I've been thinking a lot recently about the number eight. Like many of you, I just completed eight days without eating anything leavened. But, technically, I did not celebrate eight days of Passover. Rather, because I live outside of the Land of Israel, I celebrated the seventh day of Passover twice, just to be sure I was doing so on the right day. In this, Passover is exactly parallel to Sukkot, which occurs at the other pole of the year, six months apart. According to multiple references in the Torah, both holidays begin on the 15th day of their respective months, and are observed for seven days. So why am I thinking about eight, rather than seven? First, because something happens in Tishrei, at the end of Sukkot, that does not happen on Passover in Nisan. There is, in fact, an eighth day in Tishrei, a day named for being the eighth day, Sh'mini Atzeret, the Eighth Day of Assembly, or of Tarrying. Those who are alert to liturgy may have noticed that while the last day (or days, for most of us outside of Israel) is celebrated as yom tov, a holiday, with the concomitant changes in liturgy and with restrictions on productive labor, there is one element missing. When we light candles and/or say kiddush, we omit the "Shehehiyanu" blessing that is usually said when we reach special occasions. This is because we already said this blessing on the first night(s) of Passover, and since these days are simply part of the holiday already in progress, there is no new occasion to mark. On Sh'mini Atzeret, on the other hand, the blessing is said; it may be noted that it is also no longer obligatory to sit in the sukkah, and the blessing for that act is not said if we choose to eat there anyway. In this way, Sh'mini Atzeret, while intimately connected to Sukkot, is also a holiday in its own right. Why doesn't Passover seem to have a sh'mini? And how does any of this have anything to do with this week's parasha? (But here's a hint: check the name of the parashah.)
Before I address that question, let me speak a bit more about both the numbers seven and eight in Jewish tradition. Seven is a number that is quite familiar to us ritually. As well as the seven days of Passover and Sukkot already mentioned, there is the most obvious example of the week being seven days, with the seventh being Shabbat - and this is a reminder of the creation of the world, which is described as a six day process, culminating in God's rest on the seventh, in the very first chapter of the Torah. Rabbenu Bahya, a Spanish commentator of the 13th century, notes that the "4 species" used on Sukkot are actually composed of seven items: one etrog, one palm branch, two willow branches, and three myrtle branches. We mourn for seven days - the "shivah" in "sitting shivah" is, of course, "seven." A wedding is celebrated with seven blessings (the shevah berakhot); these blessings may also be said again during the seven days following the wedding any time the bride and groom dine with a minyan that includes at least one person who has not previously been present for a recitation of the blessings. The Torah also mandates a seven year agricultural cycle, in which the land (in Israel) is allowed to lay fallow during the seventh year.
Yet it also does not take much thought to come up with at least one central ritual in Judaism that takes place on the eighth day: the circumcision of a newborn baby boy. We might also make mention (as we did in the Torah reading on the second day of hol hamo'ed during Passover) that while all first born animals are to be dedicated to God, first "it shall be with its mother seven days, and on the eighth day you shall give it to Me" (Ex. 22:29). And then there is the opening of our parashah, and the word that gives it its title, Lev. 9:1: "On the eight day Moses called Aaron and his sons, and the elders of Israel." What follows is the description of Aaron's inauguration as the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, and with that, the initiation of the priesthood, the Tabernacle, and regular sacrificial worship more generally. Why on the eighth day?
I would like to suggest that there is a clue in a rabbinic tradition (cited by Rashi, for example, and found in sources such as Sifra Sh'mini, parashah 1, and Shabbat 87b) that this "eighth day" is not to be read as a date (i.e., the 8th of the month), but as the eighth and culminating day of a process of preparation. In fact, according to this tradition, the day described in the opening of our parashah was a Sunday, and the first of Nisan. Much about this tradition is potentially suggestive. Sunday is typically referred to in Hebrew as "yom rishon," the first day of the week, but of course it also follows the seventh day, Shabbat, and is thus also a kind of eighth day. Nisan, meanwhile, is biblically the first month of the year, and according to at least some early rabbis, the anniversary of the creation of the world (not the beginning of Tishrei, as we generally hold now); at a minimum, the beginning of Nisan is the beginning of the spring and the season of new life and growth. And it is widely noted that the seven day process of establishing the Tabernacle parallels the seven days of the creation of the world, such that the Tabernacle functions as a kind of microcosm of the world.
What occurs to me, then, is that it is the eighth day that is the true day of beginning. The rabbis believed that Adam and Eve sinned and were banished from Eden all on their first day of being, the sixth day of creation (see, for example, Sanhedrin 38b). But the harshness of their first day of exile was mitigated by the onset of the first Shabbat; it is on the eighth day that human beings have to learn to live in the everyday world as we know it. On the eighth day, we welcome a new Jewish child (at least a male one) into the Covenant between God and Israel, which he will participate in for the rest of his life. On the eighth day, the Tabernacle becomes the site of regular, on-going worship.
And what of the "missing" eighth day of Passover, that I hinted at above? Since the second night of Passover, we are now in the omer period. The ritual of this period is a count of days and week, seven days in each of seven weeks. But what comes at the end of this cycle of squared sevens? A capping eighth day of sorts. On the fiftieth day, we celebrate the holiday we call Shavuot, or "Weeks." But since rabbinic times, this holiday has another name: Z'man Matan Torateinu - the Time of the Giving of our Torah. The seven days of Passover are the beginning of something critical, the journey to freedom from slavery. But it is the "eighth" day on which the true beginning of our life as a free nation begins - the day on which we receive and accept Torah.
Shabbat shalom.