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Shavuot
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In the days of the Temple there were three Pilgrimage festivals when Jews would go to
Jerusalem with thanksgiving offerings for the harvest. Shavuot is the Summer pilgrimage festival,
the festival of first fruits. There is Pesach in Spring and Sukkot in Autumn.
Shavuot means 'weeks', referring to the time of the festival seven weeks after Pesach.
The period leading up to Shavuot is known as the 'counting of the Omer'. Counting starts
on the second day of Pesach, and forty nine days are counted until Shavuot.
The counting of the omer is a remembrance of Temple times when a harvest offering
of an omer of barley was brought to the Temple every day for forty nine days.
(An omer is a measure of about 2 litres, equivalent to a sheaf of barley.)
Shavuot also commemorates the time when the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai.
Counting the days between Pesach and Shavuot represents the progression from the liberation
from slavery (at Pesach) to spiritual redemption at Shavuot, when the Torah was received.
In our Shavuot prayers we thank God for having given us the Torah. The Torah reading
describes the scene at Mount Sinai when God gave the Israelites the Torah, and lists the Ten
Commandments.
Shavuot is also known as 'Chag HaBikkurim' - the Festival of the First Fruits.
In Temple times, farmers would bring their first harvest to Jerusalem as a token of thanksgiving.
On Shavuot, the synagogue is decorated with flowers and we eat lots of cheese cake.
At NWSS we gather on the eve of Shavuot for a specially devised seder which
explores the themes of harvest, revelation and study, and we eat some of the First Fruits
mentioned in Torah and enjoy a chavurah supper (a shared meal). Afterwards, when the younger
families have gone home, we sit and study together, (and eat more cheese cake!) observing the
custom of the Tikkun Leyl Shavuot (The Repair of the Night of Shavuot) making up through
our willingness to study for the fact that our ancestors went to bed before the revelation
of the Commandments instead of staying up and preparing themselves for the occasion.
During the Omer we gather to recall the horrors of the Holocaust on Yom Hashoa and the joy of the foundation of the State of Israel on Yom Ha'atzmaut.
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Festival dates
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