Shavuot

Shavuot is often trivialized in the modern world. It falls at an awkward time of year, after many religious schools have finished up classes. It doesn't have any big symbols like building a sukkah for Sukkot, nor any major rituals like the Pesach seder. However, there is a lot to like about Shavuot and it has become one of my favorite holidays.

Like most Jewish holidays, Shavuot has both an ancient agricultural meaning and a more recent (though still pretty old) rabbinic meaning. Agriculturally, Shavuot is known as Chag HaBikurim, the festival of the first fruits or Chag HaKatsir, the festival harvest. Through these names, Shavuot is tied to the wheat harvest and to the custom of bringing the first and best of the harvest to the Temple in ancient times.

The agricultural connotations have little meaning to Jews living in Galut, as we do. Therefore, the later rabbinical layers have come to take on some very special meanings. My personal favorite is Z'man Matan Torah -- The Time when the Torah was Given. The tradition is that on Shavuot all Jews -- not only those who were living at the time, but all Jews in all generations -- stood together at Mt. Sinai and received the Torah.
To remember receiving the Torah, every year on Shavuot, we stand again in our congregations all over the world as the Ten Commandments are read from the Torah.

In anticipation of this re-enactment, many groups and synagogue hold a tikkun leyl Shavuot the night before the Ten Commandments are read. A tikkun is an all-night study session intended to get you in the right frame of mind to receive Torah. Receiving Torah, after all, is a dynamic and ongoing process.

Our local community does not hold an all-night tikkun, so this year we invited some friends over for a small personal tikkun. Various people promised to teach something, or to lead a discussion, but it was kind of a free-form evening and we figured we would go until we ran out of things to say.

First of all, we had to rearrange our family room to make room for everyone, including comfortable pillows and blankets in case people (or children) felt like taking a nap.

Okay, the pillows and blankets hadn't arrived yet when that picture was taken, but at least there were lots of places to sit and lounge around. We also set up a tent on the back patio so that the youngest members of the group could settle down out of the way.

The early part of the evening was somewhat oriented toward the kids, with the adults having various discussions in the background. They made a delicious Torah cake, where they had to look up verses in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible) to figure out the ingredients. Fortunately, I had checked out the verses the night before because there were a couple of errors in the version I found. The corrected version is available as a PDF.

Other kid-oriented activities: We read a midrash about b'nai Israel receiving the Ten Commandments from G-d at Mt. Sinai. The entire decalogue was said all at once and it was hard for the people to understand, so they asked Moses to go up alone and receive the word of G-d. So we stood 10 adults around the room with abbreviated versions of each commandment and we read them all at once. Afterwards, we had a nice discussion of what the kids actually heard.

Around midnight, we took a short walk around the neighborhood and then went out into the back yard to gaze up at the sky. Another midrash tells how, at midnight on erev Shavuot, the heavens open up and prayers are heard.

We also had a couple of simple crafts available for the kids -- ones that required little to no adult supervision -- such as tissue paper flowers.

One of the participants prepared a list of topics she was ready to talk about, and has allowed me to reproduce it here:

Jews and Brisket
The Changes of Our People - Our Nation
Intermarriage
Chinese Food
British Jews vs American Jews and Self Identity
Who is a Jew
Patriarchs, Mad and Imperfect
The First Born Jewish Son, Syndrome
Belief levels, Mystic vs "Reality"
Prepare to be Assimilated
Jewish Mothers and Food
Why don't we listen harder to our Converts?
Do We Need the Diaspora - Cue Community
Jews and the "Swan Lake Syndrome"
Jewish souls
Being Isaak
Jewish Identity in America Today, from my point of view
The connection between Midrash and OCD in Jews
To Frum or not too Frum
30 minutes crash courses and introduction to Judaism
The Flood
The history of the Tikkun

What is truly interesting about this list was that, over the course of the evening and early morning, we touched on almost all of these topics, even though our "official" list of topics was slightly different:

Jewish views toward death and afterlife
What makes a Jewish community?
Day and Night in Jewish Thought
What is holy/holiness/a holy people?
The Evil Eye, amulets, and superstitions
Why being a Red Sox fan is similar to being Jewish

We even had a participant via webcam from England. I hate to confess that I don't really remember most of what she talked about because I kind of dozed off right about then, but it was nice to have yet another point of view presented.

In the morning, we woke up the kids and ate blintzes and fruit. And then we went to the synagogue, where I got to read the 10 commandments from the Torah. One of my favorite Torah readings of all time.

All in all, it was a very satisfying experience. If you don't have an all-night tikkun where you live, think about putting one together next year.