[Avodah] The Torah was not given on Shavuos!!

[Zev Sero]

Shmuel Weidberg wrote:
> Surprisingly, the Torah was not given on Shavuos.

This is according to the opinion in the gemara that yetzias mitzrayim
was on a Thursday.  People often don't notice that at the end of the
sugya another opinion is given, that it was on a Friday.  In that case
Mattan Torah (which lechol hade'os was on Shabbos) was on Shovuos.

Note that the machlokes over whether the date of Mattan Torah was the
6th or the 7th of sivan is irrelevant to this question.  If yetzias
mitzrayim was on Thursday then Shovuos was on the day before Mattan
Torah, regardless of the date; if it was on Friday then Shovuos was on
Mattan Torah.

> So it comes out that the Torah was NOT given on Shavuos but we
> celebrate Shavuos on the day the Torah was given. And this was not
> always the case. Before Hillel set the calendar Shavuos was not
> necessarily celebrated on the day that the Torah was given!!

Of course. Shovuos could be on the 5th, the 6th, or the 7th, so any
connection to Mattan Torah is purely coincidental. And presumably they
did not say "zman mattan torasenu" in davening then. This still has a
practical application: someone who has crossed the dateline, and misafek
is keeping today as yomtov, doesn't say "zman matan torasenu". (Two of
my cousins are actually in this situation right now; their granddaughter's
birth was much later than expected, so they're stuck in NY for yomtov, and
on Sunday night they counted 49 so last night they started their yomtov.)

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 11:30:31PM -0400, Shmuel Weidberg wrote:
> : Surprisingly, the Torah was not given on Shavuos. The Torah was
> : supposed to be given on the 50th day of the omer, but Moshe added one
> : day so it was given on the 51st day of the omer which according to the
> : chachamim was the sixth day of Sivan, because that year both Nissan
> : and Iyar were Malei...

> So it WAS given on Shavuos.

Shavuos is by definition the 50th day of the counting.

> (Which reminds me of the Lub Rebbe's position on the international date
> line and omer. Leshitaso, one should observe the 1st day of Shavous
> on their own 50th day.

True

> However, the YT sheini shel goliyos, which is
> minhag avoseihem beyadeihem, is always 7 Sivan -- since that's when they
> observed it in Bavel. Even if this means that someone who crossed the
> date line one way has a day of chol between the two halves of Shavuos,
> or the one who went the other way has both coinciding.)

If you meant this as a continuation of your presentation of the LR's
shita, then AFAIK it is false. He says nothing about when to keep
YT sheni.

If it's your own chidush then I disagree, because YT sheni is defined
not as a specific calendar date but as the day after YT rishon. 

> They all must be temimos. No problem for us. But yetzi'as Mitzrayim was
> at midnight.

Mid*day*.

Micha Berger wrote:
> A different question -- was the Torah received on Shavuos, or on Yom
> Kippur?

Or on the 7th of Adar?  That is, after all, when we received the text
of the Torah as we have it today.  Before that all we had were excerpts
and the mitzvos that it contains, but not the Torah itself.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher