Without exaggeration, Shavuot is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Since Passover we’ve been counting, literally, to this moment. Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16 tell us when Shavuot is to take place. From the time of Passover, God says, “you shall count off seven weeks….You shall count until the day after the seventh sabbath, fifty days” (Leviticus 23:15-16). Here is why it is called Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks—it is separated from Passover by a “week” of weeks, i.e., seven weeks). This explains why it is also called Pentecost, from the Greek – because it occurs fifty days after Passover.
In Exodus 23:14, God commands, “Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me.” The three festivals specified by the Almighty are: (1) “the festival of unleavened bread” (2) “the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor” and (3) “the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor”. And of course these are the holidays of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.
If the Torah describes Shavuot as an agricultural festival requiring worshipers to bring the first fruits of the harvest to Jerusalem to offer at the Temple. why is it celebrated as the day on which God gave Israel the Torah at Sinai?
Following the destruction of the Temple in 70 ce the focus of the holiday shifted within Judaism to put increasing emphasis on Exodus 19:1-3 which says that “Moses went up to God” during the third month after the Exodus. Thus, the holiday celebrating the first fruits of the summer grain harvest is also the day on which the Jewish people celebrate the astonishing gift of the Torah. And thus the holiday earned yet another title: Z’man Matan Torateinu, “the time of the giving of our Torah.”
Interestingly, one can see both emphases, agriculture and Torah, in Shavuot celebrations in Israel. While more religious celebrations of Shavuot include staying up all night studying Torah, more agricultural-based celebrations are held on kibbutzim, communal farms, all over the country, focused on the harvest and “first fruits”. These two themes are brought together in the synagogue, where we read both the Ten Commandments (reminding us of Sinai and Torah) and the scroll of Ruth (with its harvest setting).
One of the unique Shavuot customs is eating dairy foods. And while there’s no clear reason as to why that is, I think my favourite explanation is that in chapter 4 of the Song of Songs, The Torah is compared to milk: "Like honey and milk, it lies under your tongue".
About the author:
Dr. Faydra Shapiro is a specialist in contemporary Jewish-Christian relations and is the Director of the Israel Center for Jewish-Christian Relations. She received the National Jewish Book Award for her first publication (2006). Her most recent book, with Gavin d'Costa, is Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel. Dr. Shapiro is also a Senior Fellow at the Philos Project https://philosproject.org and a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religions at Tel Hai College in Israel