Happy Shavuot!

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 What is the most significant holiday on the Jewish calendar?  Pesach?  Chanukah?  Yom Kippur?  Perhaps they are the most observed, but arguably it is Shavuot.  Because without Shavuot there would be no Pesach or Chanukah or Yom Kippur.  They are all in the Torah (written or oral), and Shavuot is the day the Torah was given.

 

Our holidays are not just times to remember what happened in the past.  Our holidays are times to experience once again what happened the first time.  Because the spirit that brought about the holiday repeats itself every year on that day.  So just as 3,335 years ago, shortly after our ancestors left Egypt, they all stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and received the Torah directly from Hashem, so too today we recreate that experience.  True, we don’t hear the voice of Hashem speaking the Ten Commandments to us directly, but when we hear the same eternal words read from the Torah scroll, we imagine that we are living through that Sinai experience. 

 

Actually, while the voice we hear reading the words is a human voice, the words are the same words that Hashem spoke, written exactly as they were the first time by Moshe in a Torah scroll.  Therefore, there are many things we do to truly feel that experience.  During the days leading up to Shavuot, we recommit to observing the Torah, as our ancestors said: “Na'aseh v'Nishma” – we will observe and we will hear.  On the day of Shavuot, we recreate the attendance at Mount Sinai in the Synagogue.  Now, like then, men, women and children, including newborns, gather to hear the Torah reading.  It is customary to add a dairy meal before the festive meat meal on the first day of Shavuot, just as our ancestors ate dairy on the day the Torah was given.  (See here for more explanation.)

 

On Shavuot it is appropriate to consider our personal relationship with the Torah and its observance, and to make resolutions to increase our Torah study and observance of Mitzvot.

 

This year, since the holiday falls on Friday and Shabbat, there is a special procedure that permits us to cook on Friday in preparation for Shabbat, despite the fact that in other years we do not prepare on the first day for the second.  This procedure is called “Eruv Tavshilin.”


I invite you to join us at Chabad for this wonderful holiday.  See details below.  In the traditional Shavuot blessing, may you receive the Torah with joy and internalize it. 

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