Thought Shavuot was all about dairy foods? Think again, says Rabbi Gabriel Botnick
When you think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, what do you picture as the forbidden fruit they ate? You might imagine an apple though we have no true idea what grew on the Tree of Knowledge. However, history has provided plenty of hypotheses.
Our sages have suggested the fruit might have been a grape, reasoning that nothing brings on more trouble than wine. Or it might have been a fig, since immediately upon eating it, Adam and Eve saw they were naked and made loin cloths out of nearby fig leaves.
But the most interesting hypothesis I’ve read about the forbidden fruit is that it was wheat. One might dismiss this as wheat is not a fruit, but we must remember we’re dealing with rabbinic logic here!
In ancient times there were two main grains that were widely cultivated: barley and wheat. Even though it is hearty and healthy, it’s not so easy on the stomach, so our ancestors avoided making barley into bread. Instead, they used it forstews, beer or animal feed. Wheat was held in much higher esteem, asit could be ground into a very fine flour for making easily digested bread.
Our sages also teach that the first solid food most children ate was wheat bread, which their parents would feed them once they started talking. This suggests a direct connection between wheat and knowledge, so sages identify the forbidden fruit as this grain.
But the symbolism of wheat and barley goes even deeper. In ancient Israel, farmers would plant wheat and barley seeds in the autumn, just in time to be nourished by the winter rains. However, the barley grows faster and would be harvested in March or April, while the wheat would be harvested in May or June. In the Torah, the barley harvest is associated with Pesach as the Israelites would make an offering of barley to God then. Fifty days later, the Israelites would celebrate Shavuot and bring an offering of bread, made of the finest flour from their wheat harvest.
Of course, the importance of Pesach and Shavuot extends beyond the agrarian, as they remind us of the two most central events in our people’s history. Pesach celebrates our liberation from enslavement and the birth of our people, and Shavuot celebrates the day God gave us the Torah and we attained knowledge.
Shavuot’s association with wheat, a grain so tied up with knowledge, led our sages to teach that ‘without wheat, there is no Torah; without Torah, there is no wheat’.
The 50-day journey that takes us from Pesach to Shavuot is called the Omer. The essence of this period is to see ourselves transform from being merely free animals into cognitive humans – finding our humanity through the wisdom of the Torah.
On this journey from Pesach to Shavuot, I encourage you to manifest your fullest potential as a human. And if you find yourself stuck, just remember Adam and Eve, who taught us that even the simplest of acts (like eating an apple) can prove to be truly transformative.