Shavuot (שָׁבוּעוֹת)

Shavuot, fifty days after the second night of Pesach (Passover), commemorates the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Every night from that second Seder onwards, we count the Omer (an offering of barley originally brought to the Temple) for seven weeks. After the final day of the Omer, Shavuot begins.

Shavuot literally means “Weeks.” Though there are some surface similarities to the Christian holiday of Pentecost (fifty days after Easter), they mark completely different events. It’s always jarring to see a very old text calling Shavuot Pentecost. Beyond being extremely archaic, it’s completely inaccurate.

In the 19th century, the Reform Movement started having Confirmation ceremonies on Shavuot. Some Orthodox shuls also began having Confirmation for girls of bat mitzvah age (back when there was no such thing as a bat mitzvah ceremony). The typical Confirmation age today is sixteen or seventeen (tenth grade).

Many people decorate their homes and shuls with flowers, plants, and leafy branches, since according to tradition, Sinai bloomed with beautiful flowers before the Torah was given. Other sources believe flowers represent the Jewish people and the eternal covenant we made with Hashem. We’re the bride, Sinai is the chupah (marriage canopy), Hashem is the groom, and the Torah is the ketubah (marriage contract).

Some Sephardim and Chasidim read a ketubah between us and Hashem, written by Rabbi Israel ben Moses Najara (ca. 1555–1625), who lived in Damascus, Tzfat, and Gaza.

The traditional Orthodox belief is that the entire Torah, both written and oral, was given at Sinai. (The Oral Torah was later transcribed as the Talmud.) Though I accept the modern scholarship that shows multiple people wrote the Torah over a long period of time, I believe the core was given at Sinai and passed down orally. I also believe the tablets of the Ten Commandments were given at Sinai.

As it famously says in the first line of Pirkey Avot, “Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the Great Assembly.”

Buchenwald survivors celebrating Shavuot, 18 May 1945

Judaism is different from most other faiths because our foundational event was a mass revelation. Yes, Avraham was a single person called by Hashem, but we didn’t get the Torah for quite a long time. Our ancestors faithfully passed down the story of the revelation at Sinai for thousands of years, which shows how very important it is to our identity as a people.

However, since Judaism isn’t a religion of Biblical literalism and inerrancy, I don’t believe there were millions of people there (600,000 adult men plus their families). Far more likely, we were a much smaller group whose numbers were greatly embellished later on.

Still, I’m not a hardened skeptic who believes anything in the Bible without outside archaeological or documentary confirmation is just a fairytale. Many folktales have origins in stories passed down from ancient days, and oral cultures are known for excellent memories.  They have no other way to pass along their important stories and wisdom. But by the time these stories are finally written down, surely some changes have been made along the way.

The people who wrote the Bible were wise, spiritual, and inspired by God, but they were also humans, and no human being is perfect.

Many people stay up all night studying, in recreation of waiting to receive the Torah. It’s customary for synagogues to have late-night study sessions and seminars, and for people to host such sessions at their homes.

Shavuot is the only Biblical holiday without any mandated laws apart from abstaining from the 39 categories classified as work. Everything associated with it is a traditional custom or rabbinic observance.

The best-known culinary custom is eating dairy. The simplest explanations are that the Song of Solomon compares the Torah to milk and that we had to eat dairy at Sinai because our meat cookware had to be kashered. Until we received the Torah, we weren’t obligated to keep kosher, though some people believe our ancestors kept every single applicable law even before the Torah was given.

Chalav (milk; dairy) has a numerological value of 40, and Moses was on Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights. Psalm 68 also calls Sinai Har Gavnunim (mountain of majestic peaks). Gavnunim is very similar to genivah (cheese).

The Zohar links each of the negative commandments to a day of the year, and Shavuot corresponds to the commandment to bring our first fruits to the Temple and to not cook a kid in its mother’s milk. The first day we could bring those first fruits was Shavuot, so the second part of that line means we should eat one meat meal and one milk meal on the holiday.

The most popular dairy Shavuot foods today are cheesecake, ice-cream, and quiche.

We also recite liturgical poems and read the Book of Ruth, which is set around harvest season, stars a convert who accepted Judaism and Jewish peoplehood just as our ancestors did at Sinai, and ends with the genealogy of King David, who is said to have been born and died on Shavuot.

In modern Israel, many agricultural communities have reclaimed the tradition of celebrating the harvest of first fruits.