Shavuot שבועות
The festival of the giving of the Torah on the fiftieth day after Pesach, and once the festival of first fruits.
Shavuot is the one festival with no date of its own in the Torah: it falls seven weeks after the second day of Pesach, hence its name, "weeks". Counting those forty-nine days turns the Exodus into a preparation: freedom means something only if it leads to receiving the Torah.
The Torah calls it the feast of harvest and the day of first fruits; two loaves of new wheat were brought to the Temple, along with bikkurim carried up in procession from the villages. The sages added a second name—the time of the giving of our Torah, 6 Sivan 2448.
Today it is a festival of study: following a custom rooted in the Zohar and spread by the kabbalists of Tzfat, the night is spent learning. Megillat Ruth is read, and dairy foods are eaten.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Vayikra 23:15–21 — the counting of the seven weeks and the festival
- Shemot 19–20 — Sinai and the Ten Utterances
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Mishnah Bikkurim 3 — how the first fruits were carried up to Jerusalem
- Pesachim 68b — on Atzeret “it must also be yours” — the joy of the day the Torah was given
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 494 — the customs of Shavuot
Basis: tradition.