Shavuot second day
Deuteronomy 14:22-16:17
Numbers 28:26-31
Habakkuk 2:20-3:19
Ruth
This Shabbat’s Torah reading eventually gets around to the pilgrimage festivals, a perfectly reasonable passage to read on Shavuot. Before it gets there, though, it presents us with a ritual tax on agricultural products, the periodic remission of debts, the obligation to support the poor and laws limiting slavery among Hebrews (Deut 14:22-16:17).
The Torah must have a reason for placing those other topics near the festivals. Our rabbis, who designated the readings for each festival, could have given us a shorter passage, without much more than the list of festivals. They must have had a reason to ask us to begin the reading back at the agricultural tax.
I called it an agricultural tax, but perhaps this institution does not deserve the name. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “tax” as “a compulsory contribution to the support of government…” The institution defined in our reading, the Second Tithe, does not involve contributing to anything. The farmer gets to keep his produce, and eat it. Only he has to eat it “before God, in the place where he has chosen to cause his name to rest” (Deut. 14:23), Jerusalem. If the way appears too long, the fruit too perishable, the burden too heavy, then the farmer can redeem the fruit for silver, and take the cash to Jerusalem, there to use it to purchase food (Deut. 14:24-26).
The farmer has, let us say, an orchard with 100 grapefruit trees, which grow 100 grapefruit each. So he has 10,000 grapefruits to tithe. The Torah assures us that he must separate Terumah first, an undefined amount to give to a Kohen (Deut. 18:4). An ordinary farmer, not generous, not stingy, according to the Mishnah, usually would give 2 percent (Terumah 4:3). So our average hero gives 200 grapefruit.
Then he has to give the First Tithe, 10 percent of what remains, to a Levi; so he obediently donates 980 grapefruit (Numbers 18:24). These taxes support the teachers and religious functionaries. That leaves him with 8,820 grapefruit.
Finally, our hero can take care of his Second Tithe, the 10 percent for eating in Jerusalem; if I have figured this out right, that’s 882 grapefruit.
Which our hero carts up to Jerusalem to eat there. A lot of grapefruit. He cannot eat all those grapefruit himself, his hosts cannot put up with him indefinitely, he has an orchard to tend back home. So he hoists an invitation flag in front, to let people know that they should feel welcome. Dozens of guests, strangers, poor people, come and eat his grapefruit. The more guests arrive, the happier our farmer feels. Soon he can go home.
Of course, in the biblical period the orchard would not have grown grapefruit, which seem to have mutated from a fruit called the pomelo in the early 1800s.
The farmer fulfills the Second Tithe as he eats his own produce in Jerusalem. He probably brings his Second Tithe to Jerusalem when he comes up for the pilgrimage festival, which he has to do anyway (Deut 16:16). But if he has any substantial crop, he needs help in eating it. Poor people from all over the country go up to Jerusalem to share in the bounty.
So too, the other commandments of our reading: Remission of debt, loans to the poor, generous gifts when one sets a Hebrew slave free, all have to do with protecting the needy, keeping them part of our society. So too, the commandment to rejoice on Shavuot, “you, and your son, and your daughter, and your male slave and your female slave, and the Levite in your gate, and the stranger, and the orphan and the widow who are among you…” (Deut. 16:11).
The Second Tithe, often brought along with the pilgrimage festival, reinforces a message of the festival: Enabling the poor to rejoice “among you.” And we, without farms in Israel, without First and Second Tithes, need to find ways to include the poor with us as we celebrate Shavuot.