Shavuot or in the Greek Pentecost is a Jewish festival , which falls on the evening of 19th May to 21st May. It is both an agricultural festival and the time which we remember the giving of Torah to the Jewish people at mount Sinai.
There are several traditions :
1. Houses are fully decked out with flowers and greenery
2. We stay up all night to study Torah
3. We also read through the book of Ruth
4. We have our customary festive meals, always including wine. Ashkenazi tend to eat just dairy products. Sephardim eat meat for the evening meal and something dairy for the daytime meal as a compromise , which in a way reflects the difference between Ashkenazi rigidity and Sephardi leniency
5. Special foods are from dairy products. In the Ashkenazi world that would be cheese cake and blintzes. Sephardim are predictably more exotic , with cheese sambusak, kelsonnes , atayef, kahee and a cake called the 7 heavens , which is 7 layers of cake !!
6. In Ashkenazi synagogues the Aramaic poem Akdamut is sung: Sephardim - who have, as we all know have no concept of time , but do have a deeply ingrained concept of hospitality culture "come in for a chat " after coming round for a specific reason , involves at minimum a coffee (or alcohol in the evening) ,sweets and light food, followed by some gentle small talk, politics and more plates of snacks , after about an hour you get to the purpose of the visit - instead have a poem Azharot which goes through all 613 Mitzvot .
Happy Shavuot !
No comments:
Post a Comment