Hey there and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one

incredible page of Talmud each day.

And on today's pages of Talmud, the discussion about birds and slaughtering continues. But we are going to take a deep

breath and a little break because today we are on the cuss of a kind of incredible one-to punch

in which we celebrate in secession,

the great holiday of Shavuot, followed by Shabbat.

And this proximity is far from coincidental,

so he wanted to take a few minutes and just reflect a little bit on this incredible holiday.

And we begin with a really important question. When precisely did we receive

the Torah? It's a simple question, right? Or at least it ought to be. The given of the Torah

is easily the single most important occasion in Jewish history and a crucial moment that has

shaped the course of all human events. So when

exactly did it happen? The Torah, a book which has a lot of very specific dates to convey to us

when it wants to doesn't say. We know exactly when we're supposed to celebrate Passover.

Sukhot, we have a specific date.

But Shavuot, the holiday in which we received the Torah, all the Torah gives us to help us mark the occasion, is this hazy instruction in Leviticus 23, verse 15.

You shall count for yourselves from the day following the day of rest,

from the day on which you bring the omer as a wave offering. The counting shall be for seven full

weeks. No wonder that the rabbis quarreled about the holiday's precise date, with some saying

we ought to celebrate it on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan,

and others arguing that the correct date is the seventh.

Why the confusion?

...