CBI Blogs

For the past few weeks we have been counting the omer every Friday night during services. Every year from Passover to Shavuot we count upward to 49, night by night. When the Temple was in use the people would bring a sheaf of wheat every day to the priests, and that would serve as their tally mark each evening. When they reached their goal, they knew that the next night would be Shavuot, the festival of weeks, also known as chag hakatzir (“festival of reaping” from Exodus 23:16), or chag habikurim (“festival of first fruits” from Numbers 28:26).

From its names we can understand that Shavuot was a harvest festival for our agrarian ancestors, but by the time the Talmud was synthesized it was known to be holiday during which we celebrated receiving Torah from Mount Sinai. Through math that I cannot explain (because it’s math), the rabbis calculate that it would have taken the Israelites seven weeks to go from the exodus celebrated on Passover to Sinai, which coincidentally would have been the 6th of Sivan, the very day we are told to celebrate Shavuot (Exodus 19:1 and B. Shabbat 86b-88a). The modern celebration of Shavuot includes celebrating receiving Torah by studying it all night (a practice call Tikkun Leil Shavuot), eating dairy products like cheesecake and blintzes (because the Israelites were told not to eat meat while they were at Sinai), and remembering our loved ones who have died, especially in the past year (a practice called Yizkor, which happens four times a year).

As you may have seen in Rabbi Levy’s email this week, we are celebrating Shavuot as a community a little differently than usual this year. Instead of a morning yizkor service, we will hold a combination healing, Shavuot, and yizkor service on Erev Shavuot, June 1 at 5pm. We will have a little cheesecake oneg, celebrate receiving Torah, and remember our loved ones with yizkor. This will give us all time to grab a bite for dinner to nourish ourselves on our way to Tikkun Leil Shavuot at Agues Achim, which begins at 8pm with a panel called, “Shalem: Whole Souls, Shared Torah,” featuring a nutritionist and a social worker. After that there will be teachings offered all night, including one at 9pm that I will be teaching (a reprise of our “Truman Show” session of Reel Judaism). There are some very interesting topics that will be discussed, and it should be a wonderful evening for all.

We hope you will join us on Sunday evening, experience receiving Torah in a way we have never done before at CBI, and enjoy some time with other community members (and some cheesecake!)