Greetings again! After reviewing some material and articles about the timing of Matan Torah I was trying to clarify the need for the use of the term in the tefillah of "zman matan toraseynu." I look forward to your input on this.
1) How did Jews before the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim celebrate the giving of the Torah? Did Jews always do so around the time of Shavuos as a "custom" EVEN when Shavuos was only a festival of the Torah and related to bikkurim, etc.?
2) How did Jews understand the ambiguity of the dating chronology leading to Moshe receiving the Ten Commandments at Sinai?
3) The statements in Shabbos 80 etc. about the dating is somewhat irrelevant and non-binding because they only come from a braisa anyway, which is of less authority than a mishnah, and this fact doesn't get addressed in the commentaries. If we focus on the Torah all we can say (ambiguously) is that Moshe Rabbenu received the Ten Commandments sometime during the first week of Sivan (3rd or 6th or 7th of Sivan).
4) If it was not important before the time of the Tannaim when the "Torah was given" this was because a) the giving of the 10 commandments was not the same thing as the "giving of the Torah," b) the written Torah was given to Moshe over the period of the 40 years in the desert; c) the oral Torah was rooted in the written Torah, BUT it was a process related to the Sanhedrin throughout many generations, and not merely at Sinai. So why did the Jews have to adopt the notion of "zman matan Toraseynu" for the day(s) of Shavuos into the davvening, especially if this adoption never existed before?
5) Even if there was concern that sectarian groups would claim that only the Ten Commandments was given by God, how does this warrant the need to refer to Shavuos as "zman Matan Toraseynu" which is not really correct, per what I wrote above?
6) Finally, why can't Shavuos be observed without any express need to link it to "giving of the Torah" even in a legendary or allegorical manner? Given the point about the written and oral Torahs it is clear why Hash-m did not give an explicit date for the giving of the 10 commandments in the Torah.
Thanks,
David Goldman
Thank you for this question, especially in the way you presented it. Let me summarize some of the different aspects:
A) The historical aspect. What was the custom before Tana'im, and is it necessary at all to say there was a festival which commemorates the giving of the Torah?
B) What is the reason or the meaning of inserting Matan Torah into the Sidur, when the date is not really known, and, also, the Ten Commandments are not the entire Torah? And why do we "need" this reason added into the festival? I can add to your questions another well-known one. Even if we know perfectly well the date of Matan Torah, even at the time of Chazal, when they were still practicing Kidush ha'Chodesh by testimony of Edim, if the months of Nisan and Iyar were of 30 days, Shavuos was celebrated on the fifth of Sivan, and if they were both 29 days, it was celebrated on the seventh. Since the times of Hillel who fixed the calendar, we now are sure that Shavuos will always be Zman Matan Torah, but that is only "by chance."
At first, I must admit that these questions are mind blowing. The Rivash (96) actually says that only after the calendar was fixed did the Tana'im of that generation (long after Anshei Keneses ha'Gedolah) inserted the addition "Zman Matan Toraseinu" into the Siddur.
On the other hand, we find in the Midrash "hints" in the Torah in a more "Derash" way, that Shavuos is also commemorating Matan Torah (see Rabeinu Bachye to Bamidbar 28:26). We find that the Rambam (Moreh Nevuchim 3:43) and other Rishonim also combine the two.
The basic question is: Is Shavuos celebrated on the 50th day of the Omer, or on the day of Matan Torah, or perhaps a combination of the two?
A lot has been written on this topic, but it seems that the most reasonable way to understand all of this is that there are different levels and dimensions in Jewish life. The "Peshat" level offers a festival for the field produce. On Pesach we bring from the Omer made from barley, and count happily towards the festival of the Katzir and bring another Korban made of wheat. The "Derash" level might be that this process in the field is a parable to one's spiritual life. The giving of the Ten Commandments on this day is not merely the set of rules we find in the rest of the Torah, but -- as we find in Parshas Ekev at length -- that the main point of Ma'amad Har Sinai was as if Hash-m "came down" to talk to Yisrael "Panim b'Panim" -- face to face -- which actually is a kind of harvest not only for Klal Yisrael but a change in the whole concept of spiritual service that the Jewish nation brought to most of the world until this day.
This idea is a little elevated beyond a lot of technical and Halachic questions that we would need hours to go through. But the basic idea hinted by the Derash, and later on inserted by Chazal into the festival, pretty much convinces us that it is difficult to say that it is a coincidence and just two separate topics which collided by chance.
I hope this is a good start.
Kol Tuv,
Aharon Steiner