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A Testimony : YHWH Creator Father’s Name is in our DNA

Brothers and sisters in our MessiYAH YAHUSHUA YAHUWAH,

In the last few days I have had some great opportunities to set up several meetings with certain people, and then let the Ruach do the rest.  One of my prayers is to remove any darkness and fleshly desires, basically to get out of HIS way as he pours out HIS Ruach through me.  I do not want to cause any corruption and say anything I’m not supposed to when He has a message for certain people.

This week, I’ve had several meetings with unvaccinated Germans where I live.  There are people awake all over the world it seems.  I had a chance to witness to them about the name of YHWH encoded in our DNA and why there’s a satanic push to vaccinate the populations of the world.  I explained that this is playing out exactly according to scripture (MAT 24:22,27) and that satan and his minions are making war with the saints (the elect) and overcoming some of them (REV 13:7) through deceit, getting them to voluntarily take the vaccine and change their DNA.  I explained to them that satan knows that our DNA is divine which enables our bodies to become the temple of YHWH (1 COR 3:16), with his name written in us. The enemy also knows that if he can destroy our temple (our DNA), the Ruach Ha’Qodesh of the Most High will no longer dwell there because it has been corrupted by mankind’s hands.  The enemy is deceiving us, even some of the elect, to get us destroy our temples because he also knows that when we destroy our temple, YHWH will destroy us (1 COR 3:17).  I will continue to pray that their spiritual eyes to see have been opened and they come to the truth.

On another note, I’ve also had conversations with a co-worker, named E here, who took the vaccine, but is refusing to take any others.  I explained to him what Yah has revealed to me about the true vaccine agenda, a diabolical campaign to war against the saints to destroy the temple(s) of the Most High.  It is NO coincidence that E is now leaving government civilian service after 20 years because he sees the evil behind the vax mandates for govt. employees.  I told him to repent for himself and his wife and children that took the jab not knowing that they were destroying the temple of YHWH.  He is the priest of his family and should fall on his face before the Most High and ask for forgiveness and restoration for himself and his family, so the RUACH can once again dwell inside them.  He understands this is SERIOUS business.  I’ve attached a copy of a power point presentation I put together that I sent him concerning the name of God in our DNA.  Feel free to use it however you see fit.

E knows I’m retiring and going into the civilian sector.  I explained to him that I am in the preliminary stages of establishing an IT company to enable business transactions for financial and insurance products and would be recruiting many others through prayer and supplication. After chatting with him for a while, he unequivocally understands that righteous judgment is the number one trait we are looking for in our employees.  E is a civilian IT project manager also has a background in ecommerce.  In fact, he has started several ecommerce businesses in previous jobs, and he understands the processes over the internet very well.  I didn’t get into specifics, but told him that we were taking ecommerce to the next level with blockchain and would be interested in consulting with him later.  Wow,  It’s amazing the kind of things that happen to you after you submit yourself to the Father’s will.  I may not understand things as they unfold, but after looking back, I see how perfectly things have been orchestrated by Him! HalleluYah!

This has been a crazy unusual week for me, but the Father has been using me to deliver messages to key people I didn’t even think about.  Now, as I look back, I understand that it isn’t me that set up these meetings at all.  It was Yah.  I just need to stand in the gap and let the RUACH do it’s thing by being in the right place, at the right time.  Praise YHWH for His perfect timing in all things, including bringing people together according to YAH’s perfect purpose.

Respectfully your bother in Mashiach,

YaHShUEL


Jubilee 12:26
And I ( Messenger of the Almighty )opened his (Abraham) mouth, and his ears and his lips, and I began to speak with him in Hebrew in the tongue of the creation.

Additional Links to our Creator’s Shem : YaHuWaH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW_W39jO5Fs&t=33s

YHWH‘s Name is in The Sound of Our Breathing

Genesis 2:7 And YAHUWAH Aloha formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. – Job 33:4 The Ruach of Aloha hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.

Sound – Breathing effects: A collection of some physiological and pathological breath sounds that may be heard by auscultation.

This short and very powerful video demonstrates the relationship between the human breathing pattern and our Creator’s Name. His name, YAH-UW-AH, is pronounced exactly according to the inhalation and exhalation sounds produced when we breathe. He is our Breath of Life!

Exo 3:14  And Elohai said unto El-Mosheh, Ehayah Asher Ehayah: and he said, Thus shall you say unto the children of Yashar’el, Ehayah has sent me unto you. 

Exo 3:15  And Eloha said moreover unto El-Mosheh, Thus shall you say unto the children of Yashar’el, Yahuwah Eloha of your fathers, the Eloha of Avraham, the Eloha of Yitschaq, and the Eloha of Yaqovhas sent me unto you: this is my name forever, and this is my mention unto all generationsExo 3:16 Go, and gather the elders of Yashar’el together, and say unto them, Yahuwah Eloha of your fathers, the Eloha of Avraham, of Yitschaq, and of Yaqov appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Mitsrayim: 


Exo 3:17 
And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Mitsrayim unto the land of the Kena`aniym, and the Chittiym, and the Emoriym, and the Perizziym, and the Chivviym, and the Yevuciym, unto a land flowing with milk and honey. 
Exo 3:18  And they shall hearken to your voice: and you shall come, you and the elders of Yashar’el, unto the king of Mitsrayim, and ye shall say unto him, YaHuWaH Elohai of the Ivriym has met with us: and now let us go, we beseech you, three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to YaHuWaH Elohaynu. 

Exo 3:14 (I AM HE WHO EXIST) 出3:14 (I AM The One Who IS )

I Am The Breath Of LIFE : I Am Yah -Uw- Ah !

Selah: His Name YAHUWAH Tells Us: IN HIM IS LIFE

Genesis 2:7 And YAHUWAH Aloha formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. – Job 33:4 The Ruach of Aloha hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.

Shalum

Num 6: 26 YaHuWaH lift up His countenance upon you and give you shalom.

Num 6: 27 And they shall put My Name upon the children of Yisrael and I will Baruch them 。

Acknowledgment: Disciples of The Way Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ae6ZV2Y-9M

𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 (from right to left ) = YHWH (From left to Right) =YaHuWaH

How to pronounce the Creator’s name YaH-uW-aH Find it out from the chart below:

Y= ee sound, H= eh sound. Hence Y H= YaH, ( Psa 68:4  Sing unto Eloha, sing praises to HIS name: extol HIM that rides upon the heavens by HIS name YaH. )

U with emphasis = double UU (W) = OO (uW) sound. Hence UU-aH=uWaH

𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 (from right to left ) = YHWH (From Right to Left) =YaHuWaH

More Details goes to : https://man-child.com/publish-the-name-of-yahuwah/

“Ed” Hebrew word pronounced “Eyd.” It means “witness.”


“Edah” Hebrew word for “Assembly.” This word is pronounced “Eydah.” A feminine word. It is the Hebrew word that gets mistranslated as “church” in what Christians call the “New Testament.” (Eydah: HIS Bride! Rev 21:2 And I, Yocḥanon, saw the set-apart city, renewed Yerushalayim, coming down out of Shamayim/the heaven from Eloah, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.) It is one of the most occurring words in the Torah. It is used in the Torah of Moshe (Law of Moses) as a title for Yisra’el. The children of Yisra’el are called throughout the whole Torah. (For example, see Exodus/Shemot 12:3 “Speak to the Eydah(Assembly) /Church of Yisra’el.”) This is what the word meant to Messiah in the first century. It meant “Yisra’el.” “Church” thus is a false word, a made up word. A word used by the ancient church fathers to argue that Yisra’el is no longer the people of Eloah (the Greek word “ekklesia” means “elect/chosen people”) and the new people of “God” is the “church” that “Jesus” made. The “Assembly” of Yisra’el was not born on Pentecost, but with Pesach (See Shemot-Exodus Chapter 12). Again, look in a concordance, Yisra’el is called “Eydah” (Assembly) dozens of times in the Torah. This word has been corrupted by church men.
 

“Edat” or “Adat” Hebrew word pronounced “Eydat.” This word is the same word as “Edah” above. However, this is the feminine singular construct form. The Hebrew Language does not have a word for “of.” In Hebrew, this is expressed in the construct relationship, and “Edah” is a feminine word. Therefore, “Adat/Edat” means “Assembly of”
 

“Moed” This is a singular word, it means “appointed assembly.” This word is a noun, derived from the word “Edah.” “Edah” in Hebrew spelled ayin, dalet, heh. “Moed” spelled mem, ayin, dalet. The ayin and dalet are the root word. Moed thus a time in which the assembly must meet. This term used first in the TaNaCK in, Bereishis, Genesis 1:14. Eloah put the sun, moon, and stars in the sky to tell all humanity when His “moadim” occur, (“Moadim” is the plural of “Moed”, see below). The word “moadim” used throughout the Torah/Law (for great examples, see Vayikra, Leviticus chapter 23) as the word for the “appointed times” of Yisrael. They are Yisrael’s moeds so to speak. In other words, the Scriptural truth behind this, the true “Assembly” of Yisrael, meet on the moed of Eloahh discussed in Vayikra- Leviticus 23. Thus, as stated above, when the “Edah” meets on a “Moed” she is a “witness” (“ed”) to the world of Eloah’s order and plan for man, these Moadim, represent significant events passed and future, whether it is seventh day 1. Sabbath Shabbaton, 2.Pesach, 14th of Aviv Passover, 3.Chag Matzo, Unleavened Bread, 4.Wave Sheaf, First Fruits, 5.Chag Yom Shavuot, count seven Shabbats from the day of the wave sheaf and the morrow of the Shabbat is Yom Shavuot, count 50 days 6.Yom Teruah, Trumpets, 7.Yom Kippurim a Sabbath Shabbaton, 8. Chag Sukkot, Seven Days and the Eighth Day a Miqra Qodesh, and Rosh Qodesh, Renewed months, Bamibar Numbers10: 10 and 28:11.


Moadim” The Plural of “moed” above. This Hebrew word means “appointed time.”

Therefore, “EDAT MOADIM” means “Assembly/Witness, Eydat of the Moadim.”

Defining the Moadim a noun, Hebrew nouns orginate from three letter verbs with few exceptions and we see this in the word Shabat a prime root, a verb.

Shabat is the verb form composed of shen-beyt-tav, by adding a dot in the beyt the beyt is doubled and now the word becomes a noun spelled shen-beyt-beyt-tav-Shabbat, the seventh day.

Shabat verb form gives us the permitted and not permitted, the day of Shabbat, Beresheeth-Genesis 2:3 the verb form used and the day identified and Eloah barach-blessed the seventh day and made it kadosh. The second time shabat is used it is translated as cease in Beresheeth-Genesis 8:22. While the land remains seed time and harvest time and cold and heat, summer and winter will not shabat-cease-rest, meaning never ending.

Shemot-Exodus 23:12, (this verse tells us that there is a barach in keeping this day), six days you shall work and on the seventh day you shall shabat-rest or cease, and your ox and ass and be “naphash“-to be breathed upon, renewed, your sons and maids and the stranger.

Shabbat as a noun, Shemot-Exodus 35:2-3, six days shall work be done, the seventh day shall be to you a kadosh-set apart day a Shabbat of shabbaton-resting to YaHuWaH: whosoever works in this day shall be put to death. You shall not light a fire throughout your habitations on the Shabbat day, (kindle a fire, nor cook). Shemot-Exodus 16:23 And he said, this is that which YaHuWaH said, tomorrow is the Shabbaton-rest of the kadosh-set apart Shabbat to YaHuWaH: Bake what you will bake today and cook that you will cook and that which remains lay aside until the morning, “Shabbat”.

Beresheeth-Genesis 1:14, Rosh chodesh-Renewed Month and Eloah said, let there be lights in the firmament of the shamayim-heavens to divide the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for moadim-appointed times, and for days and years.

The moadim have a set time revealed in scripture, and recorded in the Hebrew calendar. The head, or beginning of months is defined in Shemot-Exodus 12:1-2 and 13:4 labels this month as Aviv. This will always be the time of the year when the barley is ripe, when the milk stage has passed and the starch has began to set-harden in the grain heads.

The set Moadim of Yod Hey Vav Hey YaHuWaH, are revealed in Vayiqra-Leviticus 23:1-2. These you shall proclaim as a Miqra Kodash-assembly set apart, at the appointed Moed-set time. Shemot-Exodus 23:14-17 three times in a year shall you oberserve a Chag-festival to YaHuWaH, and Devarim-Deuteronomy 16:16.

Vayiqra-Leviticus 23:3, for six days work is to be done and on day seven is a Shabbat Shabbaton..

Vayiqra-Leviticus 23:5, Peasch in the first month, 14th day between the evenings (starting the evening of the 14th and continuing on into the 15th, Shemot 12:42, an observance guarded) is the Peasch, to YaHuWaH. And the guidelines are revealed in Shemot 12:42 through 13:10 and verse 8, your children are present. Shemot 10:1-2 the reason for the Haggadah-Telling, and this day is a memorial the 15 of Aviv Shemot-Exodus 12:14.

Leviticus 23:6, HaMatzot-The Unleavened Bread and on the 15th day of this month is the first Chag-Festival of Matzot to YaHuWaH seven days shall you eat unleavened bread-matzot. On the first day you shall have a Miqra Kodash-assembly set apart, any work of service you shall not do. And you shall bring an offering near for a fire offering to YaHuWaH seven days. And day seven is a Miqra Kodash-assembly set apart, any work of service you shall not do. Shemot-Exodus 12:14-17, and this day shall be to you for a memorial, a Chag-Festival, and olam-forever by a chuqqah-law. Verse 16 allows for food to be prepared on the days of shabbaton-rest.

Vayiqra-Leviticus 23:10-14, The Wave Sheaf offering is the harvest of the first sheaf of barley when you come into the land, the morrow after the Shabbat (the 26th of Aviv), for verse 14 says you shall eat neither lecham-bread or roasted grain or new grain, not shall you eat of, until you have brought the offering to your Eloah, it is olam-never ending in all your dwellings (wherever you may dwell beyond the land). Yahushua-Joshua 5:10-11 Here we see that all Yisra’el ate the grain of the land the day after Pesach the 26th, the 15th ends the Pesach and starts unleavened bread. History is very clear that this day of counting the omer began on the 26th of Aviv, the morrow after the Shabbat of the moed of unleavened bread. Josephus records in Book 3, 10:5 Antiquities of the Jews how the Chag-festival was observed on the 16th. There is certain confusion from history that the day of the cutting of the omer and the waving of the sheaf of barley was the 16th of Aviv. According to the findings of DSS dead Sea Scroll, we discovered and confirmed that The Wave Sheaf offering is always on the 26th of Aviv, the first day of the week after the 7 days feast of Unleavened bread!

Vayiqra-Leviticus 23:15-21, on Yom Shavout-Festival of Weeks, the second Chag, you shall number to you (you are counting the fifty days and seven weeks) from the day after the Shabbat (of the unleavened feast) , from the day you bring in the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Shabbats perfect they shall be to the day after the seventh Shabbat (week). And you shall number fifty days (fifty days from the day you bring in the wave sheaf) and you shall bring a minchah-tribute, or present of new grains, foods to YaHuWaH. Out of your dwellings you shall bring in lechem-bread, a waving of two loaves of two tenths (ephah) of flour and they shall be baked with yeast, bikkurim-the first of the harvest to YHVH. (This is the only offering made that allows chametz-leavening, representing the sins of both houses of Yisrael). :21, and you shall proclaim on this same day, a Miqra Kodash-assembly set apart it is to you. And no work of service you shall do, it is a chuqqot-law, an olam-never ending in all your dwelling, in all your generations. Shemot-Exodus 34:22, this is the wheat harvest. Devarim-Deut. 16:9 count seven weeks for yourself. Begin to count when you put the sickle to the grain. You are to count from the cutting, not the wave offering as taught. And in the lands, Shemot-Exodus 23:19, the Firstfruit of the lands-adamat-your and Devarim-Deuteronomy 26:1-2, Then verse :3-:11, saying the avowal and :12-:19, are added in the third and sixth year of the seven year cycle for third tithe.

Vayiqra-Leviticus 23:24, On Yom Teruah, spoke YaHuWaH to Moshe, speak to the sons of Yisrael saying, in the month seven on the first day of this month shall be to you a shabbaton-rest, a memorial day, a clamoring of shofars, any work of service you shall not do and you shall bring a fire offering to YaHuWaH.

Day of Atonement | Grace Fellowship Church

Vayiqra-Leviticus 16:1-34 Yom Kippurim a Shabbat Shabbaton and it shall be unto you a chuqqah-law never ending in the seventh month in the 10 of the month you shall humble yourself and no work do (or cause others) the native and the ger-alien who is staying in your midst. :30 For in this day he (the Kohen Gadol-High Preist) shall kaphar-cover-atone for you to taher-cleanse you from all your sins before YaHuWaH you shall be taher-clean .This chapter brings to Yisrael the reminder of the cost of sin, and on this day the Nation is forgiven and renewed, :31 a Shabbat Shabbaton it is to you and you shall humble yourself a chuqqot-law never ending.

Vayiqra-Leviticus 23:26-32, :32 Yom Kippurim A Shabbat Shabbaton it is to you and you shall humble yourself in the ninth of the month at evening from evening to evening you shall keep your Shabbat.

Vayiqra-Leviticus 25:1-7 and :21, The Land Shabbat, counting begins on Yom Kippurim and spoke YaHuWaH to Moshe saying to the sons of Yisrael, when you come into the land I am giving you. The land then shall Shabat-rest a Shabbat to YaHuWaH. Six years shall you sow your fields and six years shall you prune your vineyard and gather the produce. and :4 And in the seventh year a Shabbat Shabbaton shall be for the land a Shabbat to YHVH. And your fields are not to be sowed and your vineyards shall not be pruned. The growth of your fields do not reap, and the produce of the unkept vineyards do not gather, a year of rest for the land it shall be, verses 6 and 7, explain to who the produce of the land is for and how it is consumed for food. Bet Divre Hayamim-2nd Chronicles 36:21 Yirmeyahu-Jere., 25:11-12 and 29:10, Vayiqra-Leviticus 26:34-35 and verse 43, The land’s Shabbat, and it’s importance to Yisrael and the nations.

Devarim-Deuteronomy 31:9 And Moshe wrote this Torah-Davrim in a scroll and delivered it to the kohanim, the sons of Levi, who bore the Ark of the covenant of YaHuWaH, and to all the zechanim-elders of Yisrael. And Moshe commanded them, saying at the end of every seven years, in the moed-appointed time of the year of release (counting the seventh Yom Kippurim) at Chag-Festival Sukkot, When kol-all Yisrael comes to appear before YaHuWaH your Eloah in the place that He shall choose, you shall read this Torah before kol-all Yisrael in there hearing. Devarim 1:5 Declared this Torah.

Vayiqra-Leviticus 25:8-10, The Yovel-Jubilee Year and Yom Kippurim And you shall count for you seven Shabbats of years seven years seven times, and shall be to you seven days of Shabbat years to you forty nine years. And you shall sound the shofar a signal in the month seventh in the tenth day of the month, in the day of Yom Kippurim shall pass a shofar through out all your lands. And you shall make Kadosh the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty in the land to all its dwellers. A Yovel-Jubilee it shall be to you and you shall return every man to his possession and each to his family you shall return. Verse 11-22 explain the food and its increase the sixth year for these festivals and the Bracha-blessings for following these Torah-instructions. For reference to Sabbatical year and Yovel-Jubilee year see Josephus Complete Works, translated by William Whiston, A.M., Library of Congress card number 60-15405, pages 702-705.

Vayiqra-Leviticus 23:39-44, The third Chag-Festival of Sukkot-Booths, And on the 15th day of the seventh month when you have gathered in the increase of the land. You shall celebrate a Chag-Festival to YaHuWaH seven days; on the first day shall be a Shabbaton-rest and on the eighth day shall be a Shabbaton. Devarim-Deuteronomy 16:1-17, Shemot-Exodus 34:24 These scripture you must review. Devarim 31:9-13 And in the seventh year, the year of release when you appear before the face of YaHuWaH at this Chag-Festival you are to read the Scroll of the Torah-five books given through Moshe.

The use of the words Shabbat Shabbaton with these days, seventh day Shabbat and Yom Kippurim and the Land Shabbat, a much heaver weight to these days!

The formulation of the calendar of Yisra’el in the Galut-Diaspora: The lunar calendar was formulated according to mathematical and astronomical calculations in the time of Hillel II, and adopted in the middle of the fourth century. The publication and adoption made it possible for Yisra’el to know when to observe the moadim and kol-all Yisra’el would observe these moed-appointed times on the same days as it is to this day, according to Torah of Moshe. This provides unity for Yisrael in worship of YaHuWaH Elohim to be one in Yahushua, while we wait for the return of Melech-King Son of David Meshiach Yahushua YaHuWaH Eloah. However, we observe the calendar shown from DSS dead Sea Scroll!

http://man-child.com/2021-2022-calendar-based-on-dds-priestly-order-6-years-calendar-excel-spreadsheet/

A look back at the Chag-Festival of Sukkot-Booths, in the first century a ceremony was performed in the Temple in Yerushalom, called the Water pouring Ceremony. It involved pouring out of water on each of the days of the Chag, except the first day of the Chag and the weekly Shabbat in the Chag, This ceremony seems to refer to those in the first 4000 years before Meshiach, who were washed in the torah-word and held captivity (for good), till Mashiach’s coming, the song of Deborah, Judges 5:12, and Ephesians 4:8. The Priest who was designated would gather water from the Pool of Siloam and at the Altar in the Temple pour the water into a silver vessel on the corner of the Altar. And each day the Priest would circle the Altar one time waving the four species of Vayiqra-Lev. 23:40. On the seventh day they would wave the four species and circle the Altar seven times, making the sound of a rushing wind (the coming Kadosh Ruach). Because of this different ceremony it received a special name Hoshana Rabbah-save now Great, so this day is the Great save now. These ceremonies were never performed on the eighth day. This eighth day following the Chag-of booths in Vayiqra-Lev. 23:36, is called Shemini Atzeret meaning the eighth day of assembly and the ceremony of Simchat Torah-Rejoicing with Torah (the Torah is opened anew). The number eight in scripture relates to the regeneration or new beginnings, the new heaven and earth the great day of YaHuShua-salvation (the book of life is opened). I hope you will see the sod-hidden that is in these ceremonies and this scripture Judges 5, the Song of Deborah as Mashiach’s return is also in this song along with His route and the kadosh-set apart ones who are washed in the living water-Torah and kadosh-set apart Spirit.



quotation from her article posted below:: ”


Each month numbered thirty days, and at the end of the third month in each quarter—which always ended on a Tuesday[JL1] —an additional day was added, making for a month of thirty-one days.  This additional day, the ninety-first in the quarter, was called “yom pagu`a,” (“the defective day”).  Once every seven years, during the sabbatical year, an extra week appears to have been added in order to make up the difference between the 364 days of their calendar and the solar year of 365¼ days, a period well known in antiquity and referred to in 2 Enoch.  They may have added two weeks once every twenty-eight years in order to make up the missing quarter day.  They selected a year of 364 days rather than of 365¼ days, as astronomical calculation of the solar year would require, because the priestly calendar was one of fixed Sabbaths, calculated in advance and based on a symmetric division of the days of the year and its seasons into equal seven-day periods.  The symmetrical yearly calendar of identical weekly and quarterly periods comprised fifty-two weeks, as detailed in the Psalms Scroll found in Qumran Cave 11, and was divided into four equal, 91-day periods, as detailed in Enoch and Jubilees.  On this fixed, mathematically calculated calendar, which provided the underpinnings for the priestly sacred service and was anchored in oath and covenant, each Sabbath and each of the seven appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH had a fixed day, a fixed date, and a fixed interval between it and the appointed time that preceded it.  The three pilgrimage festivals fell on the fifteenth of the first, third, and seventh months.  Thus, the festival of Shavuot—the appointed time of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, set by Scripture at seven weeks following the time of the barley harvest—invariably fell on Sunday, the fifteenth of the third month, seven weeks after the time of the waving of the sheaf.  The latter, according to the priestly calendar, invariably fell on the Sunday following the conclusion of the Passover festival, the twenty-sixth of the first month.  This 364-day, 52-week calendar is referred to at various points in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It begins with the month of Abib (that is, Nisan) and, as noted, comprises four 91-day seasons (Jub. 6:23-29); they are known as the season of early harvest, the summer time, the season of sowing, and the season of grass (Comm. Rule, 1QS X:7).  The calendar is discussed in various traditions, beginning with the books of Jubilees and Enoch, continuing through the Qumran Psalms Scroll and the calendar at the beginning of MMT, and culminating in the Temple Scroll, the Priestly Courses Scroll and the Qumran version of the flood story, which is an account of the determination of the yearly calendar.  All of the Zadokite priestly traditions are identical in this regard, emphasizing the fixed 364-day year divided into fifty-two weeks that were allocated to the twenty-four priestly courses (1 Chr. Ch. 24) who served in the Temple for one week at a time on a fixed rotation and after whom the weeks of the festivals were named.  The Qumran Priestly Courses Scroll enumerates the cycles of songs sung by the priests over a period of hundreds of years.  During the six-year period between sabbatical years, each of the twenty-four courses of priests was on duty thirteen times for a week at a time and followed the song cycles listed in the Priestly Courses Scroll.  The priestly courses—the groups who maintained the rotation in the sanctuary—were endowed with responsibility for the eternal priestly covenant; they observed the continuous annual cycle of fifty-two Sabbaths and seven appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH along with the seven-year cycle of sabbatical years and jubilees.  These cycles were the essence of the eternal testimony to the sacred cycles of respite (“the appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, holy convocations”) that maintain the covenant; accordingly, the festival of Shavuot, which attests to them, is called “the day of testimony.”  The cycles embodied the essence of the oath taken at Sinai, the oath that the festival of Shavuot was meant to maintain and renew annually.  Once each of the priestly courses had served thirteen times over six years, the seventh year was declared to be a sabbatical year in which work ceased, just as the seven days of the week concluded with the seventh day, the Sabbath, on which all labor was forbidden.  After seven seven-year cycles—forty-nine years—a jubilee year was declared. The twenty-four priestly courses were a living liturgical calendar, for their rotation into and out of service every Sunday marked the start of the new week and their rotation after fifty-two weeks marked the start of a new year.  The completion of thirteen cycles of service by each of the twenty-four courses marked the time for the sabbatical year, and the completion of ninety-one cycles of service marked the time for the jubilee.  The rigorous observance of these eternal and sacred seven-based cycles of respite from labor—fixed and calculated in advance as cycles of rest, sabbatical year, equality, freedom, and liberty, and made known from the heavens through the oath and covenant at Sinai—were regarded by the Zadokite priests as the essence of the oath and covenant maintained by the festival of Shavuot and written in the tablets of the covenant.”

FROM THE COVENANT OF THE RAINBOW TO THE COVENANT AT SINAI; FROM THE PILGRIMAGE TO THE TEMPLE TO THE VISION OF THE CHARIOT, FROM THE BERACHAH OF THE FIRST FRUITS TO THE PRIESTLY  BERACHAH, AND FROM THE TIQQUN LEIL  SHAVU`OT TO THE REVELATION OF THE SHEKHINAH

By RACHEL ELIOR[1]

shavuot_FROM_THE_COVENANT_OF_THE_RAINBOW.pdf

                                                                                    For David Grossman

“One must rejoice on this festival in particular, for it is the day on which we acquired the crown of Torah….”  Shelah, Masekhet shavu`ot, shenei luhot ha-berit, p. 7.

“If all their experiences are not here, certainly a memorial to their lives is here. And it is fitting and proper that we afford them a name and a vestige in Hebrew script and in the kadosh tongue.” S. Y. Agnon, Ha-esh ve-ha-ezim, p. 337.

            The festival of Shavuot (lit., “weeks”)—the fourth of the seven “appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH” detailed in the Pentateuch and one of the three pilgrimage festivals—is known in the Pentateuch by four names.  In the book of Exodus, it is expressly mentioned as one of the pilgrimage festivals and termed the “Feast of the Harvest” (Ex. 23:14-16); it is later called the “Feast of Weeks, of the first fruits of the wheat harvest” (Ex. 34:22).  In Leviticus (23:15-22), it is mentioned in detail as the day on which “you shall bring an offering of new grain to the Lord/YaHuWaH,” associated with the counting of seven full weeks from “the day after the sabbath,” following the time for harvesting the first sheaf (“omer”; id. 10-11).  In Deuteronomy, the holiday is called the “Feast of Weeks” in the context of the instruction that “You shall count off seven weeks; start to count the seven weeks when the sickle is first put to the standing grain.  Then you shall observe the Feast of Weeks [hag shavu`ot] for the Lord/YaHuWaH your God/Aloah , offering your freewill contribution according as the Lord/YaHuWaH your God/Aloah  has Baruched you.  You shall rejoice before the Lord/YaHuWaH your God/Aloah …at the place where the Lord/YaHuWaH your God/Aloah  will choose to establish His name” (Dt. 16:9-11).  The joy of the festival is associated with the pilgrimage to the sacred place, as stated in Deuteronomy, and the occasion is termed “the day of the first fruits” in Numbers 28:26 on account of the first fruits of the wheat harvest brought to the sanctuary on that day by those who had been Baruched with the harvest and were coming to appear before God/Aloah .  The festival sacrifices, offered by the priests at the sanctuary and including the “offering of new grain to the Lord/YaHuWaH on your Feast of Weeks [on which] you shall observe a sacred occasion” (id.) are described there in detail.

            Rather astonishingly, therefore, this central festival—known variously as the Feast of the Harvest and the Feast of the First Fruits of the Wheat Harvest, the day of the first fruits, the Feast of Weeks, the festival observed on the fiftieth day, after counting seven weeks, one of the three pilgrimage festivals, the feast of the harvest Berachahand the feast of the offering of new grain—is not mentioned by any of its biblical names in the early rabbinic tradition recorded in the Mishnah.  The rabbis identify no commandment uniquely dependent on the Feast of Weeks, which is based on the precise counting of seven Sabbaths or seven weeks, known as the “counting of the omer,” that precedes the pilgrimage to the sanctuary, and the Mishnah likewise contains no tractate devoted to the holiday and named for it, analogous to the tractates devoted to other holidays (such as Sukkah, Pesahim, or Yoma).  Compounding one’s surprise at the omission of the festival from mishnaic tradition and the single fleeting reference to it as an aside in the Tosefta is the perplexing suppression of the ancient tradition’s explicitly stated time for observing it.  That, in turn, becomes even more perplexing given that holiday is known in the ancient, pre-Christian-era priestly tradition recorded in the Book of Jubilees as the day of testimony, the festival of the giving of the Torah, the festival of the covenants, the festival observed by the angels, and the festival associated with Ezekiel’s vision and the tradition of the chariot.  In the Temple Scroll found at Qumran, the festival of Shavuot is described in a manner that blends various biblical traditions and emphasizes the holiday’s place in the sanctuary and in the service of priests who wave the sheaf; it appears in the context of the cycle of seven weeks between the first fruits of the barley harvest and the first fruits of the wheat harvest:

You[JL1]  shall count seven complete Sabbaths from the day of your bringing the sheaf of [the wave-offering.  You shall c]ount until the morrow of the seventh Sabbath.  You shall count [fifty] days.  You shall bring a new grain-offering to YHWH from your homes, [a loaf of fine fl]ou[r], freshly baked with leaven. They are firstfruits to YHWH, wheat  bread, twe[lve cakes, two] tenths of fine flour in each cake…the tribes of Israel.  They shall offer…their [grain-offerin]g and dr[ink-offering] according to the statute.  The [priests] shall wave…[wave-offering with the bread of] the firstfruits.  They shall b[elong to] the priests and they shall eat them in the [inner] court[yard], [as a ne]w [grain-offering], the bread of the firstfruits.  Then…new bread from freshly ripened ears. [On this] da[y] there shall be [a kadosh gathering, an eter]nal [rule] for their generations.  [They] shall [do] no work.  It is the feast of Weeks and the feast of Firstfruits, an eternal[l] memorial (Temple Scroll, XVIII-XIX, Vermes, p. 195).

            The festival of Shavuot was known in antiquity as the festival of Pentecost, as in the Book of Tobit, which describes the pilgrimage and refers to “our festival of Pentecost, which is the sacred festival of weeks” (Tobit 1:6-8; 2:1), and in 2 Macc. 12:31 and Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 13:252; Jewish Wars 1:253).  In Christian circles, Pentecost was the festival on which the Kadosh Spirit alit on the Apostles in Jerusalem in connection with the renewal of the covenant (Acts 2:1-4).  Early midrashim from the Land of Israel associate the festival of Shavuot with the angels and with the Chariot tradition tied to the revelation at Sinai: “The Kadosh One Baruched Be He descended on Sinai with 22,000 bands of ministering angels.  Another comment: ‘God/Aloah ’s chariots are myriads upon myriads, thousands upon thousands’ (Ps. 68:18); this teaches that 22,000 chariots descended with the Kadosh One Baruched Be He, and each and every chariot was as the vision seen by Ezekiel” (Pesiqta de-rav kahana, Ba-hodesh ha-shelishi, 107b).  The holiday was linked in the early Jewish-Christian tradition with the receiving of the Torah from the angels, as suggested by the comments of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who was stoned to death in Jerusalem.  Stephen rebuked the High Priest who served during the fourth decade of the first century CE: “You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels[JL2] ” (Acts 7:53).  Even earlier, in the mystical tradition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the festival of Shavuot was the festival of the vision of the Chariot, linked to the world of the cherubim and angels, and early in the first millennium BCE, it was the festival associated with the renewal of the Sinai covenant during the third month of the year (2 Chr. 15:10-15).  In kabbalistic lore based on ancient traditions, the festival that renewed the giving of the Torah and the Sinaitic covenant was regarded as the time of the nuptials between the Kadosh One Baruched Be He and the Shekhinah,[2] and the tiqqun leil shavu`ot—a ritual of staying awake all Shavuot night, engaged in study and prayer—was the occasion for readying the bride for her nuptials. That description is based on the portrayal of the Sinaitic covenant as a marriage bond between God/Aloah  and the congregation of Israel; and that, in turn, is connected to the wedding descriptions in the Song of Songs, which tannaitic tradition says was recited at the revelation at Sinai (Song of Songs Rabbah 81:2).  In the debate over whether Song of Songs should be deemed canonical, R. Akiva called the book the “kadosh of holies,” saying that “The entire world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the scriptures are kadosh, but Song of Songs is kadosh of holies” (Mishnah, Yadayim 3:5).  The song that was given at the Sinai revelation is taken to refer to the day of the giving of the Torah as a wedding day, to the groom who gives the Torah and to the congregation of Israel, His bride: “O maidens of Zion, go forth and gaze upon King Solomon wearing the crown that his mother gave him on his wedding day—this is the time of the giving of the Torah; on his day of bliss—this is the building of the Temple” (Mishnah Ta`anit 4:8).  “On his wedding day—this is Sinai, which was his wedding, as it is said, ‘stay pure today and tomorrow’[3] [Ex. 19:10]. On the day of his bliss—this is the giving of the Torah, as it is said, ‘He gave it [the Torah] to Moses when he finished [ke-khaloto] speaking with him’ [Ex. 31:18]. But the ketiv is ‘his bride’ [ke-khalato]” (Numbers Rabbah 12:8).[4]

            Nevertheless, for reasons that will be explained presently, the authors of the Mishnah preferred to suppress these ancient traditions and to avoid drawing explicit connections between the festival of Shavuot and the day of the giving of the Torah, between the giving of the Torah and the revelation of the Chariot, and between the revelation at Sinai and the day of testimony, the day when the covenant was renewed at the time of the wheat harvest.  Instead, they passed in silence over the priestly, mystical traditions associated with the oath, the covenant and its renewal, the giving of the Torah, the divine revelation at Sinai, the encounter the angels, and the Chariot.  They repressed this rich collection of memories when they struck the name “Shavuot” and instead referred to the sacred occasion by the rootless name “Azeret” (lit., assembly), disregarded the renewal of the covenant, and forbade expounding the passage in Ezekiel that describes the Chariot or reading it as the prophetic portion (haftarah) in the synagogue.  During the first generations following the destruction of the Temple, the sages relegated the tradition of the oaths and the covenants to the domain of the forgotten. They did so when they argued with the Sadducees over when the holiday was properly to be celebrated; when they ordained the counting of seven weeks from the day following the first day of Passover instead of counting seven weeks from the day after the Sabbath following the full week of Passover; and when they forbade the reading Ezekiel’s vision of the Chariot, which had been associated with the festival of Shavuot, determining instead that “one does not read the Chariot [as the prophetic passage] for Shavuot (Mishnah, Megillah 4:10).  The commandments related to the first-fruits festival are very briefly treated in the Mishnah; the sages devote to it only a few lines in tractate Bikkurim, which deals primarily with the agricultural aspects of the first-fruit offering and therefore appears in the order Zera`im, pertaining to agricultural matters, rather than in the order Mo`ed, where the other festivals are considered.  No attention is devoted specifically to the wheat harvest, which is conflated with the first fruits that are harvested in the seventh month; the festival is referred to not as Shavuot (Weeks) but as Azeret (Assembly); no gemara was written about this mishnaic passage; and no unique customs are associated with the holiday.  Moreover, the mishnaic passage omits all mention of cherubim and angels; and it transforms the holiday’s association with the vision of the Chariot and the angels into a covert tradition.  To do so, it rules that “the [passage concerning the] Chariot is not expounded” and “the [passage concerning the] Chariot is not read as the prophetic reading.” Moreover, the sages deemed the written traditions that discuss the Chariot, linked to the Kadosh of Holies, and that expand upon the celestial chariots, associated with the calendar for Temple service, to be “external books” (i.e., the non-canonical works of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha) not to be read.  The absence of the festival of Weeks from rabbinic memory is striking, as is the sages’ reluctance to deal with it as the festival of the giving of the Torah and the entry into the covenant, the festival of the written Torah and of the Chariot, the festival observed by the angels, the festival of the offering of new grain and the waving of the first-fruit offering, associated with the counting of seven weeks, or as “[a kadosh gathering, an eter]nal [rule] for their generations…. It is the feast of Weeks and the feast of Firstfruits, an eternal[l] memorial” (Temple Scroll XIX, Vermes, p. 195).  It appears that these phenomena are all associated with the fact that the pre-Common-Era priestly traditions that appear in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in parallels in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha assign the festival of Shavuot a central place as the festival of renewal of the covenant observed by the angels in heaven (Jub. 6:18) and the priests on earth.

            And so, for example, the second-century-BCE Book of Jubilees tells of the covenant entered into with Noah during the third month, at the conclusion of the flood: “He set his bow in the clouds for a sign of the covenant which is forever…. Therefore it is ordained and written in the heavenly tablets that they should observe the feast of Shebuot [Weeks] in this month, once per year, in order to renew the covenant in all (respects), year by year.  And all of this feast was celebrated in heaven from the day of creation until the days of Noah….” (Jub. 6:16-18).  The parallel version in Gen. 9:16-17 says nothing of the date or of the renewal of the covenant: “‘When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God/Aloah  and all living creatures, all flesh that is on the earth.  That,’ God/Aloah  said to Noah, ‘shall be the sign of the covenant that I have established between Me and all flesh that is on earth.’” The rainbow is elsewhere mentioned in the Hebrew Bible only in Ezekiel’s vision, which also forms part of the tradition regarding covenants in the third month, as will be explained below.  In Jubilees, the holiday is termed “the festival of the renewal of the covenant,” a name derived from the command just quoted: “they should observe the feast of Shavuot in this month, once per year, in order to renew the covenant in all (respects), year by year.”  It is referred as well as a day of testimony and a kadosh day (Jub. 6:12, 36-37) and as a twofold feast (Jub. 6:21); and numerous traditions linking the Patriarchs to the covenants and the angels who enter into a covenant in the third month are associated with it (Jub. 14:18-20; 15:1-15; 16:13-14).

            The name Shavuot is associated not only with weeks (shavu`ot) but also with oaths (shevu`ot) and covenant.  It is tied to the covenant entered into between God/Aloah , the liberator from servitude, and those who left Egypt and attained freedom from servitude.  That covenant was entered into at Mount Sinai, after the passing of seven weeks from the start of the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness, which had begun on the twenty-sixth day of the month declared to be the first: “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you” (Ex. 12:2).

            The festival of Shavuot is known in the Book of Jubilees as the time for renewal of the ancient covenants entered into on that occasion: the covenant of the rainbow, entered into with Noah during the third month, as described earlier, and the covenant between the pieces entered into with Abraham at the mid-point of the third month (Jub. 14:10).  The angels are those who execute the covenant, as the angel of the presence says: “And on that day [the mid-point of the third month], we made a covenant with Abram, just as we had made a covenant in that month with Noah.  And Abram renewed the feast and the ordinance for himself forever” (Jub. 14:20).  Like every one of the seven appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, the festival of Shavuot forms a crossroads of remembrance and forgetting, canonization and censorship, hegemonic memory and alternative memory, transmission and loss.  It is a holiday linked to the struggle over memory and the weaving of historical alternatives from antiquity to our own time, and it is linked as well to polemics and disputes that have been little considered and that most have preferred to pass over in silence.

            The history of the hidden festival of Shavuot is linked to three disputes that raged in late antiquity: one between the Zadokite priests and the Hasmonean priests during the second century BCE; one between the Sadducees and the Pharisees during the first century BCE and first century CE; and one between the sages and the Jewish-Christians during the first and second centuries CE.  For the priests of the House of Zadok, Shavuot occupied a central and sacred place as the festival of the covenants and oaths executed during the third month and of the renewal of the covenant at that time.  This is evident from passages in Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, from the account of the giving of the Torah that appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls, from the calendar appearing at the beginning of the letter in the Dead Sea Scrolls known as Miqzat ma`aseh ha-torah (“Some Observances of the Law,” abbreviated as MMT), and from the beginning of the Dead Sea “Community Rule,” all of which were written during the last centuries BCE.   The sages, however, who were active following the destruction of the Second Temple, sought to suppress the traditions associated with this priestly festival—the festival of the covenant and the testimony, of the angels and the Chariot; the festival of the Zadokite priests and of the pilgrimage to the Temple.  They did so during the first centuries following the destruction of the Temple, an event that necessarily entailed the abolition of the sacred Temple service and the rejection of the cultic and mystical priestly tradition set forth in the written Torah and its Dead Sea Scroll expansions.  All of those texts without exception were considered sacred scriptures, and many were linked to the Zadokite priests and their covenantal associates, the angels.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

            The priests of the House of Zadok were a dynasty that served as High Priests for nearly a millennium, from the time of Aaron the priest until 175 BCE.  In the tradition of the rabbinic sages, they are known as Sadducees and Boethians; in Hellenistic literature they are known as the House of Honyo, named for Honyo ben Simeon III, the last Zadokite priest to serve in the Temple in Jerusalem; and in the Dead Sea Scrolls they are known as the Zadokite priests and the men of their covenant, named for Zadok ben Ahituv, the priest who served as the “first among the sons of Phineas” in Jerusalem at the time of King David, as mentioned in the Joshua Apocryphon.  The Bible tells that Zadok was the priest who served in the time of King David (2 Sam. 8:17; 15:24-29) and anointed Solomon as David’s successor (1 Kgs. 1:34, 39-45).  Toward the end of the First Temple period, they are referred to as the sons of Zadok, in view of the words of the priest and prophet Ezekiel: “the priests who perform the duties of the altar—they are the sons of Zadok, who alone of the descendants of Levi may approach the Lord/YaHuWaH to minister to Him” (Ez. 40:46; 43:19; 44:15; 48:11).  Zadok ben Ahituv’s lineage goes back to Aaron, the priest, progenitor of the High Priesthood (Ezra 7:2-5; Neh. 11:11; 1 Chr. 16:39), and his descendants served in Solomon’s Temple until the time of Seraiah, the chief priest, who was exiled with King Jehoiachin (1 Kgs. 4:2; 2 Kgs[JL3] . 25:18; 1 Chr. 5:29-34, 38; 9:11; 2 Chr. 31:10).  Thereafter, the descendants of Seraiah’s grandson, Joshua ben Jehozadak, served in the Second Temple from the return from the Babylonian Exile until the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, who conquered Jerusalem in 175 BCE.  The dispute between the Zadokite priests and the sages regarding the time for harvesting the omer and the consequent time for the festival of Shavuot is known as a dispute between Sadducees and Pharisees, but it was preceded by the intense conflict between the displaced Zadokite priests, who maintained the use of a solar calendar, and the Hasmonean priests who supplanted them and maintained the use of a lunar calendar.  For 120 years, from the middle of the second century BCE until the time of Herod, during the final third of the first century BCE, the Hasmonean priests took the place of the Zadokite priests.  In general, little attention is devoted to the nature of these disputes, which related to the festival of Shavuot, the festival of the renewal of the covenant and the time of the priestly  Berachah, and were tied to the dispute over the fixed weekly calendar vs. the variable monthly calendar and to the dispute over the times of the harvest.  That lack of attention may be attributable to the complexity of the disputes’ historical context, to the widespread anachronistic tendency to read ancient history exclusively through the rabbinic tradition, or to the struggles over remembrance and forgetting that have been waged through the ages, from antiquity until our own time.

            The disputes over the festival of Shavuot—its names and timing, the commandments that depend on it, and the memories associated with it—are connected to the polemic over the calendar and the struggle over who had the authority to fix it and determine the premises that would guide its calculation.  The Torah, in the formulation adopted by the sages following the destruction of the Temple, does not specify a fixed number of days in a year or in a month, does not specify a day of the week to be associated in advance with the date for any of the seven fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, and lacks a set time for the festival of Shavuot.  In contrast, the parallel and earlier versions of the Torah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, written by the “priests of the House of Zadok and the men of their covenant,” contain a fixed time for Shavuot, known and calculated in advance—Sunday, the fifteenth day of the third month, seven weeks after the day of waving the sheaf; the latter observance likewise is always on a Sunday, the twenty-sixth day of the first month.  The difference between the two perspectives flowed from the view of the Zadokite priests and the men of their covenant that the Temple was to follow a fixed, 364-day solar calendar, known and calculated in advance.  The calendar was made known by the angels to Enoch son of Jared, of the seventh Adamite generation (Gen. 5:21-24; Jub. 4:16-25) and is associated with various events in the tradition of the books of Genesis and Jubilees.  The calendar began each year with the first day of the first month (Ex. 12:2), which always fell on a Wednesday, the day on which the sun, moon, and stars were created; it was the first day of the month of Nisan, the day of the vernal equinox.  The year thus began with the day on which the heavenly luminaries were created, in the first month, also known as the month of Abib, from which cyclical and eternal Jewish time was counted—a time system encompassing cycles of respite from servitude.  The times of respite were termed in the Bible “the appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH” and were tied to the counting of seven-based cycles that establish the covenant.  In the Book of Exodus, the first month is the month of transition form enslavement to liberty, and it is the point from which one begins to count the Sabbaths and the seven appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH.  Time is marked by Sabbaths, by the seven appointed times, and by sabbatical years and jubilees, all of which point to the covenant through sacred seven-based cycles.  This seven-based cycle is introduced by “These are the set times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, the sacred occasions, which you shall celebrate each at its appointed time” (Lev. 23:4) and is detailed in Chap. 23 of Leviticus; it is referred to in the Scrolls as “appointed times of freedom.” These seven appointed times, and the cycles of sabbatical years and jubilees associated with them in the seven-based cycles of respite, are tied to the commandments made known in the covenant entered into in the third month on the festival of Shavuot, in the encounter at Sinai.

            The Dead Sea Scrolls version of “The Book of Heavenly Luminaries,” a portion of 1 Enoch (chapters 72-82), tells of the receipt of the calendar from the angels, and Jubilees (chapter 6) recounts the flood story as the story of the calculation of the calendar.  According to both of these texts, the year is divided into four equal quarters of ninety-one days each.  The first day of each quarter is called the “day of remembrance.”  As already noted, the first day of the year is invariably a Wednesday, the day on which the heavenly luminaries were created; it is the day of remembrance on the first day of the first month.   Each of the quarters, corresponding to the four seasons of the year, likewise begins on a Wednesday: the first of Nisan, corresponding to the vernal equinox; the first of Tammuz, the summer solstice; the first of Tishri, the autumnal equinox; and the first of Tevet, the winter solstice.  Each quarter began with the day of remembrance on a Wednesday, encompassed thirteen Sabbaths with designated dates, and continued for thirteen identical weeks.  The first Sabbath would fall invariably on the fourth day of the first month of the quarter, and the final Sabbath, the thirteenth in the quarter, would fall on the twenty-eighth of the third month.

            The festival of Shavuot, on this calendar, always falls on the day following the eleventh Sabbath of the first quarter, that is, Sunday, the fifteenth day of the third month.  All of the quarters are marked by a similar, regular division into thirteen Sabbaths having fixed dates, known in advance: the first Sabbath in the quarter falls on the fourth day of the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth months, respectively, and the final Sabbath in the quarter falls on the twenty-eighth day of the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth months, respectively.  Each month numbered thirty days, and at the end of the third month in each quarter—which always ended on a Tuesday[JL4] —an additional day was added, making for a month of thirty-one days.  This additional day, the ninety-first in the quarter, was called “yom pagu`a,” (“the defective day”).  Once every seven years, during the sabbatical year, an extra week appears to have been added in order to make up the difference between the 364 days of their calendar and the solar year of 365¼ days, a period well known in antiquity and referred to in 2 Enoch.  They may have added two weeks once every twenty-eight years in order to make up the missing quarter day.  They selected a year of 364 days rather than of 365¼ days, as astronomical calculation of the solar year would require, because the priestly calendar was one of fixed Sabbaths, calculated in advance and based on a symmetric division of the days of the year and its seasons into equal seven-day periods.  The symmetrical yearly calendar of identical weekly and quarterly periods comprised fifty-two weeks, as detailed in the Psalms Scroll found in Qumran Cave 11, and was divided into four equal, 91-day periods, as detailed in Enoch and Jubilees.  On this fixed, mathematically calculated calendar, which provided the underpinnings for the priestly sacred service and was anchored in oath and covenant, each Sabbath and each of the seven appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH had a fixed day, a fixed date, and a fixed interval between it and the appointed time that preceded it.  The three pilgrimage festivals fell on the fifteenth of the first, third, and seventh months.  Thus, the festival of Shavuot—the appointed time of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, set by Scripture at seven weeks following the time of the barley harvest—invariably fell on Sunday, the fifteenth of the third month, seven weeks after the time of the waving of the sheaf.  The latter, according to the priestly calendar, invariably fell on the Sunday following the conclusion of the Passover festival, the twenty-sixth of the first month.  This 364-day, 52-week calendar is referred to at various points in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It begins with the month of Abib (that is, Nisan) and, as noted, comprises four 91-day seasons (Jub. 6:23-29); they are known as the season of early harvest, the summer time, the season of sowing, and the season of grass (Comm. Rule, 1QS X:7).  The calendar is discussed in various traditions, beginning with the books of Jubilees and Enoch, continuing through the Qumran Psalms Scroll and the calendar at the beginning of MMT, and culminating in the Temple Scroll, the Priestly Courses Scroll and the Qumran version of the flood story, which is an account of the determination of the yearly calendar.  All of the Zadokite priestly traditions are identical in this regard, emphasizing the fixed 364-day year divided into fifty-two weeks that were allocated to the twenty-four priestly courses (1 Chr. Ch. 24) who served in the Temple for one week at a time on a fixed rotation and after whom the weeks of the festivals were named.  The Qumran Priestly Courses Scroll enumerates the cycles of songs sung by the priests over a period of hundreds of years.  During the six-year period between sabbatical years, each of the twenty-four courses of priests was on duty thirteen times for a week at a time and followed the song cycles listed in the Priestly Courses Scroll.  The priestly courses—the groups who maintained the rotation in the sanctuary—were endowed with responsibility for the eternal priestly covenant; they observed the continuous annual cycle of fifty-two Sabbaths and seven appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH along with the seven-year cycle of sabbatical years and jubilees.  These cycles were the essence of the eternal testimony to the sacred cycles of respite (“the appointed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, kadosh convocations”) that maintain the covenant; accordingly, the festival of Shavuot, which attests to them, is called “the day of testimony.”  The cycles embodied the essence of the oath taken at Sinai, the oath that the festival of Shavuot was meant to maintain and renew annually.  Once each of the priestly courses had served thirteen times over six years, the seventh year was declared to be a sabbatical year in which work ceased, just as the seven days of the week concluded with the seventh day, the Sabbath, on which all labor was forbidden.  After seven seven-year cycles—forty-nine years—a jubilee year was declared. The twenty-four priestly courses were a living liturgical calendar, for their rotation into and out of service every Sunday marked the start of the new week and their rotation after fifty-two weeks marked the start of a new year.  The completion of thirteen cycles of service by each of the twenty-four courses marked the time for the sabbatical year, and the completion of ninety-one cycles of service marked the time for the jubilee.  The rigorous observance of these eternal and sacred seven-based cycles of respite from labor—fixed and calculated in advance as cycles of rest, sabbatical year, equality, freedom, and liberty, and made known from the heavens through the oath and covenant at Sinai—were regarded by the Zadokite priests as the essence of the oath and covenant maintained by the festival of Shavuot and written in the tablets of the covenant.

*     *     *     *     *     *

            According to the priestly historiography, this solar calendar of Sabbaths, mathematically calculated in advance and always beginning in the month of Abib (Nisan) was followed in the sanctuary from the time of the High Priest Zadok son of Ahituv, who served in the First Temple and whose descendants are referred to by the prophet Ezekiel—himself a priest—as “the levitical priests who are of the stock of Zadok, and so eligible to minister to Me” (Ezek. 43:19).  It remained in force until 175 BCE, the year in which the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, the son of Antiochus III (a descendant of Alexander the Great’s successors) came to power.  He conquered Jerusalem and imposed, in the Temple as throughout his dominions, the Seleucid-Greek calendar (Dan. 7:25; 11:31).  That calendar, instituted for administrative reasons, was a lunar calendar whose year began in the fall; it was based on human observation of the moon and required intercalation to keep the lunar and solar years synchronized—something not contemplated by the Bible.  The High Priest serving in Jerusalem at the time—Honyo ben Simeon, the last of the Zadokite priests—rejected Antiochus’s demand to institute the lunar calendar with its variable number of days.  He insisted that there could be no change in the sacred, 364-day solar calendar with its spring-time new year, a calendar that was based on divinely revealed fixed calculations and that provided the basis for the entire sacred service of the priestly courses.  For his defiance, Honyo was ousted by Antiochus from his position as High Priest and, in 171 BCE, was murdered by Andronicus, an agent of the Hellenizing High Priest Menelaus, whom Antiochus had appointed.  From 175 to 164 BCE, Antiochus appointed a series of Hellenizing high priests who purchased the position and obeyed Antiochus’s directive to change the calendar.  Three Hellenizing priests—Jason, Menelaus, and Alcimus—served in place of the ousted Zadokite priests between 175 and 159 BCE.  In the wake of the Hasmonean war against Antiochus (167-164 BCE) and the corrupt and defiling calendar and ritual that he imposed on the Temple (Dan. 11: 31-32; 2 Macc. 6:1-7), the Hasmonean dynasty came to power, serving as priests from 152 to 37 BCE.  During that long period, the ousted Zadokites and their allies called themselves “the sons of light,” for they struggled on behalf of the sacred, seven-based solar calendar, in which the festival of Shavuot would always fall on Sunday, the fifteenth of the third month, following the eleventh Sabbath of the quarterly season, as written in the MMT Scroll found at Qumran.  In the account of the calendar with which that letter begins, its authors determined that: “[…On the seventh of the third month: sabbath. On the fourteenth of it: sabbath. On the fifteenth of it: Feast of Weeks. On the twenty-f]irs[t] of it: sabbath. [On] the twenty-eighth of it: sabbath. The first of the sabbath (=Sunday) and the second[d da]y (=Monday) [and the third are to be added. And the season is complete: ninety-one days…]” (MMT A:I-II, Vermes, pp. 221-222).  The Zadokites referred to their rivals, the Hasmonean priests, as the “sons of darkness.”  The latter were not included in the biblical account of the high priestly dynasty and assumed the priesthood by force of arms (1 Macc. Chap. 10).  They adopted the Seleucid calendar—a variable, lunar calendar, dependent on human observation of the new moon and precluding advance determination of the times for the festivals.  The Hasmonean priests came to power as the appointees of Antiochus’s successors, King Alexander Balus and King Demetrius II, during the 150s and 140s BCE (1 Macc. 10:18-21; 11:27-37, 57-58; 13:36-42; 14:38), and these Seleucid kings imposed their lunar calendar on the Hasmoneans, their protégés.  The Hasmoneans were termed not only “the sons of darkness” but also “the priest of wickedness” (opposite of “the priest of righteousness”), the “sons of evil” (opposite of “the sons of righteousness”), and the “dominion of malice and Mastema”; they were so called because they stole the priesthood from the Zadokites, desecrated and defiled the sanctuary, and accepted—evidently having no choice in the matter—the lunar calendar of their Seleucid patrons.  In contrast to the Hasmonean priests, who affirmed the variable lunar calendar and were therefore termed “sons of darkness” and “sons of evil, nullifiers of the covenant,” the Zadokite priests, who adhered to the fixed and sacred solar calendar, termed themselves “sons of light” and “sons of righteousness, preservers of the covenant.”  They saw themselves as loyal to the covenant, divinely chosen to maintain the ways of righteousness and of the sacred and covenantal appointed times, grounded on preservation of the fixed, pre-calculated, seven-based cycles.  They saw themselves as well as preservers of the sacred priestly courses, the stock of Aaron, who was the holiest of the kadosh, able to trace their lineage all the way back to the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness, and “the stock of Zadok, and so eligible to minister to me” (Ezek. 43:19), going back to the kingdom of David and Solomon.  The Qumran Habakkuk Commentary, written in the circles of the “men of truth who keep the Law”  (Vermes, p. 482) and are led by the Teacher of Righteousness (id.), tells of a struggle between two priestly houses regarding the time for observing the fast of the Day of Atonement.  On the one hand are those loyal to “the Covenant of God/Aloah ” who follow the path of light[JL5] ; they are the House of Zadok.  Arrayed against them are “the breakers of the Covenant” who walk in the paths of darkness; they are the Hasmoneans.  The scroll describes how the wicked Hasmonean priest persecutes the righteous Zadokite priest on the day considered to be the Day of Atonement on the sacred Zadokite calendar (Friday, the tenth day of the seventh month):

Its interpretation concerns the Wicked Priest who pursued the Teacher of Righteousness to consume him with the heat of his anger in the place of his banishment.  In festival time, during the rest of the day of Atonement, he appeared to them to consume them and make them fall on the day of fasting, the sabbath of their rest (DSSSE p. 21).

The Day of Atonement and the festival of Shavuot were the two central priestly festivals on which the service of the High Priest was assigned the highest level of importance.  Shavuot stood at the focus of the Zadokite world, for they interpreted its name as referring not[JL6]  only to weeks (from shavu`a, a week) but also to an oath or covenant (shevu`ah), as declared by Jeremiah, the priest-prophet: “Who keeps for our benefit the weeks [shevu`ot, also translatable as ‘oaths’] appointed for harvest” (Jer. 5:24) (Ezek[JL7] . 16:8) and consistent with the meaning of the word sheva in Scripture, also associated with an oath or covenant (Gen. 26:31-33). As noted, the oath concerns the maintenance of the seven-based cycles of respite referred to as “the fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH…sacred occasions” and as the “times of liberty” established in the fixed, eternal, and pre-determined order of cycles made known in the covenant of Sinai that was entered into on the festival of Shavuot.  These cycles of respite preserve the cycles of days of freedom and liberty that lie at the basis of the covenant between God/Aloah  and his people.  Their meaning is that man is bound by oath to forgo his dominion, possession, and ownership on one day in every seven; on the seven appointed times that fall during the first seven months of each year; during one year in every seven; and once in every seven seven-year cycles.  Man is commanded to rest, in accord with these seven-based cycles of appointed times, from all labor and from any enslavement of himself or another; to cease from earning any profit and from changing creation for his benefit.  This respite from all labor entails following the paths of righteousness, which interrupt secular enslavement and treat all members of the resting community equally, sanctifying them through the sacred occasions.  These ways of righteousness are conditioned on observing “the fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH…the sacred occasions” and are tied to “the spirits of true and righteous knowledge in the Kadosh of Holies,” as referred to in the Song for the Sacrifice of the Eleventh Sabbath found at Qumran[JL8] .  That sabbath (the eleventh) falls on the fourteenth day of the third month, the day preceding the festival of Shavuot, which always falls on Sunday, the fifteenth day of the third month.  The ways of true and righteous knowledge were conditioned on the cycles of respite and release, of renouncing mastery and ownership, wealth and enslavement, all in accord with the rhythm of fixed, seven-based cycles.  These continuous cycles of “fixed times, the fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions” (Lev. 23:2) constitute cycles of social justice; sacred, seven-based cycles preserved in oath and covenant.  They comprise a periodic waiver of mastery and renunciation of ownership, emancipation of lands and emancipation of slaves.  These cycles, all based on seven (sheva) and oath (shevu`ah), consist of five[JL9]  segments: fifty-two Sabbaths and seven fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, all falling during the first seven months of the year (Lev. 23), on which no work at all permitted; together they come to seventy days every year.  In addition, they include the sabbatical years once in every seven years and the jubilee once in every seven seven-year cycles (Lev. 23:1-14).  These cycles are the precondition to the Berachahof the seven species with which the Land of Israel is Baruched during the first seven months of the year, during which the seven “fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH” fall.

            The oath and the covenant—referred to, as noted, in the words of the priest-prophet Jeremiah as “the weeks [oaths] appointed for harvest”—are based, on the one hand, on the divine promise given to those who observe the covenant grounded on seven-based cycles of human rest and, on the other, on divine Berachahthrough seven-based cycles of agricultural productivity.  The covenant was entered into with those adjured to maintain the seven-based cycles of respite, known as the “fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, the sacred occasions.”  Those who observe these cycles will be Baruched with, and enjoy to satiation, the seven forms of produce yielded by the Land of Israel during the first seven months of the year—that is, between Nisan and Tishri—in accord with God/Aloah ’s words that sum up the Torah portion of Be-har and introduce the portion of Be-huqqotai:

[If] you…keep my sabbaths and venerate My sanctuary [or: My sacred occasions—R. E.]….If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit.  Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and your vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your fill of bread and dwell securely in your land….I will…make you fertile and multiply you; and I will maintain My covenant with you (Lev. 26:2-9).

“Threshing” refers to the barley harvest and the wheat harvest, which are seven Sabbaths, or seven weeks: the barley harvest—that is the “sheaf” (omer), as noted, is on Sunday, the twenty-sixth day of Nisan, and the wheat harvest is seven sabbaths later, on Sunday, the fifteenth of Sivan.  The “vintage” is the time for gathering wine grapes, which begins seven sabbaths, or seven weeks, following the conclusion of the wheat harvest, on Sunday, the third day of the month of Av.  Seven weeks after that, on Sunday, the twenty-second of the month of Elul, is the beginning of the olive-pressing season.  After these four species have been gathered—at seven-week intervals during the period running from the first month through the sixth; that is, barley on Sunday, 26 Nisan (termed “the festival of the barley time” in the Priestly Courses Scroll), wheat on Sunday, 15 Sivan, wine on Sunday, 3 Av, and oil on Sunday, 22 Elul—the year concludes with the seven-day festival of Sukkot, beginning at the mid-point of the seventh month, Tishri.  It is then that dates, figs, and pomegranates are harvested in their respective ways.  The dates for harvesting all seven of these species are specified in the Qumran Temple Scroll and alluded to in Scripture in the expression “grain, wine, and oil.”

            An example of this seven-based enumeration, providing for seven-week cycles between the onsets of the times for harvesting the first four of the seven species (barley, wheat, grapes and olives) can be found in the Temple Scroll’s comments about the time of the grape harvest, which begins seven weeks after the time for the offering of new bread first-fruits—that is, the wheat time, the festival of Shavuot:

You [shall count] seven weeks from the day when you bring the new grain-offering to YHW[H], the bread of firstfruits.  Seven full Sabbaths [shall elapse un]til you have counted fifty days to the morrow of the seventh Sabbath. [You] shall [bring] new wine for a drink-offering (Temple Scroll XIX:11-14; Vermes, p. 195).

Maintenance of the sacred seven-based cycle of rest on the Sabbaths, the seven fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, the sabbatical years, and the jubilees—detailed in God/Aloah ’s word in Torah portions of Emor and Be-har (Lev. 23 and 25) and in God/Aloah ’s word transmitted in the first person in the Temple Scroll—ensures the continuation of the seven-based cycles of harvest or the annual cycle of the seven species that promises  Berachah, fertility, and life, as detailed in the portion of Be-huqqotai (Lev. 26). The encounter at Sinai at the middle of the third month (Ex. 19:1; Jub. 1:1) takes place at the time of the first-fruit festival—the fixed time of the wheat harvest; the festival of Shavuot; the time of the “weeks [oaths] appointed for harvest” (Jer. 5:24); the time at which the covenant was entered into and the oath was taken regarding the seven-based cycles of respite commanded from the heavens, whose pinnacle is the festival of Shavuot; the day of testimony; the festival observed by the angels on high, known as the festival of the giving of the Torah.  There is a divine command regarding cyclical times of rest on Sabbaths and on the seven sacred fixed times, during the sabbatical year and the jubilee, all of which were made known by divine revelation at the time the covenant was entered into at Sinai; and the promises made to those who maintain the covenant, also made known at that time, are renewed and attested to again annually, in concrete form, beginning with the entry into the Land of Israel at the fiftieth jubilee (Jub. 50).  That process takes place through the cyclical renewal of the “weeks [oaths] appointed for harvest” and the harvest cycles of the seven species, all dependent on divine  Berachah.  That  Berachah, in turn, is conditioned on maintaining the way of righteousness through oath, respite, and renunciation of mastery on one day in every seven; on each of the seven fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH; during one year in every seven; and during the jubilee year once in every seven seven-year cycles.  These sanctified, seven-based cycles of sacred time were observed in the Temple by the priests of the House of Zadok and the priests of the House of Aaron, the guardians of the sacred courses, who served in the Temple by divine selection (Ex. 27:21; 28:1; 29:44; Lev. 3:38; 1 Chr. 23:13) and were maintained by oath and covenant as summed up in the calendar of Sabbaths, fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH, sabbatical years, and jubilees referred to earlier.  For the people, all of whom (except for the tribe of Levi) were engaged in agriculture, the harvest times were days of rest, joy and gladness (“you shall rejoice in your festival”).  The planters and reapers who realize Berachahin their toil would joyfully and gratefully bring to the Temple the first fruits of their barley harvest, along with the first fruits of their wheat, grape, and olive harvests at seven-week intervals during the first seven months of the year (Deut. 28:51; 2 Chr. 31:5; 32:28; Hos. 2;10; Neh. 10:40).

            2 Chronicles, chapter 15, recounts the joy felt by the pilgrims going up to Jerusalem during the third month for the festival of Shavuot, the first-fruits festival of the wheat harvest, in the time of King Asa, Solomon’s great-grandson, who reigned in Jerusalem from 908 to 867 BCE.  The pilgrims, grateful for the Berachahof the harvest, came to reenter and renew the covenant, to seek God/Aloah, and to swear an oath to God/Aloah  in loud voice, accompanied by trumpets and rams’ horns recalling the encounter at Sinai (2 Chr. 15:10-15).  In its translation of that passage, the Aramaic Targum of Chronicles refers specifically to the festival of Shavuot.

            The Qumran Community Rule text describes a ceremony by which those who maintain the oath related to the priestly, seven-based cycle of rest and the solar calendar of Sabbaths enter into the covenant on the festival of Shavuot:

In order to seek God/Aloah  with [all (one’s) heart and] with a[ll (one’s) soul;] in order to do what is good and just in his presence, as he commanded by the hand of Moses and by the hand of all his servants the Prophets….In order to welcome all those who freely volunteer to carry out God/Aloah ’s decrees into the covenant of kindness; in order to be united in the counsel of God/Aloah  and walk in perfection in his sight, comply with all revealed things concerning the regulated times of their stipulations….And all those who enter in the Rule of the Community shall establish a covenant before God/Aloah  in order to carry out all that he commanded….When they enter the covenant, the priests and the levites shall Baruch  the God/Aloah  of victories and all the works of his faithfulness and all those who enter the covenant shall repeat after them: “Amein, Amein” (Rule of the Community, I:1-20; DSSSE, p. 71).

The account, only part of which is quoted above, concludes with the Berachah recited by the priests for each individual entering the covenant:

And the priests will Baruch all the men of God/Aloah ’s lot who walk unblemished in all his paths and they shall say: “May he Baruch  you with everything good, and may he protect you from everything bad.  May he illuminate your heart with the discernment of life and grace you with eternal knowledge.  May he lift upon you the countenance of his favor for eternal peace” (Rule of the Community II:1-4; DSSSE, pp. 71-73).

            This  Berachah is an interesting priestly version of the priests’   Berachah prescribed in Num. 6:24-27; the version here is addressed to an individual and does not mention God/Aloah ’s name, while that in Numbers mentions God/Aloah ’s name three times.  The Dead Sea Scrolls also include a version of the Berachah addressed to the congregation as a whole, to be recited by the priest for the pilgrims coming to renew the covenant before God/Aloah and the angels.  That version likewise mentions God/Aloah ’s name several times; it is the source of the Berachah of the cyclical four seasons of the year—referred to in Enoch as the “chariots of heaven” (1 Enoch 75:3[JL10] )—and of the treasure house of Baruched rain, the preconditions to the cycles of productivity and fertility:

[Answering, he shall say] to the sons of [I]srael: May you be Baruched in the name of the Most High [God/Aloah ]…and may His Kadosh name be Baruched for ever and ever.  [May all His kadosh angels be Baruch ed. May] the M[ost High] God/Aloah  [Baruch ] you. [May He shine His face towards you and open for you His] good [treasure] which is in heaven [to bring down on your land] showers of Berachah, dew, rain, [early rain] and late rain in His/its time, and to give [you the fruit of the produce of corn, wine, and o]il plentiful.  And may the land [prod]uce for [you fruits of delight. And you shall eat and grow f]at.  And there shall be no miscarriage [in yo]ur [la]n[d] and no [sickness, blight or mildew] shall be seen in [its] produ[ce. And there shall be no loss of children n]or stumbling in [your] congrega[tion, and wild beasts shall withdraw] from your land and there shall be no pestil[ence in your land.] For God/Aloah  is wi[th you and His kadosh angels stand in your congregation, and His] kadosh [name] shall be invoked upon you…in your midst… (4Q285[JL11] , fr. 1, Vermes, pp. 187-188).

            The High Priest’s Berachah for the festival pilgrims, recited in the Temple before God/Aloah and the angels and before the Ark of the Covenant and the cherubim (cf. BT Yoma 54a), was in the nature of a renewal of the covenant and oath entered into at Sinai on the festival of Shavuot, the festival of the giving of the Torah.  But it was also a Berachah of thanksgiving for the satiety and abundance granted to those who maintained the covenant, who had just now gathered their wheat harvest into the granary.  Entry into the covenant was the pivotal event in the world of the Zadokite priests, for it constituted undeniable evidence of the link between resting on the seven-based cycle of sacred fixed times and the Berachah of the harvest.  It also served as a promise that this Berachah would be renewed in the ensuing year for those who maintain the covenant and rest on Sabbaths and festivals, sabbatical years, and jubilees.  The Zadokite priests declared, on the Sabbath preceding the festival of Shavuot, their faith in “the spirits of true and righteous knowledge in the Holy/Kadosh of Holies,” as set forth in the Song for the Sabbath Sacrifice.  They believed with all their hearts in “justice, justice shall you pursue” and spoke of the “covenant of kindness” and the commandment to support the stranger, the orphan, and the widow and to walk in the ways of righteousness.  In their writings, they waged war against those who walked in the ways of corruption and evil, headed by the wicked Hasmonean priest, whom they spoke of in their commentary on Hab. 2:14:

Because of the blood of men and the violence done to the land, the city, and all its inhabitants…. Interpreted, the city is Jerusalem where the wicked priest committed abominable deeds and defiled the Temple of God/Aloah .  The violence done to the land: these are the cities of Judah where he robbed the Poor of their possessions (Commentary on Habakkuk XII; Vermes, p. 484).

            In the writings of the Zadokite priests and the men of their covenant, the festival of Shavuot—referred to as well as the “festival of weeks,” the “day of testimony,” and the “second festival” and described as the festival celebrated by the angels on high from Creation until the encounter at Sinai—is the festival of the giving of the Torah.  That is the view taken in Jub. 1:1, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the Samaritan tradition, the Ethiopic tradition, and the tradition of the Babylonian Talmud (Pesahim 68b).  The Amidah prayer for Shavuot so states explicitly: “this festival day of Shavuot, the time of the giving of our Torah” (cf. Shulhan arukh, Orah hayyim 494:1).  But this identification of the festival of Shavuot with the time of the encounter at Sinai, the time at which the Written Torah was given, is nowhere stated in the masoretic version of the Torah, as edited by the sages of the Oral Torah following the destruction of the Temple, and it is not expressly mentioned in the Mishnah or the Tosefta.  A fragmentary tradition found among the Qumran Scrolls describes the festival of Shavuot and the entry into the covenant at Sinai, linked to the giving of the Torah (referred to here as “the precepts of Moses”) in wording that preserves the exalted essence of the revelatory encounter; the fear and trembling associated with the divine loftiness and wondrous sounds; and the angelic speech linking heaven and earth, heard from the mouth of Moses as he sanctifies himself before the glory/Kavod of God/Aloah :

[…] and your signs … […] they understand the precepts of Moses. […] And Elyab[o(?)] began to speak, saying: He[ar,] congregation of yhwh, and pay attention, all the assembly …[…] to a[ll his] wor[ds] and [his] rulin[g]s. Cursed is the man who does not persevere and keep and carry [out] all the la[ws of y]hwh by the mouth of Moses his anointed one, to follow yhwh, the God/Aloah  of our fathers, who command[ed] us from the mountains of Sina[i.]  He has spoken wi[th] the assembly of Israel face to face, like a man speaks to his neighbour.  And like a man sees li[gh]tm he has appeared to us in a burning fire, from above, from heaven, and on earth he stood on the mountain to teach us that there is no God/Aloah apart from him and no Rock like Him. [And all] the assembly […][…] … and trembling seized them before the glory/Kavod of God/Aloah  and the wonderful thunders, and they stayed at a distance.  But Moses, the man of God/Aloah , was with God/Aloah  in the cloud, and the cloud covered him because […] when He sanctified him and he spoke as an angel through his mouth, for who was a messen[ger] like him, a man of the pious ones? And he sho[wed…] … which were never created before or afterward… […] …  (4Q377; DSSSE, p. 745).

            Religious precepts, as we know, cannot be given without an epiphany, and the entry into the covenant, or the giving of the divine law made known in the encounter at Sinai, was bound up with a glorious divine revelation: “Now the Presence of the Lord/YaHuWaH appeared in the sight of the Israelites as a consuming fire on the top of the mountain” (Ex. 24:17).  In response, “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightening and the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance (Ex. 20:14).  According to the version in the Scrolls, God/Aloah ’s commandments from Sinai were bound up with burning fire from the shaking heavens or with fear and trembling that seized those who were present on account of the “wondrous voices” and the glory/Kavod of God/Aloah speaking “with the assembly of Israel face to face.”  The transmission of the laws of Moses to the congregation of the Lord/YaHuWaH, and the glorification of the image of Moses, a man of the tribe of Levi, are likewise bound up with the covenant at Sinai according to this version, which constitutes an account of an exalted divine revelation that took place at the middle of the third month.  The revelation served as a numinous structure, filled with splendor and exaltation, for the ceremony of entering into the covenant at the middle of the third month, a ceremony performed by the Zadokite priests at the Temple in Jerusalem.  The account at the beginning of the Community Rule, quoted in part earlier, and the account in chapter 15 of 2 Chronicles, attest to the importance of the oath-renewal and covenantal ceremony on the festival of Shavuot at the middle of the third month and to its link to the giving of the tablets of the covenant at the Sinai encounter.

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            The cycles of sacred time are preserved in oath and covenant and ensure the precise recurrence of the barley harvest each year on Sunday, the twenty-sixth day of the first month, and the wheat harvest seven Sabbaths later, on Sunday, the fifteenth day of the third month.  Maintaining those cycles is tied as well to the structure of the sacred space that houses the sacred law, written on the tablets of the Covenant and kept in the Ark of the Covenant over which the cherubim spread their wings.  As noted, the giving of the tablets of the Covenant on Sunday, the fifteenth of the third month, is linked to the divine revelation on the festival of Covenant and testimony, and that revelation of the One Who dwells upon the Cherubim (1 Sam. 4:4; 2 Sam. 6:2; Ps. 99:1) is tied to the sacred place, the Kadosh of Holies, in which the cherubim were situated (Ex. 25:18-22; 1 Kgs. 6:23-28; 2 Chr. 3:10-13).  At the time the tabernacle was built by the Israelites in the wilderness, the cherubim were constructed in accord with a celestial pattern shown to Moses at Mount Sinai (Ex. 25:40); later, when the Temple was built in Jerusalem, they were constructed in accord with a heavenly pattern shown to David: “…the gold for the figure of the chariot—the cherubs—those with outspread wings screening the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord/YaHuWaH.  All this that the Lord/YaHuWaH made me understand by His hand on me, I give you in writing—the plan of all the works” (1 Chr. 28:18-19).  During the time of the Zadokite priests’ service, the Temple was the place where the seven-based cycles of oath and covenant were maintained, at least ideally, in both law and practice; the mechanisms for doing so included sacrifices, prayers,  Brachot, and sacred assemblies performed by the priests who maintained the sacred courses.  According to the biblical historiography, the Zadokite priests served continuously for nearly one thousand years, from the time of Aaron the priest, Moses’ brother, until time of Honyo ben Simeon, who was murdered by those who ousted him and seized his place in 171 BCE.

            In the ideal order of these priestly writers, the traditions regarding the sacred place of the cherubim’s Chariot in the Kadosh of Holies and the heavenly chariot described in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice—“his glorious chariots […] kadosh cherubs, shining ophanim, in the in[ner shrine … spirits of God/Aloah s…purity…]” (4Q405, frag. 20; DSSSE, p. 833)—were integrated with the tradition of sacred time, that is, the tradition of the “heavenly chariots” in the Book of Enoch, which expressed the eternity of the cycles of time visible to the eye, as learned from the angels (1 Enoch 75:4).  The “heavenly chariots” are the continuous, natural cycles of time associated with the celestial luminaries and the seasons of the year; they are independent of human reckoning and depend only on the kindness of God/Aloah  and the angels, extended equally to all creatures (see “The Book of Heavenly Luminaries,” 1 Enoch, chaps. 72-82). They are supplemented by “fixed times of liberty,” that is, the seven-based cycles made known aurally at the Sinai encounter; the latter are dependent on the reckoning of the human beings who rest and are maintained in covenant and oath by those who enter the covenant.  Naturally enough, the vagaries of history subjected this ideal system, which prophets and priests sought to hand down, to varied and recurring challenges.

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            Early in the sixth century BCE, around the time of the destruction of the First Temple, the tradition of the cherubim and the structure of the chariot in the Kadosh of Holies was tied to the vision of the Chariot, in which the priest-prophet Ezekiel ben Buzi saw the appearance of cherubim.  In his vision of the future Temple (chapters 40-48 of the book that bears his name), Ezekiel spoke at length in praise of the Zadokite priests, and many of his prophecies were tied to the fixed times and the sanctuary.  The mystical tradition sets Shavuot as the time of Ezekiel’s vision and explains the opening verse of his book: “R. Eliezer began and said: In the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, when I was in the community of exiles by the Chebar Canal—on the fifth day we have already explained, but this day was the day of Shavuot, that being the day on which Israel received the Torah on Mount Sinai” (Zohar hadash, parashat yitro 37c).  Judah Liebes, a Zohar scholar, has determined that the idra rabba (an assembly of sages) described in the Zohar and often equated in the text itself to the encounter at Sinai and the giving of the Torah, was, in fact, a tiqqun leil shavu`ot (an all-night mystical and study session on Shavuot night), for the Zohar states that the idra rabba took place on Shavuot.  The conclusion unconditionally reached by scientific study coincides with that reached in the mystical tradition, for according to calculations based on the metonic cycle (which synchronizes dates on the lunar and solar calendars), Ezekiel’s vision indeed took place on Shavuot, the festival of the terrestrial Temple which held the cherubim in its Kadosh of Holies and which became, in the vision of the exiled priest prophesying in the time of the destruction, a heavenly chariot or the place of the cherubim in the heavenly chariot.  If that is so, the surprising date that opens the Book of Ezekiel—“In the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month…. On the fifth day of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin” (Ezek. 1:1-2)—makes no sense on its face.  In his book The War of the Calendars During the Second Temple Period (Heb.) (Tel-Aviv, 1993), p. 75, Michael Chyutin examines that date along with others mentioned in Ezekiel and suggests they be explained by relating them to the solar calendar through the metonic cycle: “The beginning of Ezekiel’s prophecy (1:1), if synchronized with the solar calendar, was on Shavuot Eve (the fourteenth of the third month) or on the festival of Shavuot (the fifteenth of the month), as the members of the Qumran sect believed.  But “the members of the Qumran sect” a common but erroneous term invented by scholars, are none other than “the Zadokite priests and the men of their covenant,” whose writings were found in 930 scroll fragments in eleven caves at Qumran and Masada and in the Cairo Genizah.  As noted, all of the scrolls are sacred scriptures and their writers referred to themselves as the “Zadokite priests and the men of their covenant.”

            It is entirely possible that what gave rise in Ezekiel’s consciousness to the vision of the chariot in the heavenly sanctuary was the cognitive dissonance between his recollection of Shavuot, the central priestly festival, in all its splendor, and the reality of the Temple’s destruction and its aftermath that he saw all around him.  On the one hand was the holiday etched in his memory—the festival of the covenant, the day on which that covenant was entered into, and the day of testimony regarding the revelation of the written Torah.  It had been celebrated with great pomp at the Temple in Jerusalem, in the presence of the pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem with the first fruits of their wheat harvest and with festive Brachot by the priests.  On the other hand were the bitter reality of the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem (described in all their horror by Ezekiel’s contemporary, the prophet Jeremiah, in the Book of Lamentations) and the overwhelming experience of exile and the profound sadness felt by the exiled priest-prophet on the once-joyous day in the midst of the third month—a day on which mourning was forbidden but that nonetheless had been transformed into a day of mourning among the exiles in Babylonia.

            Some two thousand years later, a similar conjoining of terrible destruction with a festival on which mourning was forbidden led to the revelatory episode experienced by R. Joseph Karo’s circle of kabbalists in Adrianopolis on Shavuot night of 1533.  On that occasion, as they were engaged in a tiqqun leil shavu`ot in the Zoharic tradition, they received the bitter news that their colleague, the messianic kabbalist Solomon Malkho, had been burned at the stake.  Malkho was born a converso in 1500 and lived as a Christian until his twenties, attaining a prominent position in the Portuguese court.  He then publicly returned to his Judaism, choosing the name Malkho (“his king”) on the basis of 2 Sam. 22:51—“[God/Aloah  is a] tower of victory to His king [malko] [and] deals graciously with His anointed [meshiho; His messiah]”—and sought to advance a political messianic movement.  His was condemned by the Inquisition and burned at the stake in Mantua in November 1532.  Malkho’s attempt to work for redemption through political means engendered hope and inspired confidence in the generation that had been expelled from Spain and Portugal—he had been, after all, an officer in the Portuguese court—and the news of his death, which did not reach Adrianopolis until Shavuot night, 1533, embodied the loss of that hope. The news produced an extreme disparity between the intense joy of the festival of renewing the covenant and receiving the Torah—a joy felt by those participating in the tiqqun leil shavu`ot—and the no less intense mourning over the terrible death of the last messianic kabbalist, a man who embodied a realistic hope for redemption during the first third of the sixteenth century.  Public expression of that mourning was forbidden on the sacred festival, and the clash between the two emotions aroused within R. Joseph’s Karo’s consciousness the voice of the exiled daughter of Zion crying out in the Book of Lamentations.  She appeared to him on the festival night in the image of the Torah / Shekhinah / diadem / Mishnah and, in a voice emanating from his throat and speaking in first-person feminine, spoke dramatically to him and his colleagues of the destruction recounted in the Book of Lamentations and the redemption associated with the encounter at Sinai:

Fortunate are you and fortunate are they who bore you…. For you set your mind to adorn me on this night, after many years since my diadem fell from my head and during which there has been none to comfort me; I was cast in the dust, grasping refuse heaps.  But now you have restored the diadem to its former [glory/Kavod] …. And you have gained the merit to be of the king’s palace; and the sound of your Torah-learning and the breath of your mouth have risen before the Kadosh One Baruched Be He, splitting several Firmament and several atmospheres in order to rise [there]. And angels were hushed, seraphs fell silent, and [heavenly] beasts stood still, as the entire heavenly host and the Kadosh One Baruched Be He heard your voice…. Now I, the Mishnah, have come to speak to you…. And by your hands I have been exalted this night…and you have been bonded to the Lord/YaHuWaH and He is happy with you.   And so, my children, be strong and of good courage and rejoice in my love, my Torah, and my awe…. Be strong and of good courage and rejoice, my children and friends; do not allow the study to cease…. Therefore stand on your feet and exalt me and say aloud, as on the Day of Atonement, “Baruched be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever,” and we said “Baruched be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever,” as we were commanded.  He again said “Fortunate are you my sons, return to your studies and do not stop for [even] a minute, and go up to the Land of Israel…. And know that you are among those who go up…and you are bonded with me, and a line of kindness is extended to you.  And were the eye authorized to see it, you would see the fire surrounding this house.

            A few centuries later, a similarly stark contrast gave rise to a mystical experience powerfully expressed by S. Y. Agnon in his story “Ha-siman” (“The Sign”) first published in 1944 in the periodical Moznayim.  It was on Shavuot eve 1943 that Agnon had learned of the terrible destruction of his hometown, Buczacz, Galicia.  On the one hand, the time was one of joy at the onset of the festival of the giving of the Torah, the time of the covenant between God/Aloah  and his people, memorialized in the image of Mount Sinai aflame and flames flashing around it.  On the other hand, it was a time of mourning for the terrible devastation of the world of Torah and the annihilation, in the fires of the final destruction, of those faithful to the covenant.  Dan Laor, in a study of Agnon’s works, writes as follows[JL12] :

In mid-June 1943, the last residents of the Buczacz ghetto were liquidated, taken out to be killed in the city’s Jewish cemetery.  Around the same time, the labor camp adjacent to the city was likewise liquidated…. Jews who had hid and were found in the ghetto or in the surrounding woods were brought to the cemetery in groups and murdered there…. When the Soviets returned to the city in July 1944, fewer than one hundred survivors were to be found.

            “Ha-siman,” Agnon’s account of his vision on Shavuot night, was first published during the Second World War, in the Spring 1944 issue of Moznayim, as a one-page story.  It was republished as a longer story in 1962, and went through several editions.[5]  Agnon writes:

I made no Lament for my city and did not call for tears or for mourning over the congregation of God/Aloah  whom the enemy had wiped out.  The day when we heard the news of the city and its dead was the afternoon before Shavuot, so I put aside my mourning for the dead because of the joy of the season when our Torah was given (p. 379).

Agnon, deep in mourning over the destruction of his hometown but required by the sanctity of the festival to set aside his mourning and to rejoice even with a broken heart, experienced cognitive dissonance.  In his story, he traverses boundaries of time and space and has a vision of the greatest Spanish-Jewish poet, Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021 -1058), author of the azharot liturgical poem[6] for Shavuot, reviewing in verse the commandments that made up the covenant:

Once, on Shavuot night, I was sitting alone in the house of study, reciting the azharot. I heard a voice and raised my eyes. I saw a kadosh man of God/Aloah standing near me…. I returned to my book and read the commandments of God/Aloah , as was my practice every year on Shavuot night, when I would read the commandments of God/Aloah  as poetically rendered by R. Solomon, may his soul rest (from the original version in Moznayim).

The doors of the kadosh ark opened, and I saw a likeness of the form of a man standing there, his head resting between the scrolls of the Torah, and I heard a voice come forth from the ark, from between the trees of life.[7]  I bowed my head and closed my eyes, for I feared to look at the kadosh ark.  I looked into my prayer book and saw that the letters that the voice from among the scrolls was reciting were at the same time being written into my book.  The letters were the letters of the commandments of the Lord/YaHuWaH, in the order set for them by Rabbi Solomon Ibn Gabirol, may his soul rest.  Now the man whom I had first seen between the scrolls of the Torah stood before me, and his appearance was like the appearance of a king (Mintz-Hoffman ed., p. 405).

            The man who appeared before the author’s eyes is the tormented poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol, author of the azharot for Shavuot.  The author speaks to him of the festival of Shavuot, of the destruction of his hometown, of memory and forgetting; and he asks that Ibn Gabirol remember all that the enemy has destroyed and set a sign for it in the heavens.  All that can be done in the face of the terrible destruction wrought by human beings, and of the annihilation and oblivion associated with it, is to leave a sign in the heavens, in eternity, in poetry, story and memory.  Memory is the metamorphosis of annihilation into eternity, of oblivion into written testimony; and the story or the poem effects the transformation in which loss and annihilation on earth (lethe in Greek) become eternal heavenly existence (alethea) and death becomes immortality and eternal covenant:

Rabbi Solomon said, “I’ll make a sign, so I won’t forget the name of your town.” …Once more a voice was heard, the sound of rhyme…. And he said, “Baruched among cities is the city Buczacz,” and he went on composing a poem based on the seven letters of my town’s name, a rhymed poem in faithful verse.  My soul went out of me, and I forgot six lines of the town’s song (from the original version in Moznayim).

He did not speak to me by word of mouth, but his thought was engraved into mine, his kadosh thought into mine.  Every word he said was carved into the forms of letters, and the letters joined together into words, and the words formed what he had to say.  These are the things as I remember them, word for word (Mintz-Hoffman ed., p. 405).

Once more he moved his lips.  I turned my ear and heard him recite a poem, each line of which began with one of the letters of the name of my town.  And so I knew that the sign the poet made for my town was in beautiful and rhymed verse, in the kadosh tongue.

The hairs of my flesh stood on end and my heart melted as I left my own be0ing, and it was as though I was not.  Were it not for remembering the poem, I would have been like all my townsfolk, who were lost, who had died….  But it was because of the power of the poem that my soul went out of me….  And if I don’t remember the words of the poem, for my soul left me because of its greatness, the poem sings itself in the heavens above, among the poems of the kadosh poets, the beloved of God/Aloah  (Mintz-Hoffman ed., p. 409).

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            The experience of seeing divine visions on Shavuot, visions involving flashing fire among the cherubim and angels, and of hearing the heavenly voices of angels or the Kadosh Spirit, is an ancient tradition, mentioned in many sources: “All the people witnessed the thunder and the lightening” (Ex. 20:15); “…the heavens opened and I saw visions of God/Aloah ” (Ezek. 1:1); “You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels” (Acts 7:53).  Midrash Exodus Rabbah 29:5 notes “The saw His glory/Kavod and heard His voice, as it is said (Dt. 5:21), The Lord/YaHuWaH our God/Aloah  has just shown us His majestic Presence.”  The festival of Shavuot, one of the three pilgrimage festivals observed in the Temple, is linked to the tradition of the winged cherubim in the Kadosh of Holies, which were shown to the pilgrims at a distance: “When Israel would go up for the pilgrimage festival, they would roll back the curtain for them and show them the cherubim, which embraced each other” (BT Yoma 54a).  Many years earlier, the heavenly model of the cherubim had been made known to Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex. 25:40) in the middle of the third month.  It was made known to David on Mount Zion (2 Chr. 1:28, 18-19), at an unknown time, and it was made known through the vision revealed to the prophet Ezekiel on Shavuot.

            As we know, the Torah reading for Shavuot tells of the encounter at Sinai.  It begins with the verse that sets the encounter in the third month (Ex. 19:1); continues with the transformation of the mountain into a sacred place that may be neither touched nor approached because of the expected divine presence (id. 12-13, 23); and it reaches its climax with the reading of the Decalogue, concluding with the verse “All the people witnessed the thunder and the lightening, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance” (Ex. 20:15).  The haftarah (reading from the prophets) for the holiday is the vision of Ezekiel ben Buzi the priest (chaps. 1 and 10), describing the divine visions revealed to him at the Chebar Canal, including winged animals described as cherubim and the image of the One seated upon the cherubim, linked to the description of the encounter at Sinai: “As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like coals of fire, burning like the appearance of torches; it flashed up and down among the living creatures; and there was brightness to the fire, and out of the fire went forth lightning.  And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightening” (Ezek. 1:13-14[8]). The account of the divine visions continues: “And above the Firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone; and upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man upon it above (Ezek. 1:26), imagery tied to the description at the conclusion of the entry into the covenant: “And they saw the God/Aloah  of Israel: under His feet there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity” (Ex. 24:10).  Chapter 10 of Ezekiel, which describes a vision at the Temple in Jerusalem (id., 8:3), tells anew of the vision at the Chebar Canal, referring explicitly to the vision of the sacred beasts in Chapter 1: “I looked, and on the expanse over the heads of the cherubs, there was something like a sapphire stone; an appearance resembling a sapphire stone could be seen over them” (Ezek. 10:1).  They are referred to twice again: “the cherubs ascended; those were the creatures that I had seen by the Chebar Canal” (id. 15); “they were the same creatures that I had seen below the God/Aloah  of Israel at the Chebar Canal; so I now knew that they were cherubs” (id. 20). The divine visions shown to Ezekiel on Shavuot night, encompassing cherubim and ofanim, wings and flares, beasts and sapphire are recounted in several versions and are referred to in the Qumran texts as “The[JL13]  vision that Ezekiel saw…the light of a chariot and four creatures.”  At the beginning of the second century BCE, the priest Joshua Ben-Sira refers to it as the vision of the chariot: “It was Ezekiel who saw the vision of glory/Kavod, which God/Aloah showed him above the chariot of the cherubim” (Sir. 49:8).

            The account of Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot, revealed to him at the mid-point of the third month, the time of the covenant at Sinai, contains references to previous covenants and uses wording that calls to mind previous divine revelations during the third month, as recounted in Jubilees.  These references include, among others, the rainbow associated with the covenant with Noah, the flares that were part of the covenant “between the pieces” with Abraham and of the encounter at Sinai, and the block of sapphire seen in the encounter at Sinai.  The verse linking the Torah reading for Shavuot (the encounter at Sinai) with the haftarah (Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot) is one that preserves an ancient tradition tying the encounter at Sinai to the divine chariot and the angels: “God/Aloah ’s chariots are myriads upon myriads, thousands upon thousands; the Lord/YaHuWaH is among them as in Sinai in holiness” (Ps. 68:18).  The verse echoes a line in Deuteronomy: “The Lord/YaHuWaH came from Sinai; He shone upon them from Seir; He appeared from Mount Paran; and approached from Ribeboth-kodesh [mei-rivevot-qodesh; perhaps to be emended to be-merkavot-qodesh, “in kadosh chariots”], lightening flashing at them from His right” (Dt. 33:2).

            The treatment of Shavuot in the rabbinic tradition differs substantially from that in the various priestly traditions.  In the latter, the chariot of the cherubim, Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot, and various visions of God/Aloah are all associated with the encounter at Sinai, where the cherubim were revealed to Moses and he was instructed to make models of them and place them in the Kadosh of Holies.  Those various traditions regarding the cherubim and the chariot are tied, in turn, to the festival of Shavuot—the festival on which the covenant is renewed, and the Sinai experience recreated, the festival of the angels who presented the Torah to Israel at the Sinai encounter.  The rabbinic tradition, in contrast, simply declares that “One does not read the [account of the] chariot as a haftarah” (Mishnah Megillah 4:10).  The matter seems to have been in dispute, for a baraita in the Babylonian Talmud, in which the schedule of haftarot is first mentioned, notes that Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot is, in fact, read as the haftarah on Shavuot (BT Megillah 31a-b).  Pertinent to this dispute is the inclusion of the word “chariot” in the versions of chapter 1 of Ezekiel that appear in the pre-Common-Era texts of Scripture found at Qumran and in the Septuagint.  The word appears as well in the Septuagint to Ezekiel 43:3, which reads “and the vision of the chariot which I saw was like the vision which I saw at the river Chobar”[9]; the Masoretic Text, in contrast, reads “the very same vision that I had seen by the Chebar Canal.”  The version of the Scripture edited by the sages following the destruction of the Temple omits the word “chariot.”  There is a tradition that the sages wanted to exclude the entire Book of Ezekiel from the canon (BT Shabbat 13a), and that tradition, too, may be related to the book’s references to the chariot and to the priest-prophet’s clear association with the Zadokite priests.  The description in Ezekiel 45 of the fixed times of the Lord/YaHuWaH skips over the festival of Shavuot, going directly from Passover to Sukkot; but when it describes Passover as “a festival of seven days,” the Masoretic Text reads hag shevu’ot yamim.  This, too, suggests that there may have been an earlier version of the text that included the festival of Shavuot.  And despite the rabbis’ prohibition on reading Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot as the haftarah for Shavuot, synagogues have continued to do so from antiquity to this day.

*     *     *     *     *     *

            The dispute between the sages and the priests, alluded to in the bans on reading the account of the chariot as a haftarah (“the [account of the] chariot is not read as a haftarah”) and on expounding it (“the [account of the] chariot is not expounded”) is tied to the dispute between the Pharisees and the Sadducees / Boethians over the timing of the holiday.  The Sadducees and Boethians mentioned in the rabbinic tradition, known in Scripture and the Scrolls as the Zadokite priests, set a fixed day and date for the festival of the first fruits of the wheat harvest; it was Sunday, the fifteenth day of the third month.  As explained earlier, this was keyed to the fixed time for the beginning of the barley harvest and the waving of the omer-sheaf; that occurred on Sunday, the twenty-sixth day of the first month, all pursuant to the fixed solar calendar calculated in advance.  The Pharisees and the sages, on the other hand, followed a lunar calendar, either continuing to use the Hasmonean lunar calendar or else electing, after the destruction, to adopt a variable lunar calendar—a calendar differing from both the Zadokite solar calendar described earlier and from the 365¼-day Julian calendar of the Roman Empire in whose shadow they lived.  They argued that the biblical phrase “the day after the Sabbath,” mentioned three times in the account of the waving of the sheaf of barley (Lev. 23:11, 15, 16), refers not to a Sunday but to the day after the first day of Passover (Mishnah, Menahot 10:3; Sifra, Emor 10:5, 100c).  That day would always be the sixteenth of Nisan, but the day of the week on which it fell would vary from year to year, depending on when the onset of the month of Nisan—based on the sighting of the new moon—was proclaimed.  The Pharisees / sages maintained that the term “sabbath” was applied to the first day of Passover because it was a festival day on which no work was to be done; they thus disagreed with the Priests, Sadducees, Boethians, Karaites, Ethiopian Jews, and Samaritans, all of whom took the term at face value, as referring to the first Sabbath following the conclusion of the week of Passover—that is, the fourth Sabbath of the quarter, falling invariably on the twenty-fifth of Nisan.  On the Sunday that followed it, the twenty-sixth of Nisan, the barley harvest began.  The Pharisees and sages rejected that date, which was based on the understanding that “the day after the Sabbath” referred to the Sunday following the conclusion of Passover and declined to accept the ancient date for Shavuot (15 Sivan) that followed from it in the priestly tradition.  They briefly quoted the views of their rivals, the Boethians, regarding the festival of Shavuot, which they declined even to mention by name, referring to it, instead, as Atseret: “the sheaf is not harvested at the conclusion of the festival day” (Tosefta, Menahot 10b; 23[JL14]  p. 528); “Atseret follows the Sabbath.”  They mounted a polemic against that view, but they avoided any mention of the fixed day for the barley harvest, the twenty-sixth of the first month, on which the time for the first fruits of the wheat harvest—the fifteenth of the third month—was dependent.  Mishnah Bikkurim is silent with respect to the time for the first fruits of the wheat harvest, dealing only with the times for the first fruits that are not associated with a particular day.  The Book of Jubilees, which attests to the antiquity of the first-fruits festival, states expressly that “…in the third month, in the middle of the month, Abram made a feast of the firstfruits of the harvest of grain.  And he offered up a new sacrifice upon the altar, the firstfruits of the [produce[JL15] ]…” (Jub. 15:1-2).  MMT, cited above, likewise states explicitly: “of the third month…. On the fifteenth of it: Feast of Weeks” (Vermes, p. 221-222).

*     *     *     *     *     *

            The sages thus did all they could to suppress the holiday’s name, to expunge its ancient date, and to ban the various pre-Common-Era priestly traditions pertinent to the holiday, most notably the giving of the Torah and revelation of the chariot, the entry into and renewal of the covenant, and the Berachah by the priests and Ezekiel’s vision at the time of the covenant at Sinai.  That they did so is certainly tied to the fact that some of these traditions were adopted by the Jewish-Christian community that was active in Jerusalem during the first century CE and that set Shavuot—the day after the conclusion of the seven weeks that began with the waving of the sheaf of barley, that is, the fiftieth day (Pentecost in Greek)—as the time when the Kadosh Spirit was revealed in stormy sounds and fiery flares:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Kadosh Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability (Acts 2:1-4).

            The festival of Shavuot became transformed into a foundational holiday of the Jewish-Christian community, the day on which the Kadosh Spirit, revealed in tongues of fire, came to rest on its members, who began to speak in tongues. The festival always fell on a Sunday at the mid-point of the third month, fifty days after Master Yahushua’s resurrection on Easter, likewise a Sunday; and the new Jewish-Christian community saw in it a sort of renewal of the covenant with them, tied to the prophecy of Joel (3:1).  They also saw the descent of the Kadosh Spirit as evidence of the fulfillment of Master Yahushua’s promise that his spirit would dwell on his church.  Shavuot thus became the festival of the Kadosh Spirit’s descent on the Sunday at the mid-point of the third month, observed by the Jewish-Christian community during the thirties of the first century CE, and it remained the holiday of the founding of the church, celebrated with great pomp, as Pentecost, from then until today.  Accounts of its celebration, including the singing of Halleluiah and of “Veni Creator” (“Come, Creator Spirit”) in honor of the Kadosh Spirit can be found in the writings of late-fourth-century pilgrims.  Needless to say, this glorification of Shavuot among the Jewish Christians as the festival of the church did not enhance the standing of the mystical-priestly festival among the sages, and it is nearly certain that it contributed substantially to the holiday’s rejection within the Jewish community that came to be led by the tanna’im in the years following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.  It may well be that these developments likewise influenced the liturgical treatment by the tanna’im of the chariot tradition as related to Shavuot.

            According to tannaitic tradition, the Song of Songs was spoken at the Sinai encounter, which was interpreted, in midrash and by mystics, as involving the marriage covenant and mystical union between the Kadosh One Baruched Be He and the community of Israel; Shavuot thus comes to be seen as the wedding day.  The link between Shavuot and a covenant of marriage appears in various contexts within the rabbinic tradition; one is that of the encounter at Sinai: “The Lord/YaHuWaH came from Sinai—to greet Israel, in the manner of a bridegroom who goes forth to greet the bride” (Mekhilta de-rabbi yishma’el, Parashat ba-hodesh ha-shelishi, sec. 3).

            A second context in which the connection is drawn is that of the nuptials described in the Song of Songs, taken to refer to the bridegroom-Torah giver and his bride, the community of Israel.  The talmudist Saul Lieberman noted a mystical interpretation of the Song of Songs in the tannaitic tradition that tied it to the tradition of the cherubim and the chariot, and he cited a later version of that interpretation based on the comments of the medieval kabbalist R. Joshua Ibn Shuib: “For the words of this song are extremely obscure and impenetrable and it therefore was considered to be kadosh of holies, for all its words are mysteries of the chariot…. For the bridegroom is the Kadosh One Baruched Be He and the bride is the community of Israel…. And by received tradition these are hidden matters that one may not even think about; they are the supernal chariot higher than Ezekiel’s chariot and they are the sefirot [the kabbalistic divine emanations].”  According to the tradition in the Babylonian Talmud, the pilgrims would be shown the cherubim “which embraced each other” on the ark-cover in the Kadosh of Holies, and it was said that “their mutual affection was like that of male and female” (BT Yoma 54a).

            The Zohar, written in late-thirteenth-century Spain in the wake of the terrible destruction wrought by the Crusades on the Ashkenazi communities between 1096 and 1296, likewise associates Shavuot, the covenant festival, with the covenant of marriage—in this instance, the celestial nuptials between God/Aloah  as bridegroom and the Shekhinah as bride.  It associates the custom of staying awake all night on Shavuot, referred to in various midrashic sources, with the need to prepare the bride for entry into the marriage canopy: “The early pious ones would not sleep that night and would engage in Torah study, saying: Let us come and acquire a kadosh inheritance for ourselves and our children in both worlds.  When the initiates gathered and joined him that night, R. Simeon said: Let us go and prepare the bridal jewels so she may be found tomorrow bejeweled and prepared as befits the King” (Zohar, part 3, 98a).  As noted earlier, the Zohar associates Shavuot with the idra rabba, the occasion on which R. Simeon bar Yohai and his students convened, understood as the occasion for receiving the Torah anew and as a nuptial festival.  In the Zohar, Shavuot night is called “the night of the bride uniting with her husband,” “the tiqqun leil shavu`ot” (the “repair” [of the fabric of the world] on Shavuot night) (Zohar, part 1, 8a-9a; part 2, 98a).  Implicit in that conception of the night is the hope for renewal of the covenant—a new revelation of the heavenly Written Torah along with the beginning of redemption, linked to the Oral Torah, the Shekhinah, and the bride—with the nation that had violated the covenant and was exiled from its land for hundreds and thousands of years.

            The late thirteenth century, the end of the Crusades, was a time when destruction and annihilation had been visited upon many Jewish communities in Ashkenaz and weighty questions were being raised about the nature of the oath and covenant between God/Aloah  and his people, who were suffering such devastating persecution.  It was in that context that the Zohar was written, seeking to forge a new unity between the memory of the Written Torah (God/Aloah , the bridegroom) and the creative memory of the Oral Torah (the bride, the community of Israel).  The author of the Zohar, R. Moses de Leon, wrote the following account of a tiqqun leil shavu`ot, in which the ten martyrs were transformed from sages who had died for the sanctification of God/Aloah ’s name in the time of the tanna’im into beings enjoying eternal life one thousand years later, thanks to the traversal of boundaries of time and space within the tradition of the Zohar:

The mystery of the festival of Shavuot….The ancient ones, of Baruched memory, the pillars of the world who knew how to draw down from on high the grace/unmerited Favor that would enable them to go without sleep on these two nights of Shavuot, spend the entire night reading from the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings and then skip through the Talmud and aggadot [non-halakhic rabbinic texts] and read from the mysteries of the Torah until morning light, continuing their fathers’ traditions…. And at those times [that is, the days of counting the omer—R. E.] the bride would adorn herself and enter the region on high, and on that fiftieth night, this night devoted to God/Aloah , uniting the Written Torah with the Oral Torah, her devoted children on earth would escort her into the wedding canopy.  And it is listed and written in the book of memories that they would sing joyfully on the night of the bride’s rejoicing…. And they should not, therefore give[JL16]  ransom for their souls through the singing of Torah, for they are listed before God/Aloah …and God/Aloah  will listen and heed and inscribe their memory before him with joy” (MS Schocken 14, 87a-b, quoted in Y. D. Yahalom, “Sidrei tiqqunim,” in Alei ayinFestschrift for S. Z. Schocken on his Seventieth Birthday [Jerusalem, 1948-1952], p. 126).

            The mystical tradition shaped Shavuot night into a time of preparation for the kadosh union to take place on the festival—the nuptial day for heaven and earth, God/Aloah  and His people, bridegroom and bride, Written Torah and Oral Torah, the sefirah of tif’eret (glory) and the sefirah of malkhut (sovereignty), the Kadosh One Baruched Be He and the Shekhinah (that is, the masculine and feminine aspects of divinity), all symbolized by the embracing cherubim that the pilgrims coming to observe the festival were allowed to observe from afar (BT Yoma 54a-b).  This tradition generated a wealth of mystical symbols for the idea of king’s coupling with his consort (matronita) or the union between the Kadosh One Baruched Be He and His Shekhinah—that is, the covenant between the bridegroom as giver of the Torah and the bride (the congregation of Israel) as receiver of the eternal Torah who perpetuates and continues to form it.  The mystical tradition treats these images of union and coupling between “the Kadosh One Baruched Be He and His Shekhinah” in thousands of pages of kabbalistic literature and liturgical poems and sees the souls of Jewish men and women as the fruit of this mystical union.  That tradition even formulated wording for a ketubbah (marriage contract) between “the bridegroom, the Kadosh One Baruched Be He” and the “bride, the virgin Israel” (Gershom Scholem, Pirqei yesod be-havanat ha-qabbalah u-semalehah [Jerusalem, 1976], p. 132) and described ceremonies in which that ketubbah was read as part of the tiqqun leil shavu`ot.

            The mystical tradition recounts various occasions on which revelations of the Kadosh Spirit took place on Shavuot, as the passages telling of the encounter at Sinai or Ezekiel’s vision of the Chariot were read.  They include, in chronological order:

  • The idra rabba described in the Zohar at the end of the thirteenth century.
  • The revelation of the Shekhinah / Mishnah in R. Joseph Karo’s circle during the first third of the sixteenth century, which culminated in their immigration to the Land of Israel in 1535 and the establishment of the kabbalistic settlement in Safed.  These events are described in the introduction to Karo’s Maggid meisharim and in Shenei luhot ha-berit by R. Isaiah Leib Horowitz, known as the kadosh Shelah, in the chapter titled “Masekhet shevu`ot”.
  • The Kadosh Spirit’s alighting on Nathan of Gaza on Shavuot night 1665.  When he lost consciousness, Nathan began to prophesy in bizarre voices that his listeners interpreted to foretell the renewal of the covenant and the ascent to sovereignty of the king messiah Shabbetai Zevi, who would lead his nation to redemption, just as had Moses.

            That last episode decisively influenced the growth of the Sabbatean movement during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as detailed in Gershom Scholem’s Shabbetai zevi ve-ha-tenu`ah ha-shabta’it bi-yemei hayyav (Tel-Aviv, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 177-178) and Mehqarei shabta’ut (ed. Yehuda Liebes) (Tel-Aviv, 1992), pp. 310-320.  While there is disagreement over who wrote the account of the vision and some see it as pseudepigraphal, there is no dispute about its link to Nathan’s vision on Shavuot, which begins with a sentence that echoes other ceremonies from the Book of Ezekiel:

Now, it was Shavuot night and I was studying with the initiates in my home in Gaza.  After midnight, I heard a voice from behind the ark curtain speaking to me [and saying]: Arise, and go to the outer courtyard, and I will speak with you there.  My heart was stirred, and I went out to the courtyard, where I saw a man wearing a linen tunic; his appearance was that of a very awesome angel of God/Aloah  and he said to me… (id., p. 310).

            Another appearance of the Kadosh Spirit during the month of Sivan (the third month) took place in Italy, at the end of the first third of the eighteenth century, among the followers of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto.  On that occasion, which was influenced by R. Joseph Karo’s Shavuot-night vision, an angel-maggid appeared to Luzzatto and dictated heavenly Torah to him in a book titled Zohar teniyya (“Second Zohar”) or Adir ba-marom.  Luzzatto describes the beginning of the revelation as follows:

On the new moon of Sivan 5487 (1727), while I was performing a certain unification ritual, I nodded off and when I awoke, I heard a voice saying: “I have come down to reveal hidden secrets of the Kadosh King.”  I arose shaking a bit, but then gained my strength, but the voice did not cease, and told the mystery that it told…. Thereafter, on a certain day, it revealed to me that it was a maggid sent from heaven…and that while I did not see it, I would hear its voice speaking from my mouth (Iggerot moshe hayyim luzato u-venei doro, ed. Simon Ginsburg [Tel-Aviv 1937], p. 39).

Luzzatto here describes not only his own angel-maggid but also R. Joseph Karo’s angel-maggid, which appeared on Shavuot night as well, and his account seems to echo in that of the wondrous man in Agnon’s Shavuot-night vision quoted earlier. 

            The mystical innovation in the kabbalistic tradition is that the unification takes place between, on the one hand, God/Aloah , the One Who establishes the eternal covenant, the Kadosh One Baruched Be He, the sefirah of tif’eret (glory/Kavod) and the Written Torah, and, on the other hand, the Shekhinah, the community of Israel, the party entering into the covenant, the sefirah of malkhut (sovereignty), and the Oral Torah.  The kabbalists who participated in covenant-renewal rituals called “tiqqun leil shavu`ot” or “yihud qudsha berikh hu u-shekhinteih” (unification of the Kadosh One Baruched Be He and His Shekhinah) experienced, from time to time, a renewal of the covenant in the form of a divine voice speaking in the spirit of such persons as the author of the Zohar, R. Joseph Karo, Nathan of Gaza, Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, or S. Y. Agnon.  Some of them identified with Moses and internalized his image (the author of the Zohar, Karo, Luzzatto, the Seer of Lublin), while others identified with other written traditions (Malkho, Nathan, Agnon); but in all cases, the divine revelation is preceded by a written tradition, which undergoes transformation and reincarnation in the spirit of the person who experiences the new vision in his mind’s ear, “seeing the voices.”

            As a practical matter, it was the reading of the biblical text that triggered these episodes.  The text describes the entry into the covenant at Sinai, before the building of the Tabernacle, and its renewal in Ezekiel’s vision, in the course of the destruction of the First Temple, and it was read loudly in kabbalistic circles during the tiqqun leil shavu`ot.  That reading prompted a mystical awakening in which the voice of the Shekhinah was heard as a voice speaking from above the cover atop the tablets of the covenant or a voice calling for a return to the Land of Israel as it spoke from the mouth of the person reading from Scripture in the Zoharic tradition about the mystical nuptials.  The Shekhinah is described as an angel oscillating between male and female, in a manner resembling the accounts of the cherubim and kadosh beasts as bisexual entities in the visions of Ezekiel and of R. Joseph Karo.  The voice of the angel-maggid therefore is sometimes heard as a qol midabber (addressing voice), as in the verse (Num. 7:89) “When Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the Voice addressing him from above the cover that was on top of the Ark of the Pact between the two cherubim; thus He spoke to him”; at other times, it is heard as the voice of the exiled daughter of Zion; and at still other times as a voice described in terms of “Hark! My beloved knocks” (Song 5:2) or “Who announce[s] what is true [maggid meisharim]” (Isa. 45:19).  As noted, an event involving renewal of the covenant was experienced by R. Joseph Karo, the author of Maggid meisharim, in Adrianopolis on Shavuot night 1533 and led him and his colleagues to immigrate to the Land of Israel in 1535 and establish the community of kabbalists in Safed.  The Safed community, which devoted its time to hastening the redemption and uniting the Shekhinah with the Kadosh One Baruched Be He so as to renew the covenant at Sinai, spread kabbalistic-messianic awareness throughout the Jewish world and contributed decisively to fostering the yearning for Zion and the return to the Land of Israel.

            R. Simeon bar Yohai’s final words in the Zohar, uttered as he dies, are “There the Lord/YaHuWaH ordained  Berachah, everlasting life” (Ps. 133:3), a sentence linked to the eternal promise warranted to those who walk in the paths of righteousness, as declared by Jeremiah, the priest-prophet and advocate of justice: “Then only will I let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers for all time” (Jer. 7:7).  Bound up with these words are the array of ideas related to Shavuot discussed above: the eternal covenant or oath related to the eternity of the divine promise and dependent on maintaining the eternal cycles of justice associated with the sacred fixed times and with the seven-based cycles of rest that have gone on from Sinai to this very day of Shavuot.  These are sacred biblical cycles of memory, knowledge, justice and truth, cycles of the covenant and the Berachah in their varied manifestations over the course of history and in the pages of books.  The verse in Jeremiah just quoted ends with the words “for all time” (ad olam), and “Ad olam” (“Forevermore”) is the title of the story with which S. Y. Agnon ends the volume of his works entitled Ha-esh ve-ha-ezim.  In the final pages of the volume, Agnon summons up the memory of the witnesses to the covenant who call up from the depths of oblivion that which was engraved on the tablets and recall, against all odds, what had been forgotten:

How great is the true writer…who does not abandon his work even when the sword of death hangs over his neck, who writes with his very blood, in his soul’s own script, what his eyes have seen!… So he would sit and discover new things which had been unknown to all the learned men of the ages until he came and revealed them.  And since there were many things and learning is endless and there is much to discover and investigate and understand, he did not put his work aside and did not leave his place and he remained there forevermore.[10]


[1] Translated from the Hebrew by Joel Linsider.  Except as noted below and elsewhere in the article, translations from primary sources and Hebrew secondary materials are by the present translator, as are all footnotes. Except as otherwise noted, the following translations of ancient texts have been used:

Hebrew Bible: New Jewish Publication Society Tanakh (NJPS), copyright © 1985, 1999 by the Jewish Publication Society. 

Apocrypha and New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

Jubilees: translation by O. S. Wintermute, in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Charlesworth) (New York: Doubleday, 1985), vol. 2, pp. 35-142.

1 Enoch: 1 Enoch, translated by Ephraim Isaac, in Charlesworth, vol. 1, pp. 5-90.

Qumran literature (Dead Sea Scrolls): Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York and London: Penguin Books, 1997 [1962]) (referred to as Vermes) or Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Leiden: Brill and Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2000) (referred to as DSSSE).

[2] The Shekhinah refers variously to God’s presence, often personified in feminine form, or to the feminine qualities within God, again often personified as a separate entity.

[3] The Hebrew translated “stay pure” is ve-qidashtem.  Literally, it means “sanctify yourselves,” but qiddushin also refers to marriage (more specifically, betrothal).

[4] Ketiv refers to the Masoretic written consonantal text; it is distinguished from the qeri, the text as vocalized and read.

[5] An English translation by Arthur Green was first published in Response 19 (1973), pp. 5-31 and was reprinted in David Roskies, ed., The Literature of Destruction: The Jewish Response to Catastrophe (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1988), pp. 585-604 and in S. Y. Agnon, A Book That Was Lost and Other Stories, ed. with introductions by Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman (New York: Schocken Books, 1995), pp. 378-409.  The extracts that follow are variously from the original edition in Moznayim (translated by the present translator) and from the Green translation of the expanded story (with page references to the Mintz-Hoffman edition).  The Hebrew original appears in Ha-esh ve-ha-ezim, vol. 8 of Kol sippurav shel shmu’el yosef agnon.  The story “Forevermore,” quoted from at the end of this article, is the final story in that volume; it is followed by the afterword from which the second epigraph to this article is taken.

[6] Azharot (lit., admonitions) are a genre of liturgical poems written for Shavuot, in which the 613 commandments are reviewed in verse.

[7] “Trees of life” is the term used for the staffs on which a Torah scroll is wound.

[8] The translation of these verses, and the one next quoted (Ezek. 1:16) are from the Old Jewish Publication Society translation (OJPS), The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917).

[9] English Translation of the Greek Septuagint Bible: The Translation of the Greek Old Testament Scriptures, Including the Apocrypha. Compiled from the Translation by Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton 1851, at http://www.ecmarsh.com/lxx/Jezekiel/index.htm.

[10]  S. Y. Agnon, “Forevermore,” trans. from the Heb. by Joel Blocker, revised by Robert Alter, in Robert Alter, ed., Modern Hebrew Literature (New York: Behrman House, 1975), pp. 248-249).  The Hebrew original is the concluding story in Ha-esh ve-ha-ezim.


 [JL1]This is the passage as it appears in Vermes. It differs in some respects from the Hebrew, but the version in DSSSE is much more different.

 [JL2]The quotation doesn’t link the events to Shavuot. Should that be further explained?

 [JL3]I added this citation because it seems to be the only one that speaks of Seraiah’s exile.

 [JL4]Should this be Monday, so that the yom pagu`a is Tuesday and then the next month can begin, as always, on Wednesday? Since 91 is a multiple of 7, a 91-day period beginning on a Wednesday will end on a Tuesday—or am I misunderstanding something?

 [JL5]I could find  no reference to paths of light or darkness in either the Vermes or DSSSE version of Pesher Habakkuk. Also, the Hebrew citations are שם, but I’m not sure what the reference is to, so I left out most of the references.

 [JL6]I assumed they maintained both interpretations side by side, and added this clause to clarify that.

 [JL7]This citation appears in the Hebrew but the verse—which mentions “covenant” but not “oath”—isn’t quoted.

 [JL8]I could find this text neither in Vermes nor in DSSSE; what is its 4Q citation?

 [JL9]It’s not clear what constitute the five.  Is it (1) Sabbaths; (2) fixed times; (3) sabbatical years; (4) jubilees; and (5) seven species?

 [JL10]Hebrew reads 75:4, but in Charlesworth it seems to be v. 3.

 [JL11]Hebrew reads Q2854, but this seems to be right.

 [JL12]Should this be cited?

 [JL13]There was no citation, so I couldn’t find the published translation; I translated the line myself.

 [JL14]I’ve copied this as it appears, but I’m not sure what “23” and “p. 528” refer to.

 [JL15]Charlesworth reads “food.”

 [JL16]I wasn’t sure of the meaning here; I’m not aware of a published English translation of the text.

The book of Jubilees is the earliest source to connect Shavuot to the Sinai covenant

by Prof.Michael Segal

The holiday of Shavuot is unique among the biblical festivals in two respects. First, it is the only holiday without its own set date in any calendar; its celebration is determined by counting from another event (the bringing of the omer or wave offering) whose date is also ambiguous (Lev 23:15-16; Deut 16:9). Second, it is the only holiday which has no historical context or event explicitly associated with the origins of its observance.[1] In rabbinic literature, by contrast, the holiday is anchored both calendrically, on the sixth of Sivan, and historically as a celebration of matan Torah, the giving of the Torah. When and how did these ideas develop?

The earliest source for a set date for the festival and its connection to the Sinaitic revelation, is Jubilees, a Jewish work composed in the second century BCE. The entire book is presented as a revelation to Moses on Mt. Sinai, through an angelic intermediary referred to as the Angel of Presence (מלאך הפנים).

This book, preserved in about 15 fragmentary copies in the Dead Sea scrolls,[2] presents a rewriting of Genesis and Exodus, enriching them with additional material, often reflecting both halachic and/or chronological concerns. Legal passages are added to the patriarchal narratives, and all of the events in these books are dated according to a heptadic (based on the number seven) chronological framework of years, “weeks” of years, and “jubilees” = 49 years.

The Date of Shavuot and the Meaning of “The Day after Shabbat”

The date for Shavuot in Jubilees—the date the holiday was celebrated in the Qumran community—is the 15th of the third month, Sivan, nine days later than the rabbinic practice. In accordance with the 364 day solar calendar used in Jubilees (see my TABS essay, “The Jewish Calendar of Jubilees” for details), the holiday fell on Sunday every year. This date for the Shavuot festival reflects a specific reading of the biblical text, which sheds light on a well-known passage from rabbinic literature.

Leviticus 23:15 assigns the beginning of the seven-week period that culminates in the festival of first-fruits to the day of bringing of the wave offering (omer), specified to take place on ממחרת השבת, the day after “Shabbat” (Lev 23:11). The precise identification of this day was the subject of intense polemics between Jewish groups in the late Second Temple period, who debated how to interpret the term “Shabbat.” As related in rabbinic literature, the Pharisees interpreted the term Shabbat to refer to the first day of the Matzot festival, and thus “the day after Shabbat” to refer to its second day. The Boethusians (a Second Temple sectarian group referred to in rabbinic sources, often disagreeing with the Pharisees on issues of calendar), on the other hand, took Shabbat, as in the vast majority of instances throughout the Bible, to refer to the weekly Shabbat (= Saturday). According to this, “the day after Shabbat” would refer to a Sunday.[3]

According to the Jubilees calendar, if we count seven weeks back from the 15th of the 3rd month, we arrive at Sunday, the 26th of the 1st month, as the day of the wave-offering. This date is the first Sunday following the seven-day Matzot festival (1/15–21), and reflects a literal translation of the expression “the day after Shabbat.” The count begins after the conclusion of the matzot festival since the description of this event follows the completion of the description of the previous festival (Lev 23:5-8).

Scholars debate whether the position attributed to the Boethusians is identical to that found in Jubilees and Qumran, since it is unclear whether they understood the “morrow after Shabbat” as a reference to the Sunday immediately following the matzot festival (as in Jubilees) or the one during the festival itself (as the Samaritans and Karaites do).[4] Both interpretations are fundamentally different from the rabbis, who understood that word “Shabbat” in “the day after Shabbat” as “festival,” specifically the first day of the festival.[5]

Jacob Celebrates Shavuot

In addition to having an exact date for Shavuot, Jubilees also adds an important theme to the holiday, the theme of covenant. This can be seen by looking at what transpires on Shavuot in the book—indeed, a major characteristic of Jubilees as it rewrites sections of Genesis and Exodus is the manner in which it anchors laws that only appear later in the Torah. In Jubilees 44, the date of Shavuot can be determined based upon the chronological data in the rewritten account of Jacob’s descent to Egypt (cf. Gen 46):

44:1 Israel set out from Hebron, from his house, on the first of the third month. He went by way of the well of the oath and offered a sacrifice to the Almighty YHWH of his father Isaac on the seventh of this month. 44:2 When Jacob remembered the dream that he had seen in Bethel, he was afraid to go down to Egypt. 44:3 But as he was thinking about sending word to Joseph that he should come to him and that he would not go down, he remained there for seven days on the chance that he would see a vision (about) whether he should remain or go down. 44:4 He celebrated the harvest festival—the first fruits of grain—with old grain because in all the land of Canaan there was not even a handful of seed in the land since the famine affected all the animals, the cattle, the birds, and mankind as well. 44:5 On the sixteenth the YaHuWaH appeared to him and said to him: ‘Jacob, Jacob’…

The passage opens at the beginning of the third month. Following Jacob’s arrival in Beersheba on the seventh of the third month, he remained there for seven days hoping to receive a vision about whether he should indeed go down to Egypt. This seven-day period is followed by “the harvest festival – the firstfruits of grain” in v. 4, immediately followed by the divine revelation on the 16th (v. 5). Thus, the “harvest festival” fell on the 15th of the month, after the seven-day sojourn (until the 14th) and immediately prior to the revelation on the 16th.

Abram’s Shavuot Revelation

Similarly, Abraham received the revelation concerning circumcision in “the middle of the third month”: “During the fifth year of the fourth week of this jubilee —in the third month, in the middle of the month—Abram celebrated the festival of the first fruits of the wheat harvest” (15:1). The celebration of this festival on the 15th of the month corresponds to the dates of the festivals of Matzot and Sukkot, according to the Torah, which take place on the 15th of the first and seventh months respectively.

Jubilees dates additional events to the 15th of the 3rd month:

a. 14:10 – covenant between the pieces (ברית בין הבתרים)
b. 16:13 – birth of Isaac (fulfillment of promise in chapter 15)
c. 29:7 – covenant with Laban

Thus, every significant event in Genesis that is associated with covenant is explicitly associated with the date of the “festival of harvest.”[6]

Shavuot and the Covenant with Noah

An extended passage following the flood narrative explicitly expresses the conception of Shavuot as the festival of covenant. The story concludes with a covenant between Noah and The Almighty YHWH in which He commits to never again destroy humanity through a Flood, while Noah and his sons swear not to consume the blood of animate beings:

6:17 For this reason it has been ordained and written on the heavenly tablets that they should celebrate the festival of weeks during this month—once a year—to renew the covenant each and every year.

The purpose of the annual celebration of Shavuot is to renew the covenant between The Almighty Creator and Israel,[7] a theme decidedly similar to the celebration of matan Torah found in rabbinic sources. However, there is a fundamental difference between the two conceptions.

Shavuot as a Covenant Going Back to the Time of Creation

According to Jubilees, the national covenant between The Almighty YaHuWaH and Israel was not first established at Sinai, but existed from the dawn of time, when Israel was already chosen as God’s nation in the first week of creation (2:19–21):[8]

19 ויאמר לנו הנה אני מבדיל לי]
עם בתווך עממי ו[שבתו הם וקדשתי אתם לי לעם וברכתים והיו עמי והייתי לאלהיהם] 20 ובחר בזרע יעקב ב[כל מאשר ראיתי וכתבתי אתו לי לבן בכור וקדשת אתו לי] לעולם ועד ואת היום ה[שביעי אגיד להם לשובתם בומכל 21 כאשר ברכם וקדשם לו לעם סגולה]
מכל הגוים ולהיות יחד[ עמנו שובתים

1He said to us: “I will now separate for myself] a people among my nations. And [they will keep Sabbath. I will sanctify them as my people, and I will bless them. They will be my people and I will be their Eloah.”] 20And he chose the descendants of Jacob among [all of those whom I have seen. I have recorded them as my first-born son and have sanctified them for myself] for all the age(s) of eternity. The [seventh] day [I will tell them so that they may keep Sabbath on it from everything, 21 as he blessed them and sanctified them for himself as a special people] out of all the nations and to be [keeping Sabbath] together [with us.

This accords with a deterministic, dualistic worldview expressed in a number of passages throughout Jubilees, according to which the status of Israel and the nations (and their heavenly angelic counterparts) was established by our Creator the Almighty YHWH as an integral part of the cosmos. Although Israel did not exist until over twenty generations later, its special position was determined in advance.

The existence of the covenant from the time of creation necessitated the existence of commandments, which are the stipulations of this covenant, and thus Jubilees posits that many commandments were already given prior to Mount Sinai. Similarly, the covenant festival was relevant from the dawn of time as well: first observed by angelic beings in heaven from creation,[9] until the time of Noah when it was first observed by human beings. It was then celebrated off and on until it was commanded at Mount Sinai:

6:18 This entire festival had been celebrated in heaven from the time of creation until the lifetime of Noah—for 26 jubilees and five weeks of years [=1309]. Then Noah and his sons kept it for seven jubilees and one week of years until Noah’s death [=350 years]. From the day of Noah’s death his sons corrupted (it) until Abraham’s lifetime and were eating blood. 6:19 Abraham alone kept (it), and his sons Isaac and Jacob kept it until your lifetime. During your lifetime the Israelites had forgotten (it) until I renewed (it) for them at this mountain.

חג השבועת in Jubilees thus commemorates this eternal covenant, which began in the first week of history and was renewed over time. The Sinaitic revelation is the culmination of a process, but is not the sole covenantal event at the heart of this festival.

Festival of Weeks שָׁבֻעוֹת or Oaths שְׁבוּעוֹת

The covenantal nature of the festival may also be reflected when, only a few verses later, the dual nature of the holiday is expressed: “because it is the festival of weeks and it is the festival of first fruits. This festival is twofold and of two kinds” (6:21, according to the Ge`ez translation).[10] The theme of the holiday as the “festival of first fruits” refers to the agricultural context of the holiday, reflecting the biblical descriptions of its observance.

At first, this would seem to be true of the reference to the “festival of weeks,” which is also a biblical theme surrounding this holiday. Nevertheless, due to the overwhelming emphasis on covenant in this passage, including the mention of oaths made by Noah and his sons, and subsequently commanded in the time of Moses, numerous scholars have suggested that the original Hebrew text of Jubilees (based upon the retroversion of the Ge`ez back into Hebrew) should be vocalized as חג השְבועות “the festival of oaths,”[11] reflecting the covenantal aspect of the holiday.

Conclusion

Shavuot in Jubilees may seem quite different from the festival as practiced by Rabbinic Jews nowadays. The dates are not identical, and even the nature of the covenants celebrated reflect different conceptions. At the same time, the Book of Jubilees offers important hints for the development of the conception of Shavuot in rabbinic literature as a festival with a set time that is associated with the giving of the Torah.

View Footnotes:

  1. The Sinaitic revelation is dated to the 3rd month (Exod 19:1), but there is no mention of a specific date in the month. Furthermore, there is no reference to this event in the various festival laws (Exod 23:16; Lev 23:15–22; Num 28:26–31; Deut 16:9–12), which all address the agricultural aspects of the festival.
  2. Due to their fragmentary state, these scrolls provide evidence for only a small fraction of the text in its original Hebrew. It was translated from Hebrew into Greek, and from Greek into Latin and Ge`ez (ancient Ethiopic). The book is preserved in its entirety only in Ge`ez, in multiple manuscripts, and therefore all modern editions of this book are based upon that ancient translation. For a Hebrew version of the text, see the translation of M. Goldmann in הספרים החיצונים (ed. A. Kahana). The English translation of R.H. Charles is available online: http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/jubilees.html
  3. Cf. b. Menachot 65a-66a; Scholion to Megillat Ta`anit for the 8th day of Nisan (in MS Parma, the opposing position is attributed to the Sadducees; cf. the edition of Vered Noam (Yad Ben-Zvi, 2003), pp. 174-175; see also m.Hagiga 2:4.
  4. The questions posed on the Boethusians’ position in Rabbinic sources imply that it was the Shabbat during the festival. At the same time, it is possible that the later discussions were no longer aware of the precise details of their calendar, beyond the debate of whether Shabbat referred to Saturday or a festival day. For more on Samaritan Shavuot, see Benyamim Tsedaka’s TABS essay, “The Samaritan Shavuot: A Seven-Day Celebration of the Feast of Weeks.”
  5. See Targums Onqelos, Neofiti, Pseudo-Jonathan, Genizah ms F to Lev 23:11, 15; Sifra Emor 12: 1–2; b. Menachot 65-66. This interpretation leads to the anomaly that in Lev 23:16, the term שבת in the expression ממחרת השבת needs to be understood differently as “week”; cf. the Targums to Lev 23:16. The motivation for this interpretation was perhaps to anchor Shavuot to a specific date, which was only possible according to the lunar-solar calendar if the date of the wave offering was set according to a specific date (the 16th of the 1st month), and not to a day of the week. This move still theoretically allowed for a limited shift of the date (between the 5th and 7th of Sivan), since the specific date each year was still dependent upon the lengths of the months of Nissan and Iyyar, which could each have been either 29 or 30 days long.
  6. An additional event dated to the 15th of the 3rd month is the birth of Judah (28:15). It is unclear whether this reflects the covenantal status of the tribe of Judah, associated with the Davidic line. Alternatively, it is similar to other instances in Jubilees in which the births of significant characters are dated to important dates on the Jubilees calendar; cf. e.g. the births of Levi on the 1st of the 1st month (28:14), and Joseph on the 1st of the 4th month (28:24).
  7. The Qumran sect observed an annual ceremony of covenant renewal (cf 1QS II-III), which is dated to the third month in a manuscript of the Damascus Document from Qumran Cave 4 (4Q266 11, 17). 2Chr 15:10–15 may reflect an earlier (than Jubilees) source of a covenant renewal in the third month.
  8. This text was preserved in Hebrew at Qumran (4QJubileesa [4Q216] vii 9–13 [eds. VanderKam and Milik; DJD 19], pp. 19–20), with the missing words reconstructed according to the Ge`ez version.
  9. Similarly, according to Jubilees, the angels of presence and angels of holiness celebrated the Sabbath from the dawn of time (2:18), and were created circumcised (15:27), both also described in the Torah as covenantal signs.
  10. The text of this verse has not been preserved in any of the copies of Jubilees from the Dead Sea scrolls.
  11. Since texts in the ancient world did not use vocalization (a practice continued until today in the writing of Torah scrolls), the difference between “weeks” and “oaths” would only be in reflected in how one read and interpreted the text. According to the suggestion here, a Greek translator did not understand the nuance of the original author (Jubilees was translated from Hebrew into Greek, and from Greek into Ge`ez [a dialect of Ethiopic] and Latin).

 ***Some claim that the ancient Greek Sabbaton was used for “a week” not just for Shabbat. Even if it had a dual meaning, 3 days and nights from Wednesday bring us to Saturday-Shabbat! Today the modern Greek word is no longer Sabbaton but rather Evdomáda. Shabbat remains Sabbaton in modern Greek! 
***All correct quotes from the Restoration Scriptures True Name 7th Red Letter Edition

Three facts are evident! One that He, our Mar Yah Messiah, rose just before dawn!

Second that the actual reading of the plain texts show us that He rose on one of the weekly Shabbats

Not on a first day of any supposed week!

Third since Shabbat is not a Greek concept or practice, the word Sabbaton is borrowed from the Hebrew

And is preserved in the Greek as there is no Greek word for Shabbat.

Combining these three crucial basic FACTS that undergird all the resurrection texts IN ALL FOUR GOSPELS,

another confirming four by the way, we can conclude, that the day of Yom HaTechaiyah,-Resurrection Day,

Was Shabbat Morning, Aviv 18, which In Hebrew is the

Numerical number for life or new life! So first study the centuries old lies below and then be open to enter the truth

That is being restored before your very eyes and your ears, as it settles in your hearts!

Matthew 28

Moreover, after the Shabbat (annual-Aviv 15) it being just before/towards dawn toward one of the weekly Shabbats [Aviv 18], [i] came Miryam of Magdala and the other Miryam to see the tomb.

2 And, see, there was a great earthquake: for the heavenly malach of the Master HWHY descended from the shamayim, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.

3 His appearance was like lightning, and His clothing white as snow: RED LETTERS BELOW NOT IN THE TEXT!!!!!!!!!! ADDED TO HIDE SHABBAT MORNING RESURRECTION!!

Matthew 28:1 
Text AnalysisGo to Parallel Greek

YES. our MessiYAH was laid in the heart of the earth in Aviv Yom 15th day time before HE was placed in the grave! from Yom15th to 17th were 3 Days and 3 Nights. YES, HE was raised on the 3rd YOM/day after HIS Death!

More notes from Editor:

Here are the major 2021 Moed-Feast dates:

  • March 17- New Year Aviv1
  • March 30-Passover
  • March 31-Unleavened Bread day 1
  • April 6- Unleavened Bread day 7
  • April 11- New Barley/Omer day 1
  • May 30- Shavuot
  • July 18- New Wine
  • September 5- New Oil
  • September 12- New Wood
  • September 15- Yom Teruah
  • September 24- Yom Kippur
  • September 29- Sukkot Day 1
  • October 5th Sukkot Day 7
  • October 6- Shemini Atzeret Day after Sukkoth

Commentary on SIN, and the State of our Nation (USA)

@6-2-20 By:  Edward A. Young, Ministry of Aloahiym

http://man-child.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/6-2-20-Commentary-on-SIN-and-the-State-of-our-Nation-USA-5.pdf

Speaking in reference to this country (USA), we are under the judgment of YAHUWAH Aloahiym.  We have sinned and done wickedly ignoring His righteous laws:  practicing lawlessness; murdering  millions of innocent babies; practicing evil sexual immorality and then passing laws to protect those who commit these abominations; practicing of extortion by corrupting the money system and then using it to create the bondage of debt; to name only a few.

When and what the Festival of Shavuot Memorializes

By Clifford Fearnley

Introduction

“And from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, you shall count for yourselves: seven completed Sabbaths. Until the morrow after the seventh Sabbath you count fifty days, then you shall bring a new grain offering to YHWH. Bring from your dwellings for a wave offering two loaves of bread, of two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour they are, baked with leaven, first-fruits to YHWH.” (Lev.23:15-17).

When it comes to this particular Festival, Scripture is vague; we are left in doubt about its timing and what it represents. We are told to count a definite period starting from the day after a Sabbath but Scripture is unclear which Sabbath, similarly we are told to wave two loaves of bread but not told why or what they symbolize.

We associate Shavuot with the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, the waving of the first fruits of the wheat harvest and the outpouring of the Ruach HaKodesh (Acts 2) but are we celebrating correctly? Not if we are to take any notice of the past, the ancients celebrated this Festival well before the Sinai event and certainly before what is described in Acts 2. Thus the Festival of Shavuot was celebrated before some of the events we believe it to represent. Now doesn’t that realization create a paradigm shift in our understanding? Another issue for us is how did the ancients calculate the Count of the Omer and date Shavuot.

When Scripture fails to provide the answers we should not, indeed, according to Mashiach (Matt.15:9) we must not, make up our own rules, thus with respect to;

  1. The Correct Date for Shavuot and
  2. What Shavuot Memorialises

we have to search other avenues of information: we are forced to look beyond the Scriptures and consider literature that was never canonised.

The extra-canonical information we will be considering is from; the Dead Sea scrolls and the book of Jubilees with some references to the book of Enoch. Oftentimes these two books are viewed with a jaundiced eye merely because they were never canonized. Yet the books of Jubilees and Enoch were, in both cases, recited to the recipient by a Malak; a heavenly messenger of YHWH, this itself is a compelling argument for these two books to be considered in the same vein as the Scriptures.1 It is astonishing that lower man could award himself the authority to decide information from a divine source was unworthy of the canon. Man’s decision to exclude this literature was not so much because it lacked credibility but more likely because it obstructed a particular agenda/philosophy.

From the three sources: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the book of Enoch and the book of Jubilees we are, insofar as this festival is concerned, able to resolve the above issues and ascertain the true date for Shavuot and what this celebration is about.

Dating Shavuot

“Speak to the children of Israel, and you shall say to them, ‘When you come into the land which I give you, and shall reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the first-fruits of your harvest to the priest and he shall wave the sheaf before YHWH for your acceptance. On the morrow, after the Sabbath, the priest waves it.” (Lev.23:10-11)

“And from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, you shall count for yourselves: seven completed Sabbaths. ‘Until the morrow after the

1 Refer to the separate article ‘Exclusivity Or Not of the Canon of Scripture’ found at www.undertorah.com under Miscellaneous articles

seventh Sabbath you count fifty days, then you shall bring a new grain offering to YHWH.” (Lev.23:15-16).

The period specified in Lev.23:15-16 is commonly referred to as the Counting of the Omer. As the verse instructs the Omer period is to start and finish on the day after a Sabbath and is to comprise seven Sabbaths, these facts are very clear. Less clear is from which Sabbath the counting is to begin.

Where to start the Count of the Omer is an issue of contention within Judaism. The Karaites start the 50 day count from the Sunday falling within the week of unleavened bread, whilst others of Orthodox following commence the counting from the second day of unleavened bread. So which is correct, could it be neither is correct? There is a verse from Exodus that is generally overlooked, yet it does impact on this issue,

In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. (Exod.19:1)

The phrase ‘the same day’ is translated ‘on that day’ in some scriptures. Whatever translation is used the use of the word ‘same’ in this verse is ambiguous and may be interpreted as meaning any of the following;

  1. The first day of the third month,
  2. The third day of the third month,
  3. The same day of the week as that on which they left Egypt,
  4. The same date of the month they left Egypt.
Text Box: Unleavened Bread

Taking (a)–(d) into consideration, the rules of neither the Karaites nor the Orthodox satisfy any of these alternatives,

Month 1 Date Solar Calendar Da ys Omer Count Event
Orthodox Karaite
Aviv 14 Tue 0     Pesach
  15 Wed 1     Day 1 of unleavened bread (Shabbat)
  16 Thu 2 1   Waving of first fruits (Orthodox start)
  17 Fri 3 2    
  18 Sat 4 3   First weekly Shabbat within Matzah
  19 Sun 5 4 1 Karaite start
  20 Mon 6 5 2  
  21 Tue 7 6 3 Last day of unleavened bread
             
  30 Thu   15 12 Last day of Month 1
Month 2 1 Fri   16 13  
             
  30 Sat 46 45 42 Last day of Month 2
Month 3 1 Sun 47 46 43 (a)
  2 Mon 48 47 44  
3 Tues 49 48 45 (b)
4 Wed 50 49 46 (c)
5 Thur 51 50 47 Shavuot (Orthodox)
6 Frid 52   48  
7 Sat 53   49  
8 Sun 54   50 Shavuot (Karaite)

Neither method of counting satisfies any of the conditions in (a) – (d), thus both philosophies ignore Exod.19:1.

Not only does neither teaching satisfy Scripture but neither Judaic authority can prove what they preach, so how can anyone have confidence in what they are advocating?

So concerning the dating of Shavuot let us consider what is said in the book of Jubilees

And in the fifth year of the fourth week of this jubilee in the third month, in the middle of the month, Abram celebrated the first fruits of the grain harvest. (Jub.15:1).

All of the non-canonical literature we are using recognises a 364 day year comprising 12 months of 30 days with four additional days added at the head of each quarter/season. Thus when it says the middle of the third month it is referring to the 15th of the third month which, on the 364 day solar calendar is the 75th day of the year. Now let us refer to an earlier chapter from Jubilees; chapter six. To save time and space I have abridged what is written but have kept sufficient not to lose the context. We are only interested in the first half of the chapter which concerns the end of the flood and Noach’s exit from the ark. It is important to realise that the book of Jubilees was dictated to Moshe by a malak (a heavenly messenger) and Moshe is learning what happened concerning Noach,

And He gave to Noach and his sons a sign that there should not again be a flood upon the earth. He set His bow in the cloud for a sign of the eternal covenant that there should not again be a flood on the earth to destroy it all the days of the earth. For this reason it is ordained and written on the heavenly tablets, that they should celebrate the Feast of Shavuot in this month once a year…..(Jub.6:15-17)

And this whole festival was celebrated in heaven from the day of creation till the days of Noach – twenty six jubilees and five weeks of years and Noach and his sons observed it for seven jubilees and one week of years, till the day of Noach’s death, and from the day of Noach’s death his sons did away with it until the days of Abraham, and they ate blood. But Abraham observed it, and Yitzchak

 and Ya’akov observed it until your days, and in your days the children of Israel forgot it until you celebrated it anew on this mountain. (Jub.6:18-19).

Reading Jub.15:1 with the above, clearly it was the Festival of Shavuot that Avraham and his sons celebrated on the 15th of the third month. We are told that the festival was observed by the patriarchs, subsequently forgotten and re-instituted with Moshe. What is more the patriarchs could not have been wrong with the timing because we are told that this, as are other moedim, was written down on heavenly tablets and they would not have  been allowed to celebrate it incorrectly.

The 15th of the third month is the 75th day of the year which means the start of the Count of the Omer is from the 26th day of the year (inclusive counting), which falls outside the week of unleavened bread. What this means is that we must use a calendar in which the 26th and 75th days fall immediately after a Sabbath, which is only possible using a solar calendar which recognises the equinoxes. As far as I am aware no other calendar is able to satisfy this requisite.2

Starting the count of the Omer from the day after the first Sabbath after the week of Matzah is alien to most but the accuracy of doing so becomes clearer when we realise the ancients considered Pesach and the week of Matzah as a single celebration. Consider how Moshe phrases his instructions concerning this festival,

Guard the month of Aḇiḇ, and perform the Passover to YHWH your Elohim, for in the month of Abib YHWH your Elohim brought you out of Mitsrayim by night. And you shall slaughter the Passover to YHWH your Elohim, from the flock and the herd, in the place where YHWH chooses to put His Name. Eat no leavened bread with it. For seven days you eat unleavened bread with it, bread of affliction, because you came out of the land of Mitsrayim in haste – so that you remember the day in which you came out of the land of Mitsrayim, all the days of your life. And no leaven should be seen with you in

2 More is explained on this point in the separate article ‘Which is YHWH’s Calendar.’

all your border for seven days, neither should any of the meat which you slaughter in the evening on the first day stay all night until morning. (Deut.16:1-4)

This passage clearly shows that Moshe did not consider the Pesach a separate celebration to Matzah. The Jewish historian Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews refers to the ‘Pesach week’ and also talks of the eight days of unleavened bread which has to include Pesach. Josephus would be talking in terms of what was customary within Jewish society. Scroll 4Q325 of the Dead Sea Scrolls describing the priestly family in service at the time of the Pesach talks in terms of an eight day Pesach. I do not have the audacity to say I know better  than Abraham, Yitzchak, Ya’akov, Moshe and the Zadokite Qumran community. In the gospel, Pesach is referred to as being on the first day of ‘Feast of unleavened bread’ (Matt.26:17). Even the Jews today refer to the 15th Abib to be the second day of Pesach and talk in terms of ‘the days (not day) of Pesach. Clearly the concept that Pesach included the week of Matzah is overwhelming and concurs with the Zadokite understanding that the phrase, ‘And from the morrow after the Sabbath’ refers to the first Sabbath after the completion of the week of Matzah.

Did Mashiach’s Death and Resurrection Effect the Date of Shavuot?

Did Mashiach’s death, resurrection and ascension affect the count of the Omer? Are we to correlate the waving of the first fruits of the crop with the first fruits of the resurrection, are they synonymous? When we collect together the following three elements: 1) that Deut.4:2 commands that the Torah is not to be meddled with, 2) Jubilees categorically states that the correct date of Shavuot 15/3 is ordained on heavenly tablets and 3) we are told Mashiach never sinned therefore He never transgressed Torah. How then could He implement a change to YHWH’s calendar? What is more, at His Pesach Mashiach specifically said this is the blood of the new covenant not new calendar. If His death and resurrection was to change YHWH’s calendar He had the ideal opportunity to confirm this when referring to the sign of Jonah (Matt.12:39-40). Nowhere does Mashiach mention any impending change to YHWH’s calendar as a result of His death and resurrection and nowhere does Scripture use the terms ‘first fruit of the harvest’ and ‘first fruits of the resurrection’ synonymously, if this was to be correct we would have to enquire how is the second waving of the harvest at Shavuot synonymous of resurrection?

What the Festival of Shavuot Memorializes

Other than to infer thanksgiving for a successful harvest, the Scriptures provide no explanation for this celebration. Today we attach several events to this festival; First Fruits of the harvest, the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the giving of the Ruach Hakodesh (Holy Spirit) as described in Acts 2. However, as mentioned in the Introduction, this Festival was celebrated centuries before these events. So what exactly were the ancients celebrating and should we be celebrating likewise?

The book of Jubilees shows us that YHWH chose the date of Shavuot; the 15th of the third month to enact several very salient events,

And He gave to Noach and his sons a sign that there should not again be a flood on the earth. And He set His bow in the cloud for a sign of the eternal covenant that there should not again be a flood on the earth to destroy it all the days of the earth. For this reason it is ordained and written on the heavenly tablets, that they should celebrate the ‘Feast of Weeks’ in this month once a year, to renew the covenant every year. (Jub.6:15-17)

It was on Shavuot that YHWH made a solemn promise with creation to never flood the earth again and it is commanded for us to renew/refresh/remember YHWH’s promise at this time every year. Then we have the following additional covenants enacted on this date. To save space I have abridged both abstracts,

Jubilees chapter 14;

1After these things, in the fourth year of this week, on the New Moon of the third month, the word of YHWH came to Abram in a dream saying “Fear not Abram: I am your defender and your reward will be exceedingly great…9 And He said unto him, “Take Me a heifer of three years, and a goat of three

years, and a sheep of three years, and a turtle dove, and a pigeon.” 10 And he took all these in the middle of the month.

Jubilees chapter 15;

1And in the fifth year of the fourth week of this jubilee in the third month, in the middle of the month, Abram celebrated the feast of the first fruits. 2And he offered new offerings on the alter, the first fruits of the produce unto YHWH, an heifer and a goat and a sheep on the alter as a burnt sacrifice unto YHWH; their fruit offerings and their drink offerings he offered upon the alter with frankincense. 3And YHWH appeared to Abram and said to him, 4“I am YHWH almighty; approve yourself before Me and be you perfect. And I will make My covenant between Me and you and I will multiply you exceedingly.” 5And Abram fell on his face and YHWH talked with him, and said, 6“Behold My ordinance is with you, and you shall be the father of many nations..9”And I shall establish My covenant between Me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations, for an eternal covenant so that I may be an Elohim unto you and your seed after you. 11And YHWH said unto Abraham, “And as for you do you guard My covenant, you and your seed after you and you circumcise every male after you.

Note there is no mention of two loaves of leavened bread, as we will see there was no need of such symbolism until later.

So, insofar as this festival is concerned what we have so far is,

  1. YHWH’s covenant promise never again to flood the earth
  2. YHWH’s covenant with Abram
  3. The covenant of circumcision

Feast of Weeks

  • Waving of first Fruits                                                                                             Feast of First Fruits

Thus the Festival of Shavuot has two elements, a fact confirmed by Jubilees,

For it is the ‘Feast of Weeks’ and the ‘Feast of First Fruits:’ this feast is twofold and of a double nature: according to what is written and engraved concerning it. (Jub.6:21).

Clearly it was covenant that the ancients attached to this Festival, even the element of ‘First Fruits’ has covenantal implications as we will see. But we cannot ignore the covenantal element associated with the outpouring of the Ruach Hakodesh upon the disciples also at Shavuot. So post Sinai what we have for Shavuot is,

  1. YHWH’s covenant promise never again to flood the earth
  2. YHWH’s covenant with Abram
  3. The covenant of circumcision
  4. The command to wave two loaves of leavened bread
  5. The earthly institution of the new covenant : Acts 2

Feast of Weeks

  • Waving of first Fruits                                                                                               Feast of First Fruits

It could be argued that item 5 should not be included because Mashiach introduced the new covenant at  Pesach not Shavuot however we must remember that the new covenant is the ‘Gospel’ of Mashiach and it was inaugurated at Shavuot.

The question we now have is, are we transgressing Deut.4:2 by adding to this celebration? I don’t believe so. Clearly Shavuot is YHWH’s appointed time to celebrate His covenants a fact confirmed by Jubilees. Items 1,2

and 3 were always a part of Torah indeed they were written on heavenly tablets and YHWH Himself added item 4 with the giving of the Torah at Sinai. The principle here is that Shavuot is the time of a refreshing of YHWH’s covenants and He tells us specifically which covenants are to be celebrated, that is those given on this date. Note again the following passage from Jubilees which states that Moshe celebrated this feast in the same manner as did the patriarchs,

And this whole festival was celebrated in heaven from the day of creation till the days of Noach – twenty six jubilees and five weeks of years and Noach and his sons observed it for seven jubilees and one week of years, till the day of Noach’s death, and from the day of Noach’s death his sons did away with it until the days of Abraham, and they ate blood. But Abraham observed it, and Yitzchak and Ya’akov observed it until your days, and in your days the children of Israel forgot it until you celebrated it anew on this mountain. (Jub.6:18-19).

What all this reveals is that the cannon of Scripture is, on its own, inadequate for us to correctly observe Shavuot and proves the necessity of studying extra canonical literature.

Feast of Weeks

But what of the new covenant ordained by Mashiach should this be added to Shavuot? I would say no because this covenant was ordained at a different time and has its own specific celebration – Pesach. However, I have included this covenant in the Appendix for those who may wish not to exclude it.

The book of Jubilees leaves us in no doubt that this festival is for covenant remembrance. Unfortunately this element of Shavuot is lost today because following Judaism many are starting the count of the Omer from the wrong Sabbath and unable to attach any relevance of the 15th of the third month consequently the connection between Shavuot and covenant is lost.

Feast of First Fruits

We know that this part of the ceremony is to give thanks to YHWH for a blessed harvest which is to be symbolised by waving two loaves of wheat bread. But why this specific symbolisation, why not just wave the first sheaf of the harvest as with the barley first fruits? It is because of what the loaves represent and the intrinsic connection this festival has with covenant. However, because most have failed to recognise this connection there is confusion about what the two loaves actually symbolise. Some say the two houses of Israel: others say Jew and Gentile, whilst a third opinion is that the two loaves represent righteousness and unrighteousness. When we consider the two loaves are identical this latter opinion is illogical: how can two identical objects represent two opposites. The same philosophy can be applied to the claim Jew and Gentile. Whilst these may not be opposites they are far from identical. When we consider that this festival is about the refreshing/remembrance of covenants, it is obvious that the gentiles cannot be represented in this ceremony. YHWH never made any covenants with the Gentile nations, He only ever covenanted with Israel. As the apostle says, Gentiles wanting covenant benefits must be grafted into Israel. So Gentiles cannot be represented in this waving of First Fruits. The only alternative left is for the two loaves to be symbolic of the two houses of Israel. In other words a complete Israel is YHWH’s first fruits, a fact confirmed by Jeremiah,

Holy is Israel to YHWH the first-fruits of His increase. (Jer.2:3)

But identifying what the loaves most probably represent does not explain the reason for the symbolism commanded by YHWH. Could there be several messages in this; 1) The leavened state of the loaves is a reminder that Israel will remain in a sinful condition until they accept Mashiach and His atoning sacrifice which will happen on His return (Zach.12:10-11), when all covenant promises concerning Abram’s descendants will be fulfilled. 2) Irrespective of Israel’s unrighteous condition YHWH still provides for them in remembrance of His words to the prophet (Isa. 49:15-16). 3) That Israel will remain divided until YHWH collects His body of believers at the end of this age and 4) it is a demonstration of YHWH’s accessibility, even for sinners (Isa.55:7).

With all of the above in mind how should we celebrate Shavuot? I have attached an appendix at the end of this article which provides some guidance for those who wish to make use of it.

A Further Comment on Jub.6:18-19

And this whole festival was celebrated in heaven from the day of creation till the days of Noach – twenty six jubilees and five weeks of years and Noach and his sons observed it for seven jubilees and one week of years, till the day of Noach’s death, and from the day of Noach’s death his sons did away with it until the days of Abraham, and they ate blood. But Abraham observed it, and Yitzchak and Ya’akov observed it until your days, and in your days the children of Israel forgot it until you celebrated it anew on this mountain. (Jub.6:18-19).

This passage says that YHWH’s commandment never again to flood the earth was celebrated in heaven from the time of creation, that is, it was celebrated before it was given to Noach. The book of Jubilees leaves us in no doubt of YHWH’s omniscience and that all of YHWH’s commandments and rules for humanity were preordained and celebrated by the heavenly host in advance of YHWH declaring them on earth.

As an aside, this passage also provides proof of the synchronisation between heavenly worship and earthly worship. In her book on the Dead Sea Scrolls titled ‘The Three Temples’ Rachel Ellior explains how the scrolls describe the interaction between the malakim and the temple priests thus, when we read the closing phrase of Jubilees 3:21; ‘They should keep Sabbath with us’ we can take this phrase literally. Whilst the above passage tells us that the celebration was ceased on earth there is no reason to believe heavenly worship was affected by this earthly cessation. What would have stopped was worship synchronisation between the two realms.

Conclusion

The Qumran community were Zadokites who YHWH says never erred (Ezek.48:11): they began the count of the Omer from the 26th day and not from any Sabbath within the week of Matzah. They were advocates of the solar calendar, believing this to be the calendar against which the heavenly host established sacred time and sacred service, a belief that is confirmed in the books of Jubilees and Enoch. They were also the temple administers and must have had the correct timing for Shavuot. Only a solar calendar acknowledging the relevance of the vernal equinox facilitates the correct timing for the Festival of Shavuot, being the 15th of the third month and for this date to be a day after a Sabbath.

The timing of YHWH’s comment to Ezekiel cannot be over-looked. Ezekiel lived during the period spanning the first and second temples and the temple administrators at this time were the Zadokite priests. Thus when YHWH says they ‘never erred’ He can only be referring to their performance as the temple administrators.

It was because the temple priests accepted a lunar calendar which precluded not only the correct observance of the festival of Shavuot but also the observance of the other festivals on the correct days, that the Zadokite priests separated from the temple and formed the Qumran community.3 This defilement was prophesied in the book of Jubilees,

For there will be those who will assuredly make observations of the moon – how it disturbs the seasons and comes in from year to year ten days too soon. For this reason the years will come upon them when they will disturb the order and make an abominable day the day of testimony, and an unclean day a feast day and they will confound all the days, the kodesh with the unclean, and the unclean day with the kodesh; for they will go wrong as to the months and Sabbaths and feasts and jubilees. (Jub.6:36-37).

Remember these words were spoken by a malak of YHWH to Moshe and probably first penned by Moshe himself.

3 More is explained about the cessation of the Zadokite priests in the separate article ‘Which is YHWH’s Calendar.’

As said in the Introduction, Scripture is vague insofar as this festival is concerned, thankfully the book of Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls plug the holes left by the Scriptures and gives us the true date and the true principles behind this festival. YHWH promised the outpouring of His Ruach in the end times. We are being blessed today as YHWH reveals more of His truth. But when His truth requires us to undo old beliefs and philosophies are we humble enough to do so, or are we going to let pride stand in the way? Nowhere in the Scriptures is pride spoken of in a positive context.

Clifford Fearnley 2019

APPENDIX

Accepting the emphasis of Shavuot is covenant renewal the following is purely a suggested procedure and liturgy for celebrating this feast;

Part 1: Festival of Weeks

The following passages referencing the individual covenants are suggested reading;

  • Rainbow covenant and events leading up to it: Gen.6:9-9:17
    • Abrahamic covenant starting with the initial promise YHWH made to Abram. This promise is the ‘head’ of all the subsequent covenants made with Israel:

I. Gen.12:1-3

II. Gen.15:1-21. YHWH reiterated this covenant with Abraham’s descendants Yitzchak, Gen.26:1-5 and Ya’akov, Gen.35:9-12.

  • Covenant of circumcision: Gen.17:1-14
    • Giving of the Torah at Sinai: Exod.19:1-22:17,(for brevity I restrict this section), Gen.24:4-8

I would conclude the Old Testament provisions with the passages detailing the blessings and curses recited on Mounts Gerizim and Eybal Deut.28:1-68

  • Institution of the new covenant: Matt.26:26-29, Acts2:1-4

After revising the individual covenants it is incumbent upon all of us to reconfirm our continuance in covenant with YHWH and you may like to follow my directive for all partaking of this celebration to recite the following,

“At this time as commanded by YHWH I reconfirm my partnership in all of the covenants YHWH Eloheinu (YHWH my Elohim) has offered me through Abraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov and in the new covenant sealed with the blood of Yahusha HaMashiach.”

Part 2: Festival of First Fruits

Scripture only details the waving of two loaves of leavened bread without identifying what the loaves symbolise, thus, insofar as Scripture is concerned, it is difficult to adopt a liturgy corresponding to this action. The following is proposed in harmony with the explanation offered in the attached article and for those in agreement it may be advantageous to revisit this section of the article.

Today YHWH’s Israel, the impending Israel of the millennium will be a community of believers in Mashiach. So for those who have repented and accepted Mashiach do the two unleavened loaves have any significance? Insofar as the loaves symbolize the unrighteous condition of the House of Ya’akov the answer is no: the body of Mashiach has no relationship with a disobedient Israel. However, as stated in the article, within this symbolism there is the acknowledgment of YHWH’s ever existing grace irrespective of human weakness and it is this element that we should never forget. So, as instructed in Leviticus, the host should wave the two loaves and all partaking may recite words such as these,

“Heavenly Father: YHWH Eloheinu, we are forever wretched and so we come before you always in repentance, undeserving of your grace and favor and so we give thanks that you are a compassionate Elohim who promises to hear the cries of a repentant heart. Thank you Yahushua Mashiach.”

I stress the above is a suggested format only.

P.S. Editor’s note:

The scripture uses the phrase “on (or in) the same day”. The same day as to what? The Hebrew is as unambiguous as the English translation:

it is “in the same day” -(


) that the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt. To what day does this phrase refer?

“So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:17).

Clearly, the reference is to the first day of Unleavened Bread, Nisan 15. Notice in Exodus 12:17 the use of the phrase “same day”

(     

                      ) just as Exodus 19:1 uses “in the same day” (    

                        ). Repeatedly in the account of the exodus, the day (yom)

the Israelites went out of Egypt is used with the demonstrative adjective.

“And Moses said to the people: Remember this day (     

                             ) [        

                               is just the untranslatable accusative

marker] in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of the hand of YHWH brought you out of this place.

No leavened bread shall be eaten.”On this day you are going out, in the month Abib” (Exodus 13:3-4).

41 “And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years — on that very same day (           

                                                                                                                                                                                                       literally,

“in the bone [i.e. substance] of this day) — it came to pass that all the armies of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:41).

51 “And it came to pass, on that very same day (   

                                             ), that the YHWH brought the children of Israel out

of the land of Egypt according to their armies” (Exodus 12:51).

It should be clear that when all of these passages use the phrase      

                                             in some form and all clearly refer to the 15th of Nisan

the day of the Israelites’ departure from Egypt, then Exodus 19:1 means that they came to the wilderness of Sinai on the fifteenth day of the third month.

Learning Paleo Hebrew by Bet HaShem Midrash

Aleph Bayit Learning Paleo Hebrew.pdf file:///C:/Users/YahnEl/Downloads/2019%20Aleph%20Bayit%20Learning%20Paleo%20Hebrew.pdf

TABLE             CONTENTS

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………. 4

Part One, The Story of the Letters……………………………………………… 5

Part Two, The Letters………………………………………………………………… 9

The Garden of Letters……………………………………………………….. 11

Basic Meanings of the Letters…………………………………………… 18

Alephbayit Tables 1-5……………………………………………….. 18-21

Part Three, Combining Letters………………………………………………… 22

Word Formations……………………………………………………………………. 27

Names……………………………………………………………………………………. 29

The Message of YahúWah…………………………………………………………….. 31-34

Footnotes……………………………………………………………………………….. 35

Appendix:………………………………………………………………………. 36-44

The Tables of the Alphabets………………………………………………………………………….. 36-37

Letters of Ancient and Modern Alphabets………………………………………………………….. 38

Chart of the 22 Scrolls of The Letters/The Scriptures…………………………………………. 39

Chart of the Pairs of Letters: The 12 Houses of Alehim (Elohim)………………………. 40

Chart of the States of Light:…………………………………………………………………………. 41-42

The Cardinals of Aleph to Yud……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 41

The Cardinals of Zayin to Oyin………………………………………………………………………….. 41

The Cardinals Lamed to Shayin…………………………………………………………………………. 42

22 Letters of Totality………………………………………………………………………………………….. 43

Numerical Associations of the Letters………………………………………………………………… 44

The Song of the Aleph Bayit………………………………………………………………………………. 45

The Fiery Body of the Letters…………………………………………………………………………….. 46

INTRODUCTION

THE AlephBayit

Have you ever wondered why the Letters of the AlephBayit are in a certain order, and

why it is important to learn the AlephBayit in that order? Have you ever wondered why the letters are shaped as they are and what their shapes mean, or desired to understand the reasons for combining letters together to form words?

We are rewarded for learning and for being able to recite the Letters. The order of the Letters is used throughout one’s life—in our communications, work, and in our storage and retrieval of information. The arrangement of the Letters contain many wonders and are the means to proceed into Life.

The letters are called after the first two characters, A/A/Aleph/Alpha and B/B/Bayit/Bet—the AlephBayit. The first AlephBayit of humanity, commonly shared by the Ovri/Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Samaritan peoples,1 is comprised of twenty-two characters. In this original order of letters, individual letters are used in more than one way and convey more than one sense.2 These  twenty-two characters provided the basic framework for the Greek alphabet, which in turn was borrowed by the Romans, from whose innovations the alphabet symbols of the modern, Western World are derived. See Appendix: The Table of the Alphabets pg 36-37.

Although the shapes and sounds of the letters and their arrangement in sequence have varied somewhat from the original AlephBayit across the millennia of adaptation, the underlying meaning and basic order of the original twenty-two letters remain. From these twenty-two signs, we have developed multi-systems of communication and have filled countless volumes of books and libraries.

The original twenty-two letters are not strangers to us. They are hieroglyphic symbols for the Principles underlying all forms. Their meanings are understood in every age and from every perspective.

Not only do the characters represent various human body parts,3 animal forms and functions, plants, heavenly bodies, and the social positions of humankind, they correspond to the 22 amino acids and the 22 like pairs of chromosomes common to humanity. We continually encounter the letters, both internally and externally. Therefore, we stand to benefit greatly by consciously renewing our acquaintance with these structures of Light.

The order of the Letters provides a framework for literature. The Scriptures contain 22 scrolls, from Sepher Maaseh Bereshith/Genesis to Dibre Hayamin/Chronicles.4 There is one scroll for each letter of the AlephBayit arranged in accordance with the progressive meaning of the letters. Each scroll’s assigned letter is understood to be emblematic of the scroll’s contents. See Appendix: Chart of the 22 Scrolls of the Letters, pg 39.

The Stories in scriptures are told via acrostic writings of the AlephBayit. Each scroll or book is a message of a Letter. Within the various scrolls of the Ovri texts, there are numerous AlephBayit acrostics, showing the importance of the AlephBayit in the minds of its writers/compilers. Tehillah/Psalm 119 is divided into twenty-two stanzas—one for each letter of the AlephBayit—and recounts a progression from the conception of righteousness unto perpetual renewal. In this surviving testimony to the AlephBayit’s order and endorsement, each stanza corresponds to the meanings of the AlephBayit letter that begins both the stanza, itself, and also the eight verses that comprise each stanza.5 Additionally, various types of acrostic writing6 found elsewhere in the Bible7 and in the siddur (prayer book), including songs and poetry, are based on the order of the Letters.8

The order of the AlephBayit characters tells a special story—a story that has been “hidden” to many, but nonetheless, a story that has been historically and universally accepted. The understanding of this story is like receiving a very special gift—a gift that belongs to all humankind; for the AlephBayit tells The Story of Life and the Totality of All in One.

THE MESSAGE OF THE NAME YHWH

Aleph Bayit Learning Paleo Hebrew.pdf file:///C:/Users/YahnEl/Downloads/2019%20Aleph%20Bayit%20Learning%20Paleo%20Hebrew.pdf





 Highly recommend this Youtube video relating to this subject: 

Head of the Year – Rosh Hashanah : The Feasts of the Children of Light – Head of the YearImage may contain: flower and text

March 2019-March 2020 Zadokite Priestly Calendar As Found in the Dead Sea Scrolls   

By Sholiach Moshe Yoseph Koniuchowsky

Jerusalem Spring Equinox reading confirmed Spring Astronomical Equinox was on March 20th 2019

We have been studying & making progress in grasping all there is regarding Torah time & we share with you each piece as He, our loving Abba, reveals it to us. This is now our 34th year of study on this vital matter & so we bring you our latest & most up to date understanding, building & not negating past revelations of time restoration! The weekly Shabbat starting the new Torah year Aviv 4 in 2019, will fall on Saturdays, as Day 364 will be on Tuesday March 19th 2019 and Aviv 1 WEDNESDAY March 20th 2019, making Shabbat on Saturdays this year and every other year as well, since the Torah based Year CANNOT START ON ANY DAY OF THE WEEK OTHER THAN DAY 4, WHICH WE HAVE PROVEN CORRESPONDS TO OUR MODERN WEDNESDAY!

                        From our studies so far we can assert the following few details as facts:

-The Vernal Equinox is the sign that a New Torah Year can or is in its right season to begin. It can fall on any day within the same Equinox Week, a 7 day period that transits from the old to the New Year on Aviv 1.
-Both The Vernal & Fall Equinoxes are confirmed by the shadows throughout the day making a straight line. A second witness is that only on the Spring and Fall Equinoxes does the moon rise in the east, in the same exact window that the sun sets in the west. A 3rd witness is that the year begins in the constellation of Pisces for at least another 400 or so years.
​-Every 3 years Aviv 1 starts with a full moon! That is when the full moon occurs on the same day as Aviv 1 which occurs, that same Wednesday, not the following Wednesday. This will occur in 2019.
-That the first 4th day of the week [the first Wednesday] after Day 364 [always on a Tuesday] is always Aviv 1 each and every year based on the Torah command of a 364 day year. The Wednesday of the Spring Equinox week.
-That the Torah year always starts on a 4th Day-Wednesday & always ends on a 3rd Day-Tuesday & is exactly 364 days as required by Torah, The New Covenant & Enoch.
-That the Spring Equinox occurs on a day during the last week of the 364 day year. EVERY YEAR, with Aviv 1 always being the Wednesday [Day 4] after a 364 day year ends on a Tuesday, EVERY YEAR, as required by Torah, The New Covenant & Enoch.
-That YHUH masterfully built in intercalation and there is absolutely no need to ever add days, months, weeks or years, as long as we wait each year until the first Wednesday after the 364th day on a Tuesday, during The Spring Tekufah-Equinox week. This method adjusts itself!

More Understanding! NOW PLEASE DO NOT GET ANGRY!!!! Most of you will never get the 364 day 52 week solar calendar right or YAH’s times right, because you insist on matching Gregorian dates with the calculated times of YAH! You cannot mix Gregorian data with biblical data-dates! Unless you want false calendars and violations of YAH’s Torah! Let me explain!

First let us look at the Scriptures that require a calculated 364 day 52 week year! After all, seeking the correct times must be based on Scripture alone!

​Jubilees-Yovleem Chapter 6:

30 And all the yamim of the commandment will be fifty two weeks of yamim-days  and (these will make) the entire year complete. Thus it is engraved and ordained on the heavenly tablets.
31 And there is no neglecting (this commandment) for a single year from year to year [no year can have 13 months or more than 52 weeks, even by one day]. IF YOU FOLLOW MEN THAT INSIST YOU HAVE TO ADD A WEEK EVERY SO OFTEN, IT IS NOT OF THE FATHER!!
32 And command the children of Yisrael that they observe [all] the years according to this reckoning – three hundred and sixty-four yamim-days and (these) will constitute a complete year and they will not disturb its time from its yamim-days and from its feasts; for everything will take place in them according to their testimony and they will not leave out any yom-day nor disturb any feasts. IF YOU OBEY HIS COMMANDS, HE WILL SEE TO IT THAT YOU ARE GIFTED WITH THE CORRECT TIMES!! IF YOU DISOBEY AND FOLLOW GUESSWORK AND NOT HIS MATH FOUND IN HIS COMMANDS, HE WILL SEE TO IT THAT YOUR TIMES ARE DISTURBED AND NATURALLY YOU WILL BE DISTURBED ABOUT THAT!
33 But if they do neglect and do not observe them according to His commandment, then they will disturb all their seasons and [all] the years will be dislodged from this (order), [and they will disturb the seasons and the years will be dislodged] and they will neglect their ordinances.
34 And all the children of Yisrael will forget and will not find the path of the years, and will forget the new months and seasons and the Shabbats and they will go wrong as to all the entire order of the years. YOU WON’T JUST BE WRONG ABOUT THE CALENDAR BUT ALL THE YEARS YOU ATTEMPT TO KEEP THE FEASTS WILL BE OUT OF HIS ORDER OR BROKEN!!!
35 For I know and from now on will I declare it unto you, and it is not of my own devising; for the book is written before me, and on the heavenly tablets the division of Yamim-days is ordained, lest they forget the feasts of the covenant-brit and walk according to the feasts of the goyim after their error and after their ignorance. [If we become like little school children YHUH will teach us His math [designed for men to work only in the heavenly & the earthly realm] and His ways-times so ignorance over the true times comes to an end!]
36 For there will be those who will assuredly make observations of the moon[Strictly forbidden!]- how it disturbs the seasons and comes in from year to year ten yamim-days too soon.
37 For this reason the years will come upon them when they will disturb (the order) and make an abominable (yom) the yom of testimony and an unclean yom a feast yom and they will confound all the yamim-days, the kadosh with the unclean and the unclean yom with the kadosh; for they will go wrong as to the months [once you add weeks or days, at any time, in any year, you mess up the perfect order of the kadosh-set apart 364 day 52 week year] and Shabbats and feasts and Jubilees.
38 For this reason I command and testify to you that you may testify to them; for after your death your children will disturb them, so that they will not make the year three hundred and sixty-four Yamim-days [THIS PROPHECY HAS ALREADY COME TO PASS ON A DAILY BASIS!] ONLY and for this reason they will go wrong as to the new months [and weeks by implication] and seasons and Shabbats and feasts and they will [eventually] eat all kinds of blood with all kinds of [unkosher] flesh [the end of their rebellion, if they don’t stop adding days or weeks based on mere guesswork or human math!].

Enoch 75: 2 the exactness of the year is – accomplished through its separate three hundred and sixty-four stations​. Meaning, you must stop at day 364 for exactnesseven if it is a few days before the Spring Equinox and it’s visible straight line sign or even if the Roman calendar says it’s on A Friday, Sunday or any other day! Again be careful to obey HIM and not mix biblical and Roman data!!!! YHUH is watching and testing you, with the restoration of Torah time! Even if science and religion are against the 364 day 52 week per year COMMAND!

Enoch 82:6 And the year is completed in three hundred and sixty-four yamim-days.  Nothing confusing about exactness right! Obey and get it right! Disobey!  And Stay Confused!

Enoch 71:32 On that yom-day the lyla-night decreases and amounts to nine parts and the yom to nine parts and the lyla 33 is equal to the yom-day and the year is exactly as to its yamim-days three hundred and sixty-four days!

Revelation 12:3 And I will give power to My two witnesses, and they shall prophesyone thousand two hundred sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. 

Revelation 12:6 And the woman [Israel] fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by YHUH, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred sixty days [1,260 days = 42 months of 30 days. If The Book of Revelation allowed for years with more than 364 days and 52 weeks, then the 42 months would not be perfect months of 30 days each. We cannot make the perfect solar calendar like the lunar errors of the rabbinics, which would make us just as guilty as they are! YHUH has not given us permission to change or adjust HIS REVEALED MATHEMATICAL PERFECTION, designed specifically to work for you His follower! His calendar is designed NOT TO WORK for the worldly, fearful and unbelieving!

   Questions You May Have As You Learn To Stop ​Mixing Biblical With Gregorian Data!

What happens if the alleged Spring Equinox is on a weekday, other than Tuesday on a Messianic, Jewish or Papist calendar?

Answer: You are to ignore any and all Roman, Jewish or Messianic data. If you mix Roman data with biblical commands, your entire reckoning of time will be fully out of order, or broken!  All you have to do to stay confused, is to adopt the guesswork of men, who believe that some years have 365.25 or 366.25 and some misled bible believers-teachers, that believe a year can have 370 or 371 days. You also must be willing to reject and delete the lies from your delicate minds that your secular teachers taught you as a child, in secular anti- Messiah classrooms, about the 365.25 day year and leap year lies! 

If anyone intercalates even a single day, a few days, a month or a full week, in any given year, that breaks YHUH’s command to only count to 364 days, 52 weeks exactly, from now until eternity! By disobeying YHUH, mankind falls into the trap of violating His Word! Since 364 is divisible by 7, we get a perfect 52 weeks of 7 days each, with 4 seasons of exactly 13 weeks + 4 season marker days 360 + 4 = 364!  That means, using biblical DATA, the Vernal Equinox will always be during the last week of the year and New Year’s Day Aviv 1 on The Wednesday of that same Vernal Equinox Weekas “364 math” doesn’t lie, because YAH cannot lie. He does not need to guess!  The Vernal Equinox can shift to differing weekdays, nevertheless, the divine mathematical formula used by YAH still must be followed! The counting ends on day 364 ALWAYS A TUESDAY of the last week of the old year during the Spring Equinox Week! The Spring Equinox will always fall somewhere in those 7 days where the old year transits to the new one, always during the LAST WEEK OF THE OLD YEAR!

March 2019-March 2020 Zadokite Priestly Calendar As Found in the Dead Sea Scrolls March 2019-March 2020

​If we adopt Scripture and not guesswork taught as the official calendar, the mathematics of heaven and its tablets will be stable, unchanging and easy to understand. If you count from any Wednesday Aviv 1 and OBEY YHUH by stopping at day 364 you will always end on a Tuesday. Now you may ask what if we don’t see the straight line of shadows, The Aviv-Ot Aviv-Sign, until say Thursday, Friday or Saturday and not Tuesday of that last week of the year? Answer. It does not matter! The 364 day count will have ended on the prior Tuesday, always reckoned as day 364. 

If you grab this and stick to it despite pressure and appeals to your more common sense, time will never change and all YHUH’s appointed times will be like clockwork, keeping man’s guesswork out of heaven’s revealed math! Even though the straight line is in fact The Sign of The Tekufah-The Turn of The Year in every year and even if that Day 364 arrives before The Straight Line Aviv Sign, 

you MUST declare the next day after Day 364, always a Wednesday, as New Years Day, Aviv 1. This is a test from YHUH for you, to see if you will obey Him or man. To see if you walk by faith or by sight! To see just how hungry you are for sacred time, sacred ritual and sacred place! To see if like s.a.tan, you try to usurp YAH’ssovereignty and authority over time by inserting guesswork, days and human data! This is also a test, to see if you believe that YAH is restoring ancient manuscripts, used and preserved by the ancient Zadokite priests as His Word, as He Promised in Acts 3:21! Or will you rest your head on Catholic, Protestant and yes, even Messianic guesswork – I mean, so called “Cannon Scripture”! As for me and my house, we will serve The Commander of the 364 day, 52 week per year Command! ​Joshua 24:10

                 RECAP AGAIN- WE CANNOT VIOLATE A COMMAND ​AND GET THE TRUE SHABBATS!

Torah commands that the Torah year can only have 364 [360 +4 season markers] days divisible by 7! Regardless of what man or religion or secularists think. We are called to follow Scriptures and obey whether we have or don’t have all the answers. Here are key verses that warn us about following man or a 365.25 day year; we see that YHUH declares that our weekly Shabbats and all other appointed times will be off if we do. He promises that to us, unless we obey Him and stick to the 364 day [360 +4 season markers] year despite what is going on around us and despite Roman data that seems to make so much sense! That’s if we truly desire His Shabbats and His ways!
 
Here are the clear commands AGAIN! Jubilees 6:30-38, Enoch 72:1-2, 72:32-33, Enoch 75:2-4, Enoch 82:6-7. Two key points are in order. The word EXACT OR EXACTLY OR EXACTLY IN ORDER from year to year until eternity starts, appear in every one of the 364 day per year referencesThat can only mean that YHUH sees our understanding and obedience to 364 days and 52 weeks in a year only, as our recognition that He, not science so called, is the Adon-Master over the believer’s life. It is a requirement to keep things in exact order and any departure by even one day that allegedly floats or allegedly needs to be added, between now and eternity, will cause a disaster in man’s reckoning time.  Adding a day or a week or a month to 364 days and 52 weeks per year, will cause us to miss the wonderful set times. Let us be sincere but sincerely right, as we can be given the blessings of His Word and mind!
 
We cannot worry about the Roman dates that change due to the Gregorian calendar. We suggest counting the 364 days out from Aviv 1 each year [the very first Wednesday during the Spring Equinox WEEK] to be exact, marking each New Month. The command to count only 364 days a year is not a suggestion but a command from YHUH our Abba, regardless of what other intellectuals do, say or think! [EVEN IF THERE IS AN ALLEGED OR REAL 365th or 366th SUNRISE IN A YEAR, IT MUST BE IGNORED OR NOT COUNTED, as we wait for the 364th day to arrive. Torah, Enoch & Jubilees all say that every year will have 364 days and 52 weeks forever from year to year, ordained by heaven for man!! Heaven has gifted us the times of heaven written on the heavenly Torah-tablets allowing us mere mortals to partake with angels! Let us not squander that high calling! Man and astronomy-science say that the year is now 365.25. Who is right? Only The House of Zadok’s Everlasting Priesthood & Corresponding Anointing-Charge, resolves the Torah required 364 day [360 +4 season markers] 52 week Solar Year. Praise be to YHUH-Yahusha for the unfolding revelation He is and will yet provide. Enjoy the journey with us! 

The Eternal Times Of YHUH  Based on Torah & Enoch As Given by YHUH For  Tuesday March 19th 2019, the 364th Day of this year. Wednesday March 20th starts Year # 1 in the New 6 Year Zadokite Priestly Cycle.

**The Solar times of YAH do not ever use the moon for times and seasons as this is forbidden in Scripture, in such places as Torah & Jubilees Chapter 6! The 6 year priestly cycle First Chronicles Ch. 24:1-19, uses the moon phases of full and dark moons to establish when the Zadokite priestly order starts their assigned weeks in the Temple. These 2 checkpoints occur monthly, to make sure the priestly orders are ready, prepared and correct in their turn/watch! These 2 monthly checkpoints were not used for time determination, as these were the Zadokite priests, who would never use lunar calendars, which is the primary reason they abandoned the Second Temple in JerusalemTo the true priesthood therefore, neither the full nor dark moons are new months & moreover are not to be observed like the fallen watchers. They were mathematically calculated and recorded to and for the kohaneem-priests, who would then be on time in their commanded order, NOT OBSERVED AS THE FALLEN WATCHERS DID AND TAUGHT MEN TO DO! However……there IS IN FACT A UNIQUE PURPOSE FOR THE MOON, PREVIOUSLY NOT SEEN NOR UNDERSTOOD BY MANY AMONG US!

***The moon incredibly enough as it appears in the Zadokite priestly order actually establishes the eternality of the perpetual 7 day weekly cycle! The calculated dark and full moon phases are included by those solar calendar advocate priests, only to verify and display that the 7 day week has never changed and that these phases occur on the same corresponding weekdays of the modern week, as in Torah times & as in Messiah Yahusha’s time, as long as we make super sure to use the correct year in each recorded six year priestly cycle! These phases confirm that not only the 7 day week has never changed but that most importantly, neither has the Shabbat on the day THEY, the Pagans call Saturday!

****An easy way to see which year of the priestly cycle we are in is to see which priestly order starts it. [First Chronicles 24:1-19] Have a look for yourself!

Year 1 Gamul-New Cycle Aviv March 2019 (Or Year 4)
​Year 2 Yedayah-New Cycle Aviv March 2020 (Or Year 5)

P.S. Editor’s note for this section below:  { Based on the evidence from the Dead Sea Scroll, Man-Child Ministry is convinced that 2019 calendar corresponds to the year 4 /6 priestly cycle; and it is also a Sabbatical year which falls on the 4th of the 7 Sabbatical years. The charts that show this fact is attached. HalleluYAH  }:

1. Meaning of each priestly order names:

2. 2019 Dea Sea Scroll Calendar 4Q319

3. 2019 Qumran Calendar

 No.4. 6 years priestly order cycle…

take note of the 4/6 year for 2019 calendar

No.5 2019 Aviv 1… First month priestly order:

No.6 dds YHWH Calendar year 4 section that 2019 is a Sabbatical year

No7 . http://man-child.com/?p=211

The High Calling Of Your Life

The High Calling Of Your Life

This Is How The Followers Of Yah Walk Yah’s Path –  The High Calling

Continue with the rest of the article:

The Spring Equinox falls during the last week of the old year annually, so it is not ever necessary to wait for the following Wednesday, or go back to a prior Wednesday, as that would throw everything off, including the weekday moon phases recorded by the true Zadokite priests! The Sign of the Spring Equinox, the straight line of shadows from sunrise to sunset, will occur somewhere within the 7 days OF THE EQUINOX WEEK that transits the old year [day 364] to the new one on Aviv 1!

The lunar phases confirm the year of the cycle we are in. Aviv 1 has a full moon in years 1 & 4 and again on year one of the new priestly cycle. The priestly order was based on calculation of lunar phases, not the 2nd or 3rd day of a 2-3 day full moon and NEVER BY OBSERVATION OF THE MOON.

REMEMBER JUBILEES 6 & OTHER PLACES FORBID ANY USE OF THE MOON TO DETERMINE TIME. WE FOLLOW A SOLAR ONLY CALENDAR! WE ARE MERELY SHOWING HOW THE PHASES APPEARED ON THE SAME DAY OF THE WEEK  2,000 YEARS AGO, AS THEY DO TODAY, SHOWING US THAT THE SHABBAT OF THAT DAY REMAINS THE SAME TODAY WITH THE HEATHEN NAME OF SATURDAY.

****Gregorian dates change year to year regardless of Torah patterns. Roman data-dates need to be ignored and shunned every year!

​****The Torah priestly cycles NEVER CHANGE & are as follows: Years 1-4 same, Years 2-5 same, Years 3-6 same.

​****If we start every year on Day 4 – Modern Wednesday every year will end on a 3rd Day-Tuesday and will be exactly 364 days as required by Torah & Enoch!

                                              Torah Witnesses For The Eternal Solar Calendar!
                                                 Beresheth-Genesis Chapter 1 Verses 14-19

The First Torah Witness

14 And Elohim said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the shamayim to divide the yom from the night; and let them be for signs-witnesses [visible], and for moadim, and for [all] days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the shamayim to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And Elohim made-asah [assigned] two great lights; the greater light to rule the yom, and the lesser light to rule the night: therefore namely the cochavim.

17 And Elohim set them in the firmament of the shamayim to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the yom and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and Elohim saw that it was tov.

19 And the evening and the morning were Yom Reeve-DAY FOUR.

​This is why all years begin on Day 4 of the first week, Wednesday, the day The Father assigned [Hebrew-Assah] the lights!

יד וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, יְהִי מְאֹרֹת בִּרְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמַיִם, לְהַבְדִּיל, בֵּין הַיּוֹם וּבֵין הַלָּיְלָה; וְהָיוּ לְאֹתֹת וּלְמוֹעֲדִים,וּלְיָמִים וְשָׁנִים.

טו  וְהָיוּ לִמְאוֹרֹת בִּרְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמַיִם, לְהָאִיר עַל-הָאָרֶץ; וַיְהִי-כֵן.

טז  וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹהִים, אֶת-שְׁנֵי הַמְּאֹרֹת הַגְּדֹלִים:  אֶת-הַמָּאוֹר הַגָּדֹל, לְמֶמְשֶׁלֶת הַיּוֹם, וְאֶת-הַמָּאוֹר הַקָּטֹן לְמֶמְשֶׁלֶת הַלַּיְלָה, אֵת הַכּוֹכָבִים.

יז  וַיִּתֵּן אֹתָם אֱלֹהִים, בִּרְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמָיִם, לְהָאִיר, עַל-הָאָרֶץ.

יח  וְלִמְשֹׁל, בַּיּוֹם וּבַלַּיְלָה, וּלְהַבְדִּיל, בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ; וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים, כִּי-טוֹב.

יט  וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם רְבִיעִי.

Deuteronomy-Devarim Chapter 16 Verse 1-The Second Torah Witness

שָׁמוֹר, את-חֹדֶשׁ הָאָבִיב, וְעָשִׂיתָ פֶּסַח, לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ:  כִּי בְּחֹדֶשׁ הָאָבִיב, הוֹצִיאֲךָ
​יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ מִמִּצְרַיִם-לָיְלָה

Guard The SIGN of the month of the Aviv; and perform Passover, to YHUH your Elohim; Because in the month of THE AVIV [season], YHUH your Elohim took you out of Egypt at night. The Sign being The Straight Line at the Vernal Equinox!

Exodus-Shemot 12:1-2-The Third Torah Witness

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-מֹשֶׁה וְאֶל-אַהֲרֹן, בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לֵאמֹר.
הַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה לָכֶם, רֹאשׁ חֳדָשִׁים: רִאשׁוֹן הוּא לָכֶם, לְחָדְשֵׁי הַשָּׁנָה

And YHUH said to Moshe and to Aharon, in the land of Egypt saying; this month is for you the head of all the months; it is the first for you, of the months of the year.​

Exodus-Shemot 34:22-The Fourth Torah Witness

וְחַג שָׁבֻעֹת תַּעֲשֶׂה לְךָ, בִּכּוּרֵי קְצִיר חִטִּים; וְחַג, הָאָסִיף-תְּקוּפַת הַשָּׁנָה

​And the Chag of Weeks [Shavuot] you shall do for yourself; the firstfruits of the wheat harvest; and the Chag of the Ingathering at [around] the [fall] tekufah-turn ​of the year.

-Genesis-Beresheth-8:22- The Fifth Torah Witness-The 4 Seasons

  עֹד, כָּל-יְמֵי הָאָרֶץ:  זֶרַע וְקָצִיר וְקֹר וָחֹם וְקַיִץ וָחֹרֶף,וְיוֹם וָלַיְלָה-לֹא יִשְׁבֹּתוּ

While the earth remains [before and after the flood] seedtime [Spring] and harvest [Fall]; cold and heat; summer and winter; day and night will not cease. [The seasons have never changed and the day ALWAYS goes before evening and night!].
________________________________________

​                    ​               What About These MOON Verses. Do You Just  Ignore Them? 

​Psalm 89:37- IT shall be established le-olam-va-ed as the yarayach, and as a faithful witness in the shamayim. Selah.

In verse 36 it is David’s seed that is made into a faithful witness preserved IN THE HEAVENS or the throne; just like the moon is in the heavens FOREVER; so the heavens is the place of the preserving of the faithful witness or YHUH’s throne-promises-Word FOREVER. This verse does not claim that the moon is forever faithful for telling time, as it remains sick and dysfunctional giving unbibical 29 day months and 13 month years, which if blindly followed, will cause everyone to miss the appointed times of YHUH. The actual lunation astronomically speaking is 28 days! Not the required 30 days of Scripture!

Psalm 136:9 – The yarayach-moon and cochavim to rule by night: for His rachamim endures le-olam-va-ed.

​This verse DOES NOT CLAIM the moon as THE ruler of the night by its own light. Read it again! The stars rule the night and the moon joins that ruler as a lesser co-regent, as it reflects the sun’s light, along with the night ruler in TANDEM. The night ruler is established in Torah Gen 1:14-16 [as THE LESSER LIGHT-NAMELY THE STARS] not in Psalms. Remember the biblical rule of first mention.

Psalm 104:19 – He created the yarayach-moon for moadim: the shemesh knows its going down.
20 You make darkness, and it is night: in it all the beasts of the forest do creep.
21 The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their food from El.

The moon IS a SIGN for NIGHT HUNTING BY THE NIGHT CREATURES before the sunrise. These verses have ZERO to do with the appointed times of Leviticus 23 which are SOLELY SOLAR BASED. This misunderstanding has been a major erroneous assumption that somehow they refer to the feasts of YHUH.

 PSALM 81:4 AND THE RABBINIC AGENDA! 

ד תִּקְעוּ בַחֹדֶשׁ שׁוֹפָר; בַּכֵּסֶה, לְיוֹם חַגֵּנוּ

meaning blow IN-AT the MONTH the shofar, in-at the FULLNESS of the day of our feast…that means that on the Feast of Unleavened Bread in its fullness, we are to blow the shofar at our chag…in Torah a chag is only Unleavened Bread, Feast of Weeks or Tabernacles. [3 not 8 moadem]…see how slick the enemy is? The word moon appears nowhere here and neither does the term “full moon.” Of course the rabbis translate it as full moon, to make you a disciple of the Antiochus Epiphanies lunar calendar, FORCED ON JUDAISM after the Macabbean victory. It can also mean blow the shofar at the fullness of the feast of Unleavened Bread, based on verses 5-6 which refers to the Exodus. Nothing to do with anybody’s moon!​

                                                  This says YHUH To His Eved Sholiach Moshe:

“The greatest find at Qumran was not the community rules and regulations or any such thing but the restoration of my Shabbats [monthly solar dates]. Have you not noticed and have you not heard, that scholars did not declare that truth says YHUH? Rather they declared finding some solar calendar that was noticeably different and some man-made rules. But I declare to you the purpose of my allowing them to find, the scrolls, is to declare my appointed times regarding the sincere restoration of the Shabbat day when the dates were recorded and hidden in the earth for such a time as this; the discovering of the priestly Enochian ancient Shabbats and the dates [of the solar month] that my priests ministered on Shabbat, were not of interest to man;  the scholars and the religious did not proclaim what I wanted declared for the joy and rejoicing of my people and their preparation says YHUH. But you and your fellows, you shall and must proclaim it says ​​YHUH Tzevaoth!

Your Employer CANNOT Stop You From Keeping The Creation Week Shabbat!

​Did you know a lot of USA believers who want to keep the Shabbat the day YHUH actually rested, CANNOT BE DENIED by federal law? You cannot be fired or denied time off for Shabbat, or any day, as per the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964. So let’s stop the excuses and get busy with Abba’s business!!  ​http://www.workplacefairness.org/religious-discrimination

The only way they can legally deny you off, is if the employer can PROVE to a court, that by you taking Torah Shabbat off, that it will cause them undue loss like bankruptcy, which in most cases is a case they cannot prove!

ALSO……………………..Jeremiah 6:16-18 speaks of returning to the ancient paths, where we will find or recover the good-mature ways of our Messiah, the patriarchs, prophets and Zadokite priests. Since that is true, we know they were experts at tracking the circuits of the sun, in order to determine and establish all the appointed times and weekly 7th day Shabbats, with a clear declaration of day 364 on a Tuesday and Aviv 1 the very next Wednesday during The Equinox Week, when the old year transits into the new year after EXACTLY 364 DAYS HAVE BEEN DECLARED!

16 This says YHUH: Stand in The Derech-Way, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the tov derech, and have your walk in it, and you shall find rest for your beings. But they said, We will not walk in it!
17 Also I set watchmen [Hebrew-Netsarim] over you, saying, Listen to the sound of the shofar. But they said, We will not listen!  RSTNE 6th Edition With Chanok

****Here are a few more Scriptures teaching us not to use heathen data but our own Zadokite priests and calculations in the camp of the redeemed; this high calling remains our responsibility collectively as a people!

Shemot-Exodus Ch. 20:
8 [Daled] Remember the Yom Ha-Shabbats [LXX] [52 weekly – not 53 as some teachand annual to shomer [guard-view] them as kadosh.
9 Six days shall you labor, and do all your work:
10 But the seventh yom is the Shabbat of YHUH your Elohim: in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male eved, nor your female eved, nor your cattle, nor your ger, nor a convert that is within your gates: RSTNE 6th Edition With Chanok

Shemot-Exodus Ch. 31:
16 Therefore the children of Yisrael shall shomer [guard-view] the Shabbat, to observe [guard-view] the Shabbat throughout their generations, for an everlasting brit.
17 It is an ot [visible sign] between Me and the children of Yisrael le-olam-va-ed-forever: for in six days YHUH made the shamayim and the earth, and on the seventh yom He rested, and was refreshed. RSTNE 6th Edition With Chanok

Devarim-Deuteronomy Ch. 5:
12 Shomer [guard-view] Ha-Shabbat to set it apart, as YHUH your Elohim has commanded you.
13 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work:
14 But the seventh yom-day is the Shabbat of YHUH your Elohim: in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male eved, nor your female eved, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor the ger that is within your gates; that your male eved and your female eved may rest as well as you. 
15 And remember that you were an eved in the land of Mitzrayim, and that YHUH your Elohim brought you out from there through a mighty hand and by an outstretched Arm: therefore YHUH your Elohim commanded you to shomer [guard-view] Yom Ha-Shabbat. RSTNE 6th Edition With Chanok

JUBILEES-YOVLEEM CH. 29:
15 And he sent to his abba Yitschaq of all his substance, clothing and food, and meat and drink and milk and butter and cheese and some dates of the valley.
16 And to his eema Rivkah also four times a year, between the times of the monthsbetween ploughing and reaping and between autumn and the rain (season) and between winter and spring, to the tower of Avraham. YATI Restored Version Of Jubilees With True Names

    Some Interesting Tidbits!

More Proof That Day 4-Our Modern Wednesday Was Lit Continually In The Temple-

The lamps of the menorah were lit daily from fresh, consecrated olive oil and burned from evening until morning, according to Exodus 27:21.

PROOF THAT THEY TOLD TIME BY THE 7 BRANCH MENORAH NOT THE RABBINICAL CALENDAR!!!! 

The Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus states that three of the seven lamps were allowed to burn during the day also; [13] however, according to one opinion in the Talmud (Rashi, Tractate Shabbat 22b), only the center lamp was left burning all day, into which as much oil was put as into the others. Although all the other lights were extinguished, that light continued burning oil, in spite of the fact that it had been kindled first.

DAY 4 OF THE WEEK-MIDDLE LIGHT OF THE MENORAH LIT FIRST AND BURNED ALL DAY AND NIGHT AS THE SIGN OF THE MESSIAH [WHO CAME ON DAY 4 OR 4,000 YEARS AFTER ADAM AND EVE], THE SHABBAT AND AVIV 1!

This miracle according to the Talmud (Tractate Menahot 86b) was taken as a sign that The Shechinah-Glory rested over Israel.[14] It was called the Ner Hama’aravi (Western lamp) because of the direction of its wick. This lamp was also referred to as the Ner Elohim (Lamp of El).

YAHUSHA THE ALEF TAF DAY 4 CALLED THE LIGHT OF ELOHIM BURNS CONTINUALLY!

Also mentioned in I Samuel 3:3. The miracle of the Ner Hama’aravi ended about 40 years before the destruction of the Temple (30 CE) according to the Talmud (Tractate Yoma 39a), “Our Rabbis taught: During the last forty years before the destruction of The Second Temple (that is to say from around 30 CE the very year Yahusha died) the lot [‘For YHUH’] did not come up in the right hand of the priest; nor did the crimson-colored strap become white; nor did the westernmost light shine” or that middle light of Messiah!

BECAUSE THEY PUT THE LIGHT OUT, DAY 4, ALEF TAF, STOPPED STAYING ON 24/7….THIS PROVES BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT THAT AT THE TIME OF YAHUSHA, THEY KNEW THAT TIME AND THE TORAH WEEK CENTERED AROUND DAY 4 of Week One-Modern Wednesday, NOT DAY 1 of Week One!!! SHEMA YISRAEL!!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menorah_(Temple)

4Q394 1-2 (Cave 4)-Note yet another SIGN– Where was the Torah Shabbat confirmed in the DSS? Cave 4 corresponding to day 4 of week 1. Another YAH-Incidence!

From Professor Rachel Elior a rabbinical Jew-“The present Jewish calendar is not matching the old Jewish priestly calendar. This ancient priestly calendar was replaced by the Greek lunar calendar, in the time of Antiochus Epiphanies by force” and later on by the sages, who chose the lunar calendar based on the people’s observation and not by pre-calculated calculations.”

Passion Week Proves the Zadokite Priestly Times!

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For sincere questions write to: sholiach@yourarmstoisraelglobal.com 

Teaching Articles On The Shabbat

DOES YHUH REST ON HIS OWN SHABBAT? .docx

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WHAT ABOUT THOSE MOON VERSES .docx

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CONSTELLATIONS PROVE THAT THE YEAR BEGINS IN PISCES .pdf

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THREE SPRING EQUINOX TESTS GIVEN .pdf

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THE FIRST OF THE WEEK OR SHABBAT MORNING .pdf

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SHABBAT AS YAHUSHA KEPT IT .docx

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GUIDELINES FOR SHABBAT OBSERVANCE .pdf

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PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION ON SHABBAT BEFORE DAWN .docx

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THE TEMPLE’S DESTRUCTION & MESSIAH YAHUSHA’S DEATH .docx

Download File


NEW PASSION WEEK CHART 4-30-18.pdf

Download File

 

BRACHOT OF  YAHUWAH  (Click PDF)

 A Prayer to Baruch our Souls (Psalm 103)

We are the most baruk (most favored) of Abba Yahuwah. The sword of Abba Yahuwah is drawn against those that seek after our souls. The spear of Abba Yahuwah (Hab. 3:11 and Joshua 8:18, 26) is aimed against those the evil one has sent to persecute us. No evil communication shall be successful against us because we are Mar (master) YAH’s servants. No curses that are spoken against us, released towards us, or sent our way by the wicked or the religious will be successful against us this day or any day! They will not light/land upon us but slide down to the ground, sterile and non-effective.

We are under Abba Yahuwah His authority. We are under MessiYah Yahushua His blood, and we are under the whole panoply of the armor of Yahuwah. Every weapon formed against us will misfire today or any day. We declare that we are Mar YAH’s darling (Psalm 35:17). We are the favored of Yahuwah (Exodus 19:5)

WE declare that a mighty Yoseph mantle is upon us. We are set apart for such a time as this. In the spirit world of Yetzirah, we walk with a Tallit of many colors. We have the divine council and prudent understanding of Abba Yahuwah to prevail and solve mysteries, we have the strength to persevere, and the mind to excel and succeed.

Now, we baruch our whole being and declare that our:

Blood flow right!

Heart beat right!

Bones are strong!

mind is clear and sound!

Healthy Muscles carry us where we need to go!

Healthy Skin insulate, protect and seal us!

Healthy Organs and all within us function the way Yahuwah intended when He put us in our mothers womb!

Youth is renewed like the eaglesnow!

Yes, we ask Abba Yahuwah to baruch us for length of days. We will live a baruched life today with a crown of righteousness on our head, a garment of Praise above us, and a Tallit across our shoulders to do what we are called to do. Mighty messengers of Yahuwah are all around us keeping our steps and prospering our way. We have great stamina. A wall of Ruach (Spirit of Yahuwah) fire is about us, and a canopy of Ruach fire is over us. The banner of Yahuwah is over our heads like a personal rainbow. We ask Abba to baruch us this day for an encounter with Yahuwah. We baruch our countenance to draw in from that encounter and our face to glow with Yahuwah’s beauties, esteem and honor. His beauties, esteem and honor shall be seen upon us and it shall influence all who come in contact with us this day or any day.

We ask Abba to baruch us to be in the right place at the right time and to walk with a right spirit before our fellow man and family. We will walk right into destiny and divine appointments from Yahuwah today. If there is catastrophe today, we shall not be there when it happens. We shall be hidden in Yahuwah’s pavilion.

If there is violence today, we will not be there; the celestial mighty messengers of Yahuwah shall direct us away from the path of the violent. We will hear of it, but it will not come near to us. We are not under the circumstances, under the weather, or under fire. We are mounting up, and we have a broad wingspan. We will rise above it all. HalleluYah.

Even though our enemies may spread their nets for our feet, but we will see their pit and step around their trap. We shall escape; yet they shall fall into the very hole they prepared for us. This day, Abba Yahuwah is in the process of frustrating the tokens of the liars. He is bringing great controversy to our enemiescamps. Confusion totally drowns those that would dare to tamper with Abba Yahuwah’s purposes for our life.

We also declare that we do not just believe we are baruched; we walk it out. We will demonstrate it. We decree it to be so. We speak that the mountains be brought down, our valleys be brought up, and the path of Abba Yahuwah be made straight in our lives. Our way is not hard nor the path difficult.

We are alive by Abba Yahuwah’s decree. We will stay alive and be active and productive. Our life will be full of excellent deeds and miracles so that when Abba Yahuwah decrees our time is up we will not linger nor languish, but have treasures to lay at our Masters feet. It will be a life well lived! We baruch ourselves in HaShem /the Name Yahushua ha Mossiach ! Omein!

We further declare and decree that Abba

Yahuwah’s barukot rest upon us this day and stay on forever. We are pleasing to Abba Yahuwah and He enjoys our fellowship. We are well-favored and more than able to receive His abundant provision. Yahuwah’s messengers accompany us on our right hand and on our left. They shall guide us! Abba Yahuwah’s tovness/ loving kindness and deep caring and compassion of Yahuwah shall follow close

behind us and be the guardians between us and our past.

Abba Yahuwah has determined that we shall have great success because we move in Emunah/the believe of Aloahiym and in strong courage. Our eyes shall see the salvation of Yahuwah. He shall keep us safely under His wings and pinions. I declare

this day that we are protected and delivered from the

evil of the day for the rest of our lives. We shall not stumble nor fall, for Ruach ha Qodesh / The SPIRIT of Yahuwah has anointed our eyes with eye salve to see clearly and has given us ears of the Ruach to hear precisely. We will be called Chokhmah /highly intelligent/excellent in our generation.

Our soul will rest in Yahuwah’s shalom. Abba Yahuwah has declared us to be strong and pleasing in His sight. We will eat the fruit of His promises in the land of the living and will enjoy long life and length of days because we have wholly trusted in Yahuwah our Abba. Our habitation shall be a place where we will rest in His love, find

tikvah /positive great expectations for tomorrow, and delights/ jubilee that shall strengthen us as we rest upon our bed. He shall restore our soul and give us shalom/rest in the stillness and quietness of our home.

In our prayer chamber, the Ruach ha Qodesh / the Spirit of Yahuwah shall birth a creative and powerful mind and give us sound ideas that will bring us great favor. He shall give us fresh anointings and baruch our ministry with great results. HalleluYAH! Abba Yahuwah is pleased with us and has placed His Name upon our foreheads. We will call upon Him and He

will show us great and mighty things we know not of.

In HaShem /the Name Yahushua ha Mossiach we pray! Omein!

Edited from: www.withoneaccord.org