Rabbi’s Update 5/30/2025

Dear Friends:

Shavuot, which begins this Sunday night and extends through Monday and Tuesday,  is in many ways an “orphaned holiday.” It’s one of the three Biblical “chagim” or “pilgrimage festivals” when everyone who could do so was supposed to go up to the Temple in Jerusalem. In importance therefore it ranks with Pesach and Sukkot/Shemini Atzeret and Rosh Hashanah, (and outranks Chanukah and Purim) yet I would venture a guess that it is less widely observed than any of these holidays.

Why is this the case? I think there are a few reasons:

1. It lacks distinctive and memorable rituals. Pesach has the seder and eating matzah, Sukkot has lulav and etrog and building a Sukkah, Chanukah has the menorah and dreidels and latkes and in many families gifts, Purim has the Megillah and noisemakers and hamentashen. 

2. A lot of people don’t really know what it’s about. You don’t need to know a lot of Hebrew to know that the word “Shavuot” means “weeks,” but the holiday is commonly referred to as the day the Torah was given -- nothing about “weeks”. But isn’t there another holiday that also celebrates the Torah? And that holiday, Simchat Torah, has Torah right in its name!

3. Hebrew School usually ends right before Memorial Day and is therefore over before Shavuot occurs. This means there are no Shavuot programs in the school. And if your Hebrew school curriculum was generally geared to the next holiday coming up, it’s quite possible that you never learned about Shavuot in Hebrew school at all.

So a brief primer about Shavuot:

1. The word “Shavuot” does indeed mean “weeks” and it refers to the counting of seven weeks (“Counting the Omer”) between Passover and Shavuot.

2. Biblically it was the holiday of bringing first fruits to the Temple.

3. Because the Torah commandment to count seven weeks and then observe Shavuot says that they must be “seven complete weeks”, it is generally the practice not to start Shavuot before dark. I.e. seven complete weeks, not “six weeks, six days, and 23 hours.”

4. The Torah does not claim to have been given on Shavuot but the rabbis, by counting up the days between various encampments mentioned in the Torah, deduced that Shavuot was the day on which the revelation at Mt. Sinai occurred. Eventually the holiday was refocused around revelation rather than agriculture.

The main custom of Shavuot is the practice of staying up all night to study Torah. There are all kinds of kabbalistic reasons for this which are beyond the scope of this brief introduction. We will not study through the night but we will have a brief study session after mincha and then have our Shavuot evening service at 9 pm on Sunday.

It’s also customary to eat dairy foods on Shavuot although some Orthodox authorities decry this custom and insist it is mandatory to eat meat for every Jewish holiday. The reasons for eating dairy are unclear but a couple of different theories are adduced:

1. Before the Torah was given our ancestors didn’t perform kosher slaughter so when they returned home from Sinai, they had to throw away any meat they had and all they could eat was dairy.

2. The sin of the Golden Calf occurred slightly after the revelation at Sinai and eating meat reminds us of the Golden Calf.

One of the customary foods is blintzes which, besides being dairy, resemble the shape of the Torah scroll (if you put two of them next to each other and use your imagination).

I hope that this has added to your understanding of Shavuot and that we will see you for our study session Sunday night, services Monday, and services Tuesday morning led by Hazzan Komrad and myself which include Yizkor.

As a reminder, I am having drop-in hours on Thursday afternoons from 2 to 4 at the shul. For my drop-in hours, you do not need to make an appointment -- that would negate the whole point of drop-in hours -- but I’d urge you to check and make sure I am there regardless as sometimes there are unavoidable pastoral or other emergencies which might take me away from the building.

As always, if I can do anything for you or you need to talk, please contact me at rabbi@kehilatshalom.org or 301-977-0768 rather than through the synagogue office. I am happy to meet you at the synagogue by appointment; if you want to speak with me it’s best to make an appointment rather than assuming I will be there when you stop by. 

Additionally, if you know of a Kehilat Shalom congregant or another member of our Jewish community who could use a phone call, please let me know.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Charles L. Arian