By Maayan Jaffe/JNS.org

At sundown on Saturday, May 23, Jews around the world will start the two-day holiday (which lasts only one day in Israel) of Shavuot. Also known as the Festival of Weeks because it marks the completion of the counting of the Omer period—which is 49 days long, or seven weeks of seven days—Shavuot is one of the Jewish calendar’s shalosh regalim pilgrimage holidays.

Unlike the other two pilgrimage festivals—Passover, which is marked through the retelling of the Exodus story at the seder, and Sukkot, which is celebrated by building a hut or sukkah outside one’s home—there is no definitive ritual associated with Shavuot in the text of the Torah. As such, many Jews struggle to connect with the holiday, which has yet another name: “Chag HaKatsir,” meaning the Harvest Festival.

But despite its undefined nature, Shavuot “is a gift of a holiday,” says Roberta Miller, a teacher at Chicago Land Jewish Day School in Chicago.

“It’s when we got the Ten Commandments, God’s greatest present to the Jewish people,” she says.

In that spirit, here are seven ways to infuse some meaning and minhag (tradition) into your Shavuot this year:

Cheese blintzes, a popular food when it comes to the custom of eating dairy on Shavuot. Credit: Andrevan via Wikimedia Commons.

1. Food
It is traditional on Shavuot to eat dairy foods. Rabbi Robyn Frisch, director of InterfaithFamily/Philadelphia, says some believe this is because the scripture compares Torah to “honey and milk… under your tongue” (Song of Songs 4:11). Another explanation is that when the Israelites received the Torah for the first time, they learned the kosher dietary laws and didn’t immediately have time to prepare kosher meat, so they ate dairy instead.

Baking and consuming dairy foods can differentiate Shavuot from other holidays, says Miller.

“We all have very strong memories associated with scent. If I smell a honey cake, I think of my grandmother and Rosh Hashanah. The smell of cheesecake generates a connection to Shavuot for my kids,” she tells JNS.org.

Miller also suggests ice cream cake. In her family, Shavuot marks the first ice cream cake of the season, and that knowledge builds anticipation for the holiday. Just as no one in her house is allowed to eat matzah until the seder, she says, no one gets ice cream cake until the first night of Shavuot.

2. Games
For families with young children, games are a great way to educate youth about the messages of Shavuot. Miller suggests counting games.

“You can count up to 49 of anything: 49 ways Mommy loves you, 49 things you are grateful for,” she says.

For slightly older children, Miller offers a Jewish commandments version of Pictionary®, in which before the holiday children draw their favorite commandment or commandments on a notecard. The cards are mixed up and put into a box or bag. Then, the family gets together, members draw picture cards, and someone acts out each commandment while participants guess which commandment it is and why it is important.

An illustration of Ruth in Boaz’s field. Credit: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld – National Gallery, London via Wikimedia Commons.

3. Guests
On the second day of Shavuot, we read the Book of Ruth, the story of the first Jew by choice. Frisch explains that it is also a story of welcoming the stranger and inclusivity. Shavuot is the perfect holiday for inviting new friends over for a meal, or for opening one’s home to people who are interested in learning more about Jewish traditions, says Frisch.

4. Jewish learning
Taking part in a tikkun leil Shavuot—a night of Jewish learning—is another Shavuot custom. Many traditional Jews stay up all night on the first night of the holiday to study Torah. Today, many non-observant Jews aren’t affiliated with a particular synagogue. As such, Frisch suggests hosting a communal night of learning (not affiliated with any particular religious sect or institution) that can draw in a more diverse mix of Jewish learners.

“Jewish learning is being reclaimed,” Frisch tells JNS.org, adding that it is necessary for that learning to be accessible.

For people who live in smaller communities without a formal Shavuot learning event, Frisch says there are multiple online sources that can be used to organize a grassroots evening of learning at an individual’s home.

“Jewish learning doesn’t have to be Biblical texts. … Torah is more than the Five Books of Moses. It could be liberal values or social justice or just a discussion about Jewish identity or Jewish laws,” Frisch says.

5. King David birthday party
Tradition has it that King David, Ruth’s (as in the Book of Ruth) great-grandson, was born and died on Shavuot. Miller suggests holding a King David birthday party—featuring decorations, cake, ice cream, and gifts.

“Use it as a learning tool,” she says, noting how the party can springboard into a historical discussion. “What would you write on a card to [King David]? What do you want to ask him? What would he want for a present? What would he put in the goody bag that he gives to each of us?”

An illustration of the Shavuot holiday. Credit: Moritz Daniel Oppenheim – Google Art Projectvia Wikimedia Commons.

6. Nature
On Shavuot, it is customary to decorate our homes and synagogues with flowers and plants. Ruthie Kaplan, who lives in the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem and is a former Hebrew school teacher, tells JNS.org that following this tradition of surrounding ourselves with the lushness of the natural world could “add a lot of beauty to the day.”

Shavuot comes in the late spring or early summer, when the weather is perfect and the flowers are blossoming. Kaplan says that is “the perfect time” to connect with nature and appreciate the beauty of the world that God created for us.

7. Setting goals/reflections
Kaplan says that a deeper reading of the Book of Ruth can transform Shavuot from simply another Jewish holiday into an opportunity to set goals and resolutions. Ruth, she says, believed in something (Judaism) and followed through on her belief.

“That story of Ruth excites me and really comes to life on Shavuot,” says Kaplan. “Ruth is open to the truth and therefore she sees it and she is willing to be honest with herself. For anyone searching and struggling, Ruth is a good role model for life.”

On Shavuot, remembering the day I almost dropped the Torah

By Edmon Rodman

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Shavuot, we are reminded that the Torah is a tree of life to which we are to hold fast. But what happens when that hold slips from your grasp?

It’s a question I found myself asking six weeks before Shavuot, late in the Torah service on the last day of Passover.

Returning with my wife Brenda to Temple Beth Emet, in Anaheim, Calif., where I grew up, we both had come to attend the Yizkor service and to see her family who continue to pray there. Not far from Disneyland, it’s a shrinking kingdom of Jewish memories where, as I walked down the aisle to my seat, I could see my Hebrew school teacher and the familiar faces of those who had been friends of my parents.

A little while after we were seated, the gabbai came down the aisle, blue card in hand, and asked me if I wanted to be “hagbah” — that is, to raise the Torah after it was read. “Thank you,” I said, accepting the honor.

When my wife joined me, we quickly exchanged notes and found that we were going to be a Torah team, since while she was out in the lobby, the gabbai had asked her to be “gelilah” — the person tasked with dressing the Torah.

As the scrolls were taken from the ark, I nudged her, saying the larger of the two scrolls was probably the one I should lift. As I sized it up, I could see that this scroll was longer than the one I had grown accustomed to lifting in my minyan in Los Angeles.

Torah scrolls vary quite a bit in size, from short study scrolls weighing only a few pounds up to tall, arm-length versions that can weigh up to about 50 pounds.

Besides being a holy object, a Torah scroll is also expensive, taking a scribe a year or more to write its 304,805 letters by hand, and costing between $30,000 and $60,000, depending on size, quality of script and parchment.

Trying to keep this out of mind, I counted down the aliyot, the sections in which the Torah is read, until with the completion of the eighth and final reading. Quickly, I walked up the few steps to the bima where I had chanted, in what seemed like a million turns of the Torah ago, for my bar mitzvah.

Grabbing the wooden handles, known as the Trees of Life, I rolled each tight, so that three columns were left showing in the middle.

I carefully slid the scroll towards me, and then, using the Torah reading table’s edge as a fulcrum, I slid the remaining section down, bent my knees and levered the Torah up. With the handles about even to my shoulders, I turned away from the congregation, so the worshippers could see the writing, and raised the scroll higher.

I took about four steps to the chairs where I knew I was supposed to sit, and where my wife would tie the scroll and dress it.

Only there was a problem.

“The least stable time during hagbah is right after you sit down,” says the National Chavura Committee’s website, and this is the truth. While lowering my body to sit, I lost the tension between the two halves, and the half in my left hand began to wobble. Thrusting my arm out to steady it only caused the scroll to gyrate more in what began to appear to me as a slow-motion disaster.

Now, being asked to raise the Torah is a great honor — or, as the gabbai had put it, “greater than them all.” Rabbi Joseph H. Prouser, citing the Mishnah in an article titled, “Raising Awareness: The Symbolic Significance of Hagbah and Gelilah,” explained: “lifting the Torah scroll is a public act of qinyan, of establishing ‘ownership’” rights.

But if that were the case, those “rights,” remembered on Shavuot with the celebration of the giving of the Torah, were wobbling away both from me and from the congregation, who if I dropped the Torah, would need to decide how to reassert their ownership. Would they fast? Give tzedakah?

One more wobble, and then my wife, seemingly coming out of nowhere, grabbed the top of the errant roller, and even though the parchment buckled into an S-like shape that widened my eyes, she stopped its fall.

“Good save,” someone said to her as she returned to her seat.

In another era, according to Prouser, the raising and dressing of the Torah was “executed by a single individual.” But today, I was ecstatic to be part of a team: a husband and wife, who had long been juggling work, children, family and Judaism, coming together, after some juggling of my own, finally to take grasp of the Torah and own it.

“She is a tree of life to those who grasp her,” says the Book of Proverbs, “and whoever holds on to her is happy.”

Edmon J. Rodman is a JTA columnist who writes on Jewish life from Los Angeles. Contact him at edmojace@gmail.com.