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Rabbi, I was looking at a Jewish calendar this month and it said that Shavuot was two days. I know some Jewish holidays have two days of observance, but had never noticed that about Shavuot. Why is this a two-day holiday? As a matter of fact, why are ANY Jewish holidays two-day affairs?
If one day of celebration is good, clearly two days must be better? Well, ok, maybe that isn’t the point. However, there are several holidays throughout the year, including Shavuot, Purim, and Rosh Hashanah, that include an extra day of chag, or holiday requirements. But not all Jewish communities observe the same amount of time, leaving us to wonder what this is all about.
Judaism uses a lunar calendar, centering around the phases of the moon. Thus, to determine that it is, in fact, the day of a particular holiday, we must look to the sky and ascertain whether the moon is, in fact, full or new. Historically, this was much more challenging to do than it is today, especially when weather patterns and cloud cover could obscure the passage of time from casual observation. Thus, the priests in Jerusalem were tasked with keeping meticulous track of the phases of the cycle and were responsible for declaring that it was, in fact, time to commemorate a festival.
As Jews were forced into the diaspora, information coming out of Jerusalem became more difficult. The announcement that it was time to celebrate a holiday might take a little while to travel from Jerusalem to the Diaspora, and thus, communities were worried that they would miss the vital start of a holy time. It is important that we, modern thinkers, consider the importance of strict observance to our ancestors. They believed that if we didn’t perform our role in God’s covenant exactly, then terrible things would happen to us. There are many in the Jewish community who believed that the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jews across the world was a punishment for our inability to behave ourselves in the land while we self-governed. Thus, it is vitally important that we get our timing right when tracking our calendar. For that reason, communities began to celebrate holidays on the day during the calendar cycle that was dictated in our Torah, as well as an extra day to ensure that we didn’t miss the mark due to our errant calculations. Thus, communities in the Diaspora began to observe two-day festivals, ensuring that if we didn’t receive the announcement in time, we would still be considered “kosher” in our practice.
In our modern day, a difference in practice has grown between more progressive and more traditional movements. In Reform Judaism, holidays are celebrated as they are articulated in Torah; when we read in Exodus that we are to celebrate Passover for seven days, we take that at face value. This is why Reform Jews only keep kosher for Passover for seven days while the Conservative and Orthodox movements go for an eighth day. The extra day allows for a guarantee that the holiday will be observed in its “right time,” as well as connecting to ancestors who also observed using the extended release holidays.
Another factor is the relationship with the notion of the Diaspora. Reform Jews generally do not treat their presence in the Diaspora as any kind of problem or shortcoming. Instead, spreading Judaism to our local communities has been viewed as a testament to the resilience and longevity of our peoplehood. Meanwhile, more Orthodox communities see their presence in the Diaspora as a kind of distancing from the original roots of Jewish tradition, leaving many to hope for a day when we can more appropriately honor our tradition in a Jerusalem that more closely resembles the world God intended for us. Thus, having an extra day of chag reminds us of our obligation to keep our eyes on a future that returns to our native land.
At the end of the day, the best way to think about this is not from a place of fear but a place of connection. Most modern Jews can fairly easily dismiss the concern that we aren’t sure what day it is; if anything, we have pretty well perfected our relationship with the calendar. Instead, different Jewish movements have different answers for what it means to find meaning and personal connection to our holidays and the process of putting their realities into practice. Whether you celebrate holidays for one day or two, the goal is for us to be able to truly give ourselves every opportunity to feel the deep meaning that the time and season offer, and to connect us with the systems of marking time that have bound our people together throughout the centuries.
