How many days exactly do we count between Pesach and Shavuot?
Reading the biblical passage, one will notice that there is a slight tension. In Leviticus 23:15-16 we are told to count seven weeks, seven complete weeks, [49 days], but are also told “count fifty days.”
Which one are we supposed to count?
Of the different possibilities offered by the commentators, that of the Ramban, [Nahmanides] opens a window into intersecting worlds of interpretation. Ramban was a towering and unique figure, a combination of a Talmudist of French training, a student of Maimonidean philosophy and rationalism, a poet, a biblical commentator, and, binding these all together, a mystical kabbalist.
In his introduction to the Torah, Ramban writes of one mystical principle which has powerful possibilities beyond the mystical realm, and which relates to our question above. He writes:
Our Rabbis already said: Fifty measures of wisdom were created in the world, and all were given to Moses except for one, as it says (Psalm 8), “you made him slightly less than a god.” … It is possible that that measure related to the knowledge of the Creator, may He be blessed, and this was not given to the created. … This number is hinted at in the Torah, in Sefirat ha-‘Omer and in the counting of the Yovel (Jubilee year).
There are 50 measures of wisdom, the Ramban teaches, but only 49 are accessible to created beings – us. Furthermore, this number is hinted at in counting the Omer. It is not difficult to understand what he means, at least on one level. It seems he is solving the problem of 49/50 in a very particular way. We are commanded to count 49 days, and then to wait for the next day.
What happens on the next day? Remarkably, and famously, the Torah never says what Shavuot is about!
Silence may be part of the point. We cannot determine what will happen on Shavuot, and we cannot even say what date it will fall on. We cannot create the holiday of Shavuot. We can only count 49 days.
The 50th is reserved for God.
Maybe this is the secret of Shavuot. To receive the Torah takes an enormous amount of human effort and endeavor. 98% of the work, in fact, is in our hands. But there is a bit that we cannot complete, a bit that we can’t accomplish. We can count the 49 days, but then we must wait for God to declare that the next day will be the giving of the Torah. We count, we work, we aspire, but there is a dimension that is reserved for the divine, prompting us always to continuously reach for it.
