Shavuot

The Torah counts seven weeks, the Omer, from the second day of Passover, and on the fiftieth day comes Shavuot. It was one of the three pilgrimage festivals, with Passover and Sukkot, when Israelites went up to the Temple in Jerusalem. At Shavuot they brought the first fruits of the wheat harvest, the bikkurim.

The rabbis linked the date with the revelation at Mount Sinai, which the book of Exodus places in the third month after the departure from Egypt. In Jewish prayer Shavuot became “the season of the giving of our Torah”: the harvest of the fields joined to the gift of the law.

Many communities keep the night of Shavuot awake in study, a custom known as Tikkun Leil Shavuot, spread by the mystics of 16th-century Safed. At dawn they pray the morning service. In the synagogue the Ten Commandments are read, and the congregation stands to hear them.

The Book of Ruth is read because its story takes place at the barley and wheat harvest, and because Ruth, a Moabite woman, freely took on the faith of Israel, as the people did at Sinai. Synagogues and homes are decked with greenery and flowers, and meals feature dairy dishes: cheesecake, blintzes and, in Sephardi homes, cheese pastries.

In Israel, kibbutzim hold first-fruit festivals with tractors and wagons of produce, and children wear white and crowns of flowers. In cities from New York to Jerusalem, all-night study sessions fill synagogues and community centres, and at dawn crowds walk to the Western Wall to pray.