Shavuot

When it falls

The sixth of Sivan (the sixth and seventh outside Israel), fifty days after the second day of Passover, in May or early June. The forty-nine days between are counted aloud every evening (the Omer).

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Seven weeks (shavuot) after the Exodus the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai and received the Torah; the festival is the anniversary of that day. In the Temple period it was also the festival of the first fruits (bikkurim), when the farmers of Israel walked to Jerusalem with baskets of the seven species, wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.

It has no ritual object of its own, no sukkah, no matzah, no shofar, and the customs grew around study and the harvest: staying up all night to learn, greenery in the synagogue, dairy food, and the reading of the Book of Ruth, the story of a convert's loyalty set at the barley harvest.

How the day is kept

• Tikkun Leil Shavuot: the night is spent studying Torah, in synagogues and study halls until dawn, and in Jerusalem the crowds walk to the Western Wall for the sunrise prayer.
• The Ten Commandments read in the morning service, the congregation standing, and the Book of Ruth.
• Synagogues and homes decorated with flowers and branches, for Sinai in bloom.
• On the kibbutzim of Israel, a first-fruits pageant with the year's new produce, tractors and the newborn children of the year presented.

At the table

Dairy: cheesecake, blintzes, cheese kreplach, and among Sephardim the seven-layer cake for the seven heavens; the reasons given range from the milk-and-honey land to the dietary laws first learned that day.

More holy days