13 Facts About Shavuot

Shavuot, or Shavuos in some Ashkenazi usage, commonly known in English as the Feast of Weeks, is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan.

On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot, they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God.

One of the biblically ordained Three Pilgrimage Festivals, Shavuot is traditionally celebrated in Israel for one day, where it is a public holiday, and for two days in the diaspora.

Shavuot is not explicitly named in the Bible as the day on which the Torah was revealed by God to the Israelite nation at Mount Sinai, although this is commonly considered to be its main significance.

Shavuot was thus the concluding festival of the grain harvest, just as the eighth day of Sukkot was the concluding festival of the fruit harvest.

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The other reason given for the reference ?Aseret is that just as Shemini ?Aseret brings the Festival of Succoth to a "close", in the same respect, Shavuot brings The Festival of Passover to its actual "close".

Since Shavuot occurs fifty days after Passover, Hellenistic Jews gave it the name "Pentecost".

Shavuot was the first day on which individuals could bring the Bikkurim to the Temple in Jerusalem.

Nowadays in the post-Temple era, Shavuot is the only biblically ordained holiday that has no specific laws attached to it other than usual festival requirements of abstaining from creative work.

Some synagogues decorate the bimah with a canopy of flowers and plants so that it resembles a chuppah, as Shavuot is mystically referred to as the day the matchmaker brought the bride to the chuppah to marry the bridegroom ; the ketubah was the Torah.

In secular agricultural communities in Israel, such as most kibbutzim and moshavim, Shavuot is celebrated as a harvest and first-fruit festival including a wider, symbolic meaning of joy over the accomplishments of the year.

Since the Torah does not specify the actual day on which Shavuot falls, differing interpretations of this date have arisen in both traditional and non-traditional Jewish circles.

In practice, Shavuot is observed on the sixth day of Sivan in Israel and a second day is added in the Jewish diaspora.