The Festival of Shavuot throws up several interesting questions. We say that Shavuot is the ‘time of the giving of our Torah’, yet it is not clear at all that the Torah was given on Shavuot. Shavuot, according to the Torah, has no fixed date in the calendar, but falls on the fiftieth day of the Omer. This means that in times when the calendar was fixed by observation, Shavuot could possibly fall on either the 5th, 6th or 7th of Sivan. Even today, when, according to our fixed calendar, Shavuot always falls on the 6th of Sivan, this does not necessarily solve the problem. According to one talmudic opinion, the Torah was given not on the 6th of Sivan but on the 7th! Furthermore, if Shavuot is fixed by counting the Omer from Pesach, why do we keep two days in the Diaspora? Even before the fixed calendar, fifty days later everyone would have already discovered the exact date of Pesach, and thus of Shavuot. One solution, I believe, answers both questions. The Torah was not meant to be given on a certain date in the calendar, but a certain time after Pesach. The 6th of Sivan, unlike other festival days in the Jewish year, has no intrinsic holiness, but is merely the day that we complete the counting of the Omer. Following their liberation from Egypt, the Jewish people had to prepare themselves, in order to be able to receive the Torah. At the end of that period of preparation, the day of Shavuot, G-d revealed Himself on Mt Sinai. The actual date in the calendar is therefore irrelevant. What we celebrate is the end of our Omer count, and our renewed readiness to receive the Torah. We can now also understand why we keep two days in the Diaspora. It doesn't matter that people knew by then when Pesach was. They still had to celebrate the completing of fifty days. Just as they had celebrated Pesach for two days, from doubt, they had to celebrate Shavuot twice, as a double completion of their original doubtful count. All this teaches us an important lesson. The celebration of the giving of the Torah on Shavuot, is not a celebration of an event. It is rather the completion of a process. Just as, on Pesach, we all need to personally relive the Exodus, on Shavuot we must re-experience our readiness to accept the Torah. We, too, must complete the process of spiritual preparation we began on Pesach. The Torah is not simply a gift but something that we must be worthy of. Like the Princes in the Parshah, that waited till last to donate to the Tabernacle the most precious objects, we wait fifty days until we are ready to receive G-d’s most precious treasure.