What Even Is SHAVUOT？？ ｜｜ Learn More About Judaism!
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Summary
Shavuot is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the day we received the Torah. It is also a holiday of harvest and marks the return of the first fruits of the spring harvest. On this holiday, we celebrate the Torah and the day that we received it.
Transcript
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Hello, Classic Crew, and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about
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the holiday of Shavuot. Shavuot is a Jewish holiday that some of you may know as Pentecost,
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and some of you may never have heard of at all. It's a Jewish holiday that we celebrate,
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but that isn't always known by everybody. I mean, it's not like Passover or Hanukkah where you
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absolutely have heard of it. Shavuot is another one of those holidays, but it is very important
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to us as Jews, and I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about it. So if you are new to my
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channel, we do commentary, beauty, fashion, opera, and lifestyle, all from a conservative and classic
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to the description box and click that link so that you can become a premium subscriber. Now I'm really
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excited to tell you about Shavuot, so let's get into it. So Shavuot is a holiday that commemorates the
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day we received the Torah. So what does Shavuot actually mean? Shavuot means weeks. So it's seven
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weeks from Passover, which is the liberation of the Jews from slavery from Egypt, to when we received
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the Torah. And it took seven weeks for us to travel from Egypt to Mount Sinai. And if you've ever
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wondered why Shavuot translates to Pentecost, that's actually a Greek word which means 50. So there are 50
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days. That's seven weeks. Shavuot is also a holiday of reaping. It's a holiday of harvest. So this is a
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holiday where we celebrate the spring harvest, and it's also a holiday where we celebrate getting the
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Torah. So Passover and Shavuot are actually very tied together because Passover was leaving Egypt,
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being liberated from slavery, and then Shavuot is receiving the Torah and being committed to God.
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Shavuot also goes by another name, and that is Chag HaKatzir, which means the festival of reaping. We also
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call it Yom Habikurim, which is the day of the first fruits. So Shavuot is the holiday of the spring
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harvest. What we would do during the days of the temple is that when we would see the first fruits
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start to bloom, we would tie a string around it. And when all of our fruits had bloomed, we would
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take the first fruits to the temple to celebrate that it was the time of harvest, that we'd had a
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good harvest. So Shavuot is a really important day for the Jewish people because it's the day that
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we commemorate the Torah, getting the Torah, which is what we and our faith is based on. So even though
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you may not have heard about it, it actually is a very important Jewish holiday. We have a bunch of
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different minhagim, which means traditions, that we do on the holiday. So one of the Jewish traditions
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is that we stay up all night and study Torah. So where does that tradition come from? That tradition
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comes from that when we received the Torah, we went to bed early. The Jewish people went to bed early
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the night before receiving the Torah in anticipation. They wanted to wake up early, ready to receive the
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Torah, and they slept too late. They actually slept past the time, and Moses had to come and wake
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everyone up. So in atonement for having slept too late, we now stay up all night studying Torah and
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preparing ourselves for the reception of the Torah, in a sense. We also celebrate by buying flowers and
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decorating our houses because on the day that we received the Torah, Mount Sinai bloomed and was full
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of flowers. So to reflect that, we decorate our houses and we buy fresh flowers and fresh blooms
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and put them all over. Another important tradition is eating dairy on the holiday. So very often on
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Jewish holidays, we eat meat. Meat is considered a celebratory food. It's a food that we eat on
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holidays, but on this holiday, we eat dairy. And there are a few reasons given for why we do that.
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Number one is that Shavuot occurs during milking season when dairy is fresh and plentiful,
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so we celebrate that. The second reason is that before receiving the Torah, the Israelites did
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not have the laws of ritual slaughter and of kashrut, of kosher. And so after we received the
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Torah, we didn't have any kosher utensils for meat, for meat use, because we have to have separate
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dishes for meat and dairy, separate pots and pans for meat and dairy. And so to celebrate receiving
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the Torah, we ate dairy, so now we eat dairy. And the third reason is that King Solomon compares
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the Torah to milk in the Song of Songs. The last thing I want to talk about today is the book that
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we read on Shavuot, and that is the book of Ruth. I talked about Ruth in another video, a video I did
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all about biblical women and how strong they are. And we read this book on the holiday for a few
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different reasons. One is that King David, who was Ruth's descendant, he died and was born on
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Shavuot. So that's something that we are commemorating. The second reason is that Ruth is a convert.
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Ruth was a Moabite, and she converted to Judaism when she went with Naomi. And in a sense, all Jews
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were converts when we received the Torah at Mount Sinai. So we are reading about a convert on the day
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that we are remembering receiving the Torah and us becoming converts as well. And that's what Shavuot is.
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I hope I gave you a good understanding of what this holiday is about. Let me know in the comments
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if you have any questions or if you have any other things you'd like to share. I'd love to hear.
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Thank you so much for watching today's video. Please subscribe to my channel if you haven't
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