Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary – parshat (link to original page) Parshat Nasso – Shavuot THE OTHERNESS OF SHAVUOT By Mordechai Beck Though Judaism is deeply rooted in the day-to-day traffic of the mundane world, it also contains a profound and radical sense of otherness — the idea that the core of reality is something human beings can only rarely glimpse, let alone touch. Shavuot, The Feast of Weeks, illustrates how the two dimensions are essentially one. Called in the Torah the Feast of the First Fruits (chag habikkurim) and Pentecost (lit. the fiftieth day) in Greek, Shavuot...