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Parashat Bemidbar: The Calendar

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Parashat Bemidbar: The Calendar
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ByHadar Institute

The Calendar עִנְיְנֵי דְּיוֹמָא

The holiday of Shavuot begins right after Shabbat this week.

The Torah says that Shavuot is about celebrating the beginning of the wheat harvest (Vayikra 23:1). The Talmud adds that Shavuot was also the day that God gave us the Torah on הַר סִינַי (Har Sinai, Mount Sinai) (Pesahim 68b).
Here are some מִנְהָגִים (minhagim, customs) that you can look forward to seeing on Shavuot.
Reading the Ten Commandments
We read the עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת (Aseret Ha-Dibrot, Ten Commandments) as our Torah portion. Look back to Devash on Parashat Yitro for some customs around this reading!
Learning Torah all night
It is common for communities to learn Torah on Shavuot, especially staying up the whole first night to do so. This is called תִּקּוּן לֵיל שָׁבֻעוֹת (tikkun leyl Shavuot), and the first one we know of happened about 500 years ago. Originally, there was a specific set of passages to recite and learn. While some communities still do this, others have Torah learning of all types.
“Tikkun” is a concept in kabbalah that connects to repairing our world through prayer, mitzvot, and concentrating on God. Some people have connected the tikkun on Shavuot to a midrash (Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:57) that says that Benei Yisrael nearly overslept on the day they were supposed to receive the Torah, and Moshe had to wake them up! To make up for their mistake, we learn Torah through the night without sleeping at all.
Megillat Ruth
The other main reading for Shavuot is the book of Ruth, about a heroic woman from Moav who took care of her mother-in-law, and became part of Benei Yisrael. The action of the book happens mostly during the wheat harvest. This is probably the main reason we read Ruth on Shavuot, but here are two others:
  • Ruth’s great-grandson will be King David. According to the Talmud Yerushalmi (Hagigah 2:3), King David was born and died on Shavuot.
  • Ruth becomes part of Benei Yisrael, taking on the laws of the Torah. Similarly, Benei Yisrael accepted the Torah on Shavuot.
Flowers
Many communities decorate their prayer spaces with flowers and sweet smelling plants. This minhag is first mentioned by the Maharil (600 years ago). It’s not totally clear why, but here are two possible explanations:
  • The Mishnah (Bikkurim 3:3) describes the decorations that would accompany people bringing their בִּכּוּרִים (bikkurim, first fruits) to Jerusalem on Shavuot. Our flowers remember those decorations.
  • A midrash (Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:12) says that Har Sinai was full of pleasant smells when God gave the Torah. We make our prayer spaces sweet-smelling to remember Har Sinai.
Cheesecake!
Why do many people eat dairy foods on Shavuot? According to the Rema (Orah Hayyim 494:3), it's actually not about eating dairy specifically. It's about eating a meal that starts with dairy and ends with meat. For a meal like this, we have to have two loaves of bread, one for the dairy and one for the meat. Forcing us to have two loaves of bread at our meal helps us remember the two loaves of bread brought to the Beit Ha-Mikdash on Shavuot (Vayikra 23:17).
Here are some other reasons dairy food is appropriate on Shavuot:
  • The Torah is compared to milk (Shir Ha-Shirim 4:11 and Tehilim 19:9-11).
  • The gematria (numerical value) of milk is 40 (ח + ל + ב = 8 + 30 + 2), which is the number of days Moshe spent on Har Sinai.
  • At Har Sinai, Benei Yisrael learned about the kosher slaughter of meat. They didn’t have enough time to prepare their knives right away, so at the original Shavuot they had to eat dairy instead of meat (Mishnah Berurah 494:14).