40 Fun Facts About Shavuot

Historians have suggested the spread of which drink through the Ottoman Empire made all-night Shavuot study popular?

Coffee gave kabbalists and their followers a way to stay alert until sunrise, when the night of Torah study gives way to morning prayers.

Which dessert is a signature Shavuot dish in Ashkenazi Jewish homes, often served at the festival's daytime meal?

Cheesecake leads a dairy menu with several explanations, one being that the Israelites, newly bound by kosher slaughter laws, had no meat ready to eat.

A midrash says all-night Shavuot study makes up for the Israelites doing what on the morning the Torah was given?

Oversleeping is the charge: the Israelites turned in early to be rested for the great day and had to be woken, with God already waiting on the mountain.

Besides crops and machinery, what do many Israeli kibbutzim show off to the community at Shavuot harvest festivals?

The year's babies are paraded with the produce, because secular kibbutzim recast Shavuot as a celebration of everything the community achieved in twelve months.

Shavuot falls 50 days after Passover begins; the festival's Hebrew name is the plural of the word for what?

Weeks is the meaning, because the Torah gives the festival no calendar date, only an instruction to mark off seven of them after Passover.

Which biblical king, a great-grandson of Ruth, is traditionally said to have been born and to have died on Shavuot?

David is remembered on Shavuot with psalms and a memorial candle, and his family tree closes the Book of Ruth that is read on the festival.

Jewish mystical tradition pictures the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai on Shavuot as which kind of ceremony?

A wedding, with God as groom, Israel as bride and the Torah as the marriage contract; some synagogues dress the reading platform as a bridal canopy.

Which famous passage from Exodus is read aloud from the Torah scroll in synagogues on the first morning of Shavuot?

The Ten Commandments are read because rabbinic tradition dates the revelation at Sinai to this day, though the Bible itself never links the festival to it.

Which Christian festival, described in the Acts of the Apostles, shares its Greek name with the Jewish Shavuot?

Pentecost means fiftieth, the name Greek-speaking Jews gave Shavuot, and Acts sets the first Christian one in Jerusalem on that very festival.

In the Hebrew Bible, Shavuot is the festival that marks which crop's harvest in the Land of Israel?

Wheat ripened last of the grains, so Shavuot closed a harvest season that had opened with barley at Passover.

In the Book of Ruth, read on Shavuot, which widowed mother-in-law does Ruth refuse to abandon?

Naomi had lost her husband and both sons in a foreign land, and urged her daughters-in-law to go back to their own families.

Which landowner, a relative of her late husband's family, does Ruth marry in the biblical book read on Shavuot?

Boaz first notices Ruth working in his field and praises her loyalty, and their son Obed went on to be the grandfather of a king.

The Book of Ruth, read in synagogues on Shavuot, is set mainly in which Judean town at harvest time?

Bethlehem is the ancestral home the two widows return to, arriving just as the barley harvest begins.

Shavuot and Passover are two of Judaism's Three Pilgrimage Festivals; which autumn festival is the third?

Sukkot completes the trio on which ancient Israelites travelled to the Temple in Jerusalem, each festival tied to a different harvest.

Which Jerusalem holy site drew more than 200,000 Jews on Shavuot 1967, days after Israel captured the Old City?

Western Wall access had been closed to Jews since 1948, so the Shavuot crowd was the first mass Jewish pilgrimage there in nineteen years.

Which rolled pancakes filled with sweetened cheese are an Ashkenazi Jewish favourite served on Shavuot?

Blintzes are among the dishes Jewish cooks adopted from their Christian neighbours, and their name comes through Yiddish from a Slavic word for a pancake.

Which Shavuot custom did the Vilna Gaon cancel, saying it too closely resembled Christian holiday practice?

Decorating with trees was dropped by his followers, but flowers and branches remain common, recalling a legend that Mount Sinai bloomed for the giving of the Torah.

The Hebrew word for milk has a numerical value matching which stretch of time Moses spent on Mount Sinai?

Forty days and nights is how long he stayed before bringing down the Torah, and the match is one of several reasons given for Shavuot's dairy meals.

Which Jewish movement made Shavuot the day for teenagers' confirmation ceremonies, held before the open Torah ark?

Reform Judaism created confirmation in the 1800s, loosely modelled on the church rite, and tied it to Shavuot as the day Israel accepted the Torah.

Shavuot falls on the sixth day of which Hebrew month, the third starting from the spring month of Nisan?

Sivan's sixth day is when most Talmudic sages placed the giving of the Torah, though Rabbi Jose ben Halafta argued for the seventh.

Which offering, called bikkurim in Hebrew, could farmers start bringing to the Jerusalem Temple on Shavuot?

First fruits gave Shavuot one of its biblical names, and each farmer recited a set declaration on handing them to the priest.

The offerings farmers brought from Shavuot onward came only from the Seven Species; which crop is one of them?

Pomegranates sit on the list in Deuteronomy beside figs, grapes, olives, dates and two grains, and the whole set is traditionally eaten at Shavuot.

The two loaves offered in the Temple on Shavuot were unusual among grain offerings because they contained what?

Leaven was rare in Temple sacrifices, which makes the Shavuot loaves a deliberate counterpoint to the unleavened bread of Passover.

In a midrash retold on Shavuot, whom does God accept as guarantors that the Torah will be kept?

Their children stand surety for the Torah's future in the story, which is why many parents make a point of bringing youngsters to hear the Shavuot reading.

Ruth, whose story is read on Shavuot, is held up in Jewish tradition as the model of which religious act?

Converting to Judaism is how the rabbis read her pledge to her mother-in-law, and several laws for accepting newcomers are drawn from its wording.

Ruth, the heroine of the biblical book read on Shavuot, came from which neighbouring kingdom of ancient Israel?

Moab is where a family from Judah had settled and where both of its sons married local women, one of them Ruth.

In the Book of Ruth, read on Shavuot, how does Ruth find food for herself and her mother-in-law?

Gleaning meant gathering what the harvesters left behind, and it is how Ruth comes to spend the rest of the season working a kinsman's land.

Akdamut, a 90-line poem chanted in Ashkenazi synagogues on Shavuot morning, is written in which language?

Aramaic was once used to translate each verse of the Torah reading aloud, and the poem began as an introduction to that running translation.

Which memorial prayer for the dead do Ashkenazi synagogues recite on Shavuot and on three other holidays each year?

Yizkor follows the Torah reading, and where Shavuot runs two days it waits for the second; Yom Kippur and the end of Passover have it too.

Which set of praise psalms, Psalms 113 to 118, is recited in full in synagogue on the morning of Shavuot?

Hallel is sung complete on Shavuot, whereas on the later days of Passover a shortened version drops parts of two psalms.

The prophetic reading on the first day of Shavuot is which prophet's vision of a divine chariot by the river Chebar?

Ezekiel saw the chariot arrive in a storm cloud from the north, a passage that became the centre of an early school of Jewish mysticism.

In the semi-mourning period that leads up to Shavuot, custom forbids live music, dancing parties and which other act?

Haircuts are avoided in memory of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva said to have died in these days, and many communities lift the ban on the 33rd day.

Karaite Jews reckon 50 days to Shavuot from the Sabbath within Passover, so their festival always lands on which day?

Sunday follows from taking the Torah's phrase about the day after the Sabbath literally, as the Sadducees also did in Temple times.

Which name, meaning a holding back, does the Talmud use for Shavuot as the close of the Passover season?

Atzeret casts Shavuot as the finale of Passover, in the same way that an eighth day of assembly rounds off the autumn pilgrimage festival.

Which Jewish community traditionally called Shavuot by a name meaning the festival of flowers?

Persian Jews knew it as the Mo'ed of Flowers, in keeping with the widespread custom of filling homes and synagogues with blooms and leafy branches.

Which rabbi, author of the Shulchan Arukh law code, hosted a celebrated all-night Shavuot vigil in the Ottoman Empire?

Joseph Caro and his fellow kabbalists reported that a heavenly voice spoke during the night, praising their study and urging them to settle in the Land of Israel.

A verse likening the Torah to milk and honey, cited for Shavuot dairy meals, comes from which biblical book?

Song of Songs supplies the verse, credited to King Solomon, in which the rabbis heard the Torah described as sweetness resting under the tongue.

In the Book of Ruth, read on Shavuot, which sister-in-law of Ruth turns back to her own people?

Orpah chose to go home while Ruth stayed, and Oprah Winfrey was named after her, the spelling changing because people kept mispronouncing it.

The Book of Ruth, read on Shavuot, opens by setting its story in the era of which leaders of Israel?

The judges set the scene in the book's opening line, and its closing lines look ahead by tracing a family tree down to a future king.

Which small Ashkenazi dumplings, usually meat-filled and served in chicken soup, are stuffed with cheese for Shavuot?

Kreplach also appear before the Yom Kippur fast, when their meat filling wrapped in white dough is read as severity wrapped in mercy.