🌾Shavuot (Festival of Weeks)

About Shavuot (Festival of Weeks)

Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, the foundational moment of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. It is also an ancient harvest festival, marking the wheat harvest and the bringing of the first fruits to the Temple in antiquity. One of the three pilgrimage festivals alongside Passover and Sukkot, it carries deep significance despite lasting only a day or two.

A signature custom is the all-night study session known as Tikkun Leil Shavuot, in which people stay awake learning Torah through the night to symbolically prepare to receive it anew. Dairy foods — cheesecake, blintzes and other milk dishes — are eaten across many communities, and synagogues are decorated with flowers and greenery to evoke Mount Sinai in bloom. The Book of Ruth, with its harvest setting and themes of devotion, is read aloud.

Shavuot falls on the 6th of the Hebrew month of Sivan, exactly seven weeks after the second night of Passover — the counting of the Omer that gives the festival its name. Its Gregorian date shifts each year but always lands in late spring, usually May or June. Like all Jewish holidays it begins at sundown the evening before. Add Shavuot to your own page and the counter above shows exactly how long until it begins.