Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin's 'Unlocking The Torah Text:
An In-Depth Journey Into The Weekly Parsha- Vayikra' Click here
to buy the book Why does so much mystery surround the festival
of Shavuot? Shouldn’t the single most important formative event
in Jewish history be clearly dated and uniquely celebrated?
Unexpected precedent for this approach is found in the form of
another two-tiered biblical festival, distant on the calendar
from but in many ways similar to the festival of Shavuot.
Immediately after the holiday of Succot, the Torah mandates a
one-day festival known as Shmini Atzeret. While this celebration
is clearly connected to Succot, the rabbis are nonetheless
emphatic in their contention that Shmini Atzeret is a “festival
unto itself,” with its own identity and message. (Talmud Bavli
Succa 47b–48a) We are thus again confronted with a “hybrid
holiday,” a celebration which, like Shavuot, is at once a
continuation of what comes before (even the title Shmini
Atzeret, the Eighth Day of Assembly, re