Shavuot - the Feast of Weeks, which is really about Torah and Mt. Sinai

The holiday of Shavuot begins Sunday evening, June 1 (we're talking 2025 in this post). You know the drill: in Israel, it's a one-day holiday, so it continues during the day on Monday, June 2. In the Diaspora, that one day becomes two.

In the Bible, it's agriculturally-focused, and it comes seven weeks after Passover. The period in between is called the Omer, and we count each night (i.e. the beginning of each Jewish day!) in anticipation.

What's the anticipation about? Post-Biblically, the rabbis understand that Shavuot is also the anniversary of the revelation at Mt. Sinai. And so there is a natural progression from the physical redemption of Passover, with God bringing the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt with an outstretched arm, and the spiritual redemption of Shavuot, with the revelation of the Torah, God's law, at Sinai.

The custom is to stay up late on the first night (in Israel, the only night) of Shavuot, studying Torah (which is taken in its broader sense to mean just about any Jewish text). Some stay up all night, then say the morning prayers as soon as it's light, and stumble off to sleep. I did that when I was younger.

In addition to satisfying our spiritual hunger with Torah study, it's also the custom on Shavuot to eat dairy foods, like cheesecake. Sometimes, as the folk saying goes, it's hard to be a Jew. But eating cheesecake? That's a pleasure.

Also on Shavuot, we read the Book of Ruth in the morning prayer service (before the Torah reading, which includes the 10 Commandments - i.e. the heart of the revelation at Sinai). Revelation, you see, isn't a one-way communication. There's the Giver, and there is also its human recipients. And so we read the story of Ruth, considered the exemplar of a sincere convert to Judaism. Eventually, Ruth becomes the great-grandma of King David.