SHAVUOT Shavuot Festival of Weddings, Flowers, Sweet Treats By Flora Rosefsky From comparing Shavuot to a Jewish wedding to organizing Torah study sessions from midnight till dawn. And from planning dairy menus to reading about the first convert to Judaism, Shavuot is a multifaceted holiday with much depth and opportunity for creativity. The AJT elicited insights on the holiday from three rabbis spread among Atlanta’s geographic and denominational spectrum. One of the core rituals of Shavuot is to continue learning Torah and other Jewish texts. For that reason, Shavuot secures its place as one of the most important Torah pilgrimage festivals celebrated on the Jewish calendar. Rabbi Larry Sernovitz of Temple Kol Emeth said we are to remember that “we too received the Torah at Sinai and every year we renew that covenant between G-d and the Jewish people.” Sernovitz compared dairy foods to Torah, being as “sweet as honey on the tongue.” Think cheesecake and blintzes. The Jewish people are unique in the world in how the revelation or receiving the Torah came to them as one large community, not only as individuals, said Rabbi Joshua Hearshen of Congregation Or VeShalom. The AJT also learned from Rabbi Binyomin Friedman of Congregation Ariel that although there is no biblical instruction to celebrate the anniversary of the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai, a number of customs arose that gave Shavuot the identity recognized today. Just as the barren Mount Sinai burst forth with vegetation as the Torah was given, it is customary to decorate synagogues with flowers. One traditional interpretation is that “it took a while for the Jews to integrate the newly introduced laws of kosher,” Friedman said. “Therefore, they didn’t eat meat in the days following the giving of the Torah. We commemorate that decision by eating dairy dishes,” he said. He believes the most outstanding custom is to spend the entire night engrossed in Torah study in anticipation of the anniversary of receiving the Torah on the morning of Shavuot, including the Sephardic tradition of reading a ketubah, Jewish wedding contract, during the holiday’s synagogue service.
Marriage Contract Hearshen explained how the Sephardic community, having so many con44 | MAY 15, 2021 ATLANTA JEWISH TIMES
Rabbi Larry Sernovitz is the senior rabbi at Temple Kol Emeth in Marietta.
Rabbi Joshua Hearshen leads Congregation Or VeShalom in Brookhaven.
nections to the mystic world, took one of the many paradigms for the relationship between the Jewish people and G-d, wife and husband respectively, and expressed a marriage motif during Shavuot. Symbolically, the Torah was the wedding gift from G-d to the Jewish people and also the terms of the marriage, the ketubah. It is Sephardic tradition to create special ketubot to be read on Shavuot. The most famous ketubah is by Israel Najara of Tzfat (1550 – 1625). “While that text tries to mirror the ketubot from our marriages, it waxes poetic a great deal more and provides more mysticism than our mundane marriage contracts,” Hearshen said. It is dated the sixth of Sivan 2448, which is the date of Shavuot. At OVS, the ketubah text is read on Shavuot when
Rabbi Binyomin Friedman is senior rabbi of Congregation Ariel in Dunwoody.
Rabbi Sernovitz studying Torah with his son Sam, preparing for his upcoming bar mitzvah.
the ark is opened, while preparing to take out the Torah scrolls, he said. In modern times, weddings are generally avoided between Passover, when the counting of the Omer begins and Lag B’Omer, the 33rd day, Hearshen said. The Omer is the period between Passover and Shavuot. “This leaves us with just over two weeks of acceptable days for weddings. Those days are close to Shavuot and so we tend to see, in a nonCOVID world, a large amount of weddings from Lag B’Omer until the day before Shavuot,” he said.
A Name or Two Friedman said that the day G-d presented the Israelites with Torah at Mount Sinai, after they left Egypt, Shavuot Torah Study with TKE congregants. coincides exactly with the Prior to COVID, Torah study often took place festival of Shavuot. Besides its in the homes of Kol Emeth members. historical connection to the Exodus, the holiday is clearly crop to ripen, and bring it to the temple, linked to the agricultural rhythms of Isacknowledging G-d for His beneficence rael, where crops are planted in the early in granting us this new crop. Only after winter and are ready for harvest in the bringing this Omer of barley may we eat spring around Passover time, he said. of the new crop,” Friedman said. Shavuot came to be called the FesThe Torah continues to tell the Jewtival of Weeks in its connection to the ish people to count 49 days. On the 50th, counting of the Omer. The Torah states they are to bring to the temple two loaves that on the second day of Passover, “we of bread that they have baked from the are to go out into the field and harvest now-harvested wheat crop. The day is to omers (omer is a measure) worth of barbe celebrated as the Festival of Shavuot ley, usually being the first winter planted or Weeks because it comes at the end
