And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the L-rd, thy G-d ...And thou shalt rejoice...Thou and thy son, and thy daughter...And the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are in the midst of thee. Deuteronomy 16:10-11 Shavuot is one of the three pilgrimage festivals that the Scriptures ordain, the others being Passover and Sukkot. This means that Jews the world over were expected to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the celebration of these festivals by means of sacrifices at the Holy Temple.

Shavuot goes by many names. The Torah calls it Chag ha-Katzir, the festival of the harvest (Exodus 23:16). That is, it is celebrated at the end of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest. It is also called Yom Habikkurim, the day of the first fruits (Numbers 28:26), as the first and best produce of the field’s harvest would be offered on the festival of weeks (Exodus 34:22), marking the conclusion of a seven week, forty-nine day period of counting (i.e. the Omer), from the beginning of the barley harvest on the second day of Passover. The Talmud adds a fourth name, Atzeret, the conclusion, referring perhaps to the notion that Shavuot represents a conclusion of sorts to the themes and spirit of the Passover holiday, just as the fall Atzeret, Shimini Atzeret, marks the conclusion of the Sukkot festival.

In a broader sense, Shavuot marks the spiritual climax of the Passover freedom concept. That is, post biblically, Shavuot came to be associated with the anniversary of the law-giving at Mount Sinai.   Passover   celebrates  our  ancestors’   deliverance   from

ancestors’ deliverance from Egypt. They left Egypt so that they could serve G-d at the Mount (Exodus 3:12). And in the third month after the exodus, Sivan, the Jews entered the wilderness of Sinai (Exodus 19:1). On the sixth day of that month, they witnessed the Sinaitic revelation. This date coincides with Shavuot.

It is a holiday, therefore, that has profound significance, not only for its agricultural character, but also as the anniversary of one of the most momentous events in all our history. It is for this reason that the Shavuot liturgy calls this holiday Zman Matan Toraseinu, the Season of the Law Giving.

The customs of the Shavuot holiday are many and varied. We read the Ten Commandments in the synagogue. Plants and flowers are used to decorate the bimah and sanctuary, reminiscent of the verdant green slopes at Mount Sinai at the law-giving. We stay up all night long on the evening of the first day of Shavuot, studying a range of Torah texts to commemorate the anniversary of Matan Torah. The Book of Ruth, as it describes the summer harvest in Israel, is read, as is the poem Akdamus, a lofty ode to G-d and His Torah. Dairy foods are traditionally eaten, at least on the first day of the two day Diasporan festival, to call to mind our Torah, which is compared to milk and honey in the “Song of Songs” (4:11).

Shavuot is a festival rich in historical and contemporary meaning. While it is a holiday that we have long neglected, we can change all that. It is up to us.