This article comes from Tuv Ha’Aretz’s weekly newsletter. Thanks Gary Rendsburg for the article which is especially relevant considering the upcoming holidays.

Ask anyone with a typical Jewish education today, and he or she will tell you that the three Jewish holidays of Pesah (Passover), Shavu‘ot (Weeks), and Sukkot (Booths) commemorate major events in Israel’s early history. Pesah, of course, recalls the exodus from Egypt; Shavu‘ot celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai; and Sukkot evokes the wandering in the desert. Naturally, this information is correct, but if we trace the historical origins of these festivals, we discover that all three began as agricultural observances.

Pesah is associated with the barley harvest, which occurs in the early spring; Shavu‘ot is associated with the wheat harvest and the ripening of the first fruits, both of which occur in the early summer; and Sukkot is the great fall harvest festival, celebrated after all produce has been gathered from the fields (note that many cultures in the world have such a holiday; witness, most familiarly, the Canadian and American Thanksgiving feasts). These three holidays, accordingly, were signposts for the ancient Israelite farmers, with their strong ties to the land – and let us recall that the vast majority of the people in ancient Israel was engaged in the growing of crops and the production of food.

Yet another segment of the population saw Pesah in a different, yet equally significant, light. I refer to the pastoralists who were engaged in sheep and goat herding. The young of these animals are born in the early spring, that is, once more at Pesah time, and thus it was only natural for the pastoralists to celebrate the lambing of the flocks in a festive manner.
For the people of ancient Israel – as with all peoples in antiquity – these celebrations took the form of religious observances marked by sacrifices to the deity. Thus, for example, those who tended to flocks would sacrifice a lamb, and those who grew crops would bring a sheaf of barley or the first fruits to the sanctuary at the appropriate times. Most likely, and we have some evidence for this in our ancient sources, these familiar Jewish rituals were observed by others in antiquity as well – after all, non-Jewish barley ripens at the same time as Jewish barley!
Israel, however, went one crucial step further. The gods of the ancient cultures were associated with nature; thus in a standard pantheon one finds an earth goddess, a heaven god, a sun god, a moon goddess, a sea god, a desert god, and so on. In ancient Israel, by contrast, God (properly known as Yahweh in biblical times) was not associated with nature, but rather manifested himself in history. Recall, for example, the beginning of the Decalogue: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). God is not a sun god (such as Ra in Egypt) or a storm god (such as Marduk in Babylonia), but rather a deity who acts in human history.

Because of this important distinction, the Israelites added a historical signification to the three agriculture festivals. Only after the passing of some time did Pesah become associated with the exodus from Egypt (as mentioned in a number of passages in the Torah) and Sukkot with the wandering in the desert (as indicated in only one passage, Leviticus 23). Today we take it for granted that holidays mark historical events that occurred but once (such as Thanksgiving marking the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620, and the Fourth of July commemorating the reading of the Declaration of Independence in 1776). But such was not always the case, since in antiquity it was events tied to nature (such as harvests, solstices, and equinoxes) that were celebrated. Israel’s genius to commemorate the historical not only was innovative in its day, but it set the tone for human culture down to the present day.

Let us return, however, to the agricultural aspects of the biblical holidays. Even after the festivals were given their new historical significations, remarkably the old symbols were retained and were imbued with new meanings. For example, the booths associated with Sukkot stem from the real-life situation whereby farmers would construct wooden booths in their fields during the intense harvest period at the end of the growing season, thereby allowing them to work from sunrise to sunset, without needing to commute from within the city walls of their town or city to the outlying fields each day. These booths reminded the Israelites of a different type of temporary structure, namely, the tents in which they dwelled during the wandering period. In such fashion, Sukkot was connected to the national epic account recorded in the Torah.
Similarly, the symbols of Pesah derive from the agricultural origin of the holiday. Ancient Israelite farmers celebrated the barley harvest by eating unleavened bread, made from the newly harvested grain only, without the admixture of leaven, which was derived from yeast created from fermented grain from an earlier harvest. That is to say, there was a resistance to mixing the old with the new, as if it would contaminate the new harvest then being celebrated. In time, however, the unleavened bread was associated with the Exodus from Egypt, especially as the tradition arose that the Israelites left Egypt in haste (since unleavened bread, in contrast to leavened bread, takes very little time to bake).

The pastoralists, as noted above, offered a lamb to God as thanks for the successful lambing of the flocks. The lamb was roasted and was eaten with bitter herbs, both of which represent the lifestyle of the semi-nomads. Without pots and pans (which are too heavy to transport from place to place), the preferred method of cooking is roasting; and without real crops (witness the present-day bedouin, who do not farm), the vegetables eaten with a meal are typically bitter roots that can be found growing in the wilderness. As is well known, these symbols were reinterpreted as well, with the blood from the slain lamb smeared on the doorposts of the Israelites, so that God would “pass over” their homes when smiting the firstborn of the Egyptians; and the bitter herbs reminded the people of their embittered lives while enslaved in Egypt.

In sum, the three Jewish holidays of Pesah, Shavu‘ot, and Sukkot hark back to Israel’s earliest origins, when the vast majority of the people were engaged in agricultural activity. All three are connected to harvests, Pesah also has a pastoralist component, and the symbols of Pesah and Sukkot bear the signs of the ancient agrarian and herding lifestyles. Over the course of 3000-plus years, the main emphasis of the holidays has changed, but as we contemplate Judaism’s connection to the land and to the food produced by that land, it is important to recall the very foundations of these festivals.

Professor Gary Rendsburg is the department Chair of the Jewish Studies Department at Rutgers University.