Why Not Shavuot?

Giving an overlooked holiday more love.

You know how your grandma doesn’t officially have a favorite grandchild, but deep down, you sort of know there’s a hierarchy?

This is what came to mind earlier this week, when I was in synagogue for Shavuot. (You really think I was going to go to services for Shavuot, and not find a place to mention it? Please!)

Shavuot is one of those Jewish holidays that doesn’t get nearly the attention of your Hanukkahs, your Passovers, your Yom Kippurs.

For Jews who, like me, live in New York City, you might only be reminded of Shavuot because the Department of Transportation suspends rules for alternate side parking, and you don’t have to move your car. Chag sameach, baby!

The New York City bureaucracy also provides another helpfully objective measure of Shavuot’s status. The city’s public schools are canceled on several Jewish holidays, but on Shavuot, they stay open.

So Shavuot is a big enough deal that you don’t have to repark your car, but not a big enough deal that they cancel school.

But doesn’t Shavuot deserve a little more love?

Shavuot is established in the Torah, after all, first in Exodus 34:22: “You shall observe the Feast of Weeks…” So it’s got legacy going for it. Given the span of Jewish history, even holidays that were established half a millennium ago are relative newcomers. Shavuot, though, is a truly ancient holiday.

But even in its seminal moment, you can see some of the issues with Shavuot. Feast of Weeks? What are we celebrating here again?

Shavuot means “weeks” in Hebrew. And Shavuot is celebrated seven weeks from Passover. None of which tells us anything about what the holiday today commemorates, which is the Jewish people receiving the Torah from God at Mount Sinai. Unquestionably a big deal, right? But from a brand perspective, this name is suboptimal. It’s like calling Thanksgiving “Eleven,” because it’s celebrated in the eleventh month of the year.

I also think Shavuot suffers because of this placement seven weeks after Passover. The holiday falls in sort of a tweener period in the secular Western calendar. Not quite spring, not quite summer. One day I may do a post about how one of the great mistakes in Western civilization was not adopting the Jewish calendar, and how it offers a much more logical way of organizing the year. But it’s not like I have any sway. Shavuot is staying in this spring/summer twilight zone.

Many Jewish holidays are also aided in their popularity by fun food associations. Hanukkah? Latkes and gelt! Rosh Hashanah? Apples and honey! Shavuot has… dairy! Cheesecake! Ricotta-filled blintzes!

Here again, though, some issues arise.

Is dairy all that fun to eat? Think of a cheese plate – those wedges are always pretty small. Even putting aside the modern-day scourge of lactose intolerance, dairy seems like something that should be done in moderation.

I do wonder, though, if a collective ambivalence about Shavuot in America reflects a deeper ambivalence, maybe about the central themes of the holiday itself. The notion of “God giving the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai” may strike a modern, materialist mind as implausible, at best. That modern, materialist mind also won’t have to look hard in the text for passages that feel uncomfortable, obsolete, or just strange.

And I’m not here to argue that such reactions are invalid. I will say, though, that such reactions aren’t new. There’s a story in the Talmud that God held a mountain over the heads of the people at Mount Sinai, and threatened to drop it on them if they didn’t accept the Torah. As always, the Jewish tradition speaks with many voices about such moments. But I think the implication that Torah is something even the Jews at Mount Sinai weren’t immediately comfortable with is useful for us today.

Plus, whatever one’s familiarity with or connection to or affection (or lack of affection) for the Torah might be – there’s no denying that it has held the Jewish people together, as a people, for thousands of years. When we didn’t have a homeland, or a dynasty, or a temple, or a shared native tongue, but we did have our histories and laws and traditions, compiled, first and foremost, in the Torah. And that proved sufficient.

So, Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks – why not?

It might never be as massive as Hanukkah or as raucous as Purim or draw the crowds of Yom Kippur.

But maybe its peculiar, particular niche is exactly what makes it worth celebrating, and with more than a day off from moving the car.