This is when the great summer begins, the time when the winter grains ripen, as well as the first fruits and vegetables in the grove and in the garden.

The dominant color of the Passover holiday is green, whereas Shavuot is colored in shades of gold and green.  These sheaves that sing their song in Nisan, at the beginning of Sivan they bend from their nights, waiting and waiting for the harvester’s blade.

The green grasses turn yellow in this season, their yellowness the yellow of wilting, as they were permeated by the scathing breath of the desert winds.

The weather, until now given to extreme fluctuations, is about to stabilize since the road to summer is open. Soon the easterly winds shall no longer visit us, and we will be at the mercy of westerly winds.

The days will be getting longer, and the white glaring light of summer will fill the spaces of the fields and gardens. But the green shades of the gardens and orchard plots will constantly give a person a feeling of comfort, as opposed to the stubble fields spreading their weary desolation.

 

Shavuot is the holiday marking the beginning of repatriation to man for his toil. As with the other major holidays, it is imbued with its historic memory. It ascends to us from our Book of Books, from the edges of the fields of Bethlehem in the legendary Book of Ruth. The northerly wind that passes with a whisper through the ripe fields of wheat contains the spirit of ancient times imbued with the scent of memories since then; this ancient spirit causes hidden strings to tremble in our souls. Has the time not come to bring the spirit of this holiday out to the open Hebrew space of our times, and turn the multitude of its celebrators toward the horizon of the vision inclined over engrouped fields?