest, the first-fruits of your labor,” when we bring to God a “new meal-offering.”

B. “Atzeret” in the sense of an assembly of the people, as in “Sanctify a fast, proclaim an assembly.” The Sinai revelation is also called in the Torah “the day of assembly” (Deuteronomy … ), as described: “The day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me: Assemble the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, so that they may learn to fear Me all the days…” (4:10).

With blessings,
Shatz

There is also in the Festival of Weeks a stopping in the flow of life. At the very busiest time for the farmer. The grain harvest has just ended, and immediately the grape harvest and the picking of tree-fruits begin (I once wrote a comment about this under the title: “The Festival of Weeks — between grain and tree” 🙂 ) — and right in the middle of the pressure, the daring farmer leaves everything and goes up to Jerusalem by command of his Creator.

Paragraph B, line 2
… is also called in the Torah “the day of assembly” (Deuteronomy 9:10). As described…

After such pleasant words, I have no choice but to go and celebrate the Festival of Atzeret (that is, to stop)?