Shavuot

The Festival of the Giving of the Torah — fifty days after Pesach, the early summer pilgrimage festival.

By The EditorsEssential

Sacred Time · 3 minute read

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Summary. Shavuot (literally "weeks") falls on the 6th of Sivan in Israel (6th–7th in the diaspora). The Torah commands it as the conclusion of the seven-week count from Pesach (Vayikra 23:15–22). In rabbinic tradition, Shavuot is zeman matan torateinu — "the season of the giving of our Torah" — commemorating the revelation at Sinai. The customs include the all-night Tikkun Leil Shavuot (study session), the reading of the Book of Ruth, the eating of dairy foods, and the decoration of synagogues with greenery. The Ten Commandments are read in synagogue from a Torah scroll.

Tikkun Leil Shavuot

The all-night Shavuot study session is a Kabbalistic practice that originated with the 16th-century Safed mystics around the Arizal and Rabbi Yosef Karo. The custom is to stay up all night studying Torah, in symbolic preparation for receiving the Torah at Sinai (drawing on a Midrash that the Israelites overslept on the morning of the revelation, requiring God to wake them; the all-night study is the rectification). Standard Tikkun texts (printed in the Tikkun Leil Shavuot booklet) include passages from each of the books of Tanakh and from the Mishnah and Zohar. Contemporary practice often substitutes a series of shiurim on diverse topics.

The Ten Commandments and the Book of Ruth

On Shavuot morning, the Torah reading is the Ten Commandments (Shemot 19:1–20:23). The congregation traditionally stands for this reading. The Book of Ruth is read on Shavuot — five chapters about the Moabite convert who becomes the great-grandmother of David. Multiple reasons are given: Ruth's story takes place at the wheat harvest (which Shavuot also marks); Ruth as a convert parallels the entire Jewish people receiving the Torah at Sinai (the whole people as converts to the covenant); the tradition that David was born and died on Shavuot.

Dairy Foods

Many traditions hold that on Shavuot one eats dairy foods (cheesecake, blintzes, lasagna). Multiple explanations: (1) the Torah is likened to milk (Shir HaShirim 4:11); (2) on receiving the Torah and its Kashrut laws, the Israelites did not yet have kosher meat ready, so ate dairy; (3) the gematria of chalav (milk) is 40, the number of days Moshe spent on Sinai. Whatever the reason, cheesecake is widely eaten.

Bikkurim

In the Beit HaMikdash, Shavuot was the season for bringing the bikkurim — the first fruits of the seven species (wheat, barley, grape, fig, pomegranate, olive, date) — in a public ceremony described in the Mishnah (Bikkurim 3). The Torah passage of mikra bikkurim ("my father was a wandering Aramean" — Devarim 26) was recited. Contemporary Israeli secular kibbutzim revived a folk-festival form of bikkurim. The full mitzvah awaits the rebuilding of the Temple.

Where Denominations Diverge

Universal observance. The Reform movement substantially recovered Shavuot in the 19th century with the institution of Confirmation, a ceremony for teenagers (typically 15–17) marking the completion of religious education, held annually on Shavuot in many Reform congregations. Confirmation is near-universal in Reform and Reconstructionist congregations and is found in some Conservative ones; it is not an Orthodox practice. Tikkun Leil Shavuot has become near-universal across denominations.