Shavuos, the last major holiday of the year, is coming up this week (Thursday night through Shabbat). On Shavuos, we received the Torah on Mount Sinai, and we celebrate this holiday by hearing the Ten Commandments in the synagogue (even little babies, if possible, should be brought to shul), eating dairy foods, and reading the book of Ruth. Many have the custom of staying up all night in the synagogue to learn before Shavuos, to ensure that they will be wide awake for the reading of the Ten Commandments.
Around Shavuos, the weather starts getting warmer. In Israel, during the times the Holy Temple stood, the Jews brought the offering of their first fruits to the Temple. This involved a grand procession and a joyful celebration. Since the third Temple has yet to be rebuilt, we don’t actually celebrate this aspect of Shavuos, but it is a good idea to keep it in mind when eating fruit, and it increases the joy of the holiday.
Another custom is to eat a dairy meal, including blintzes, cheesecake and other traditional foods on the first afternoon or morning after praying in the synagogue. My mother-in-law makes kreplach, or dumplings, stuffed with cheese, and a friend of mine makes lasagna before the holiday and warms it up in a dairy oven she turns on before the holiday. There are many explanations for this custom. One of them is that, when the Torah was given, the Jews realized that they needed to slaughter their meat in a certain way. Since they still were not well-versed in these laws, they ate dairy to be on the safe side until they could learn the skill of kosher slaughter. I guess the lesson behind this custom is always to play it safe!
At our synagogue, after the Shavuos service, everyone goes outside and eats cheesecake and ice cream. The tables are filled with chocolate marble cheesecake, almond cheesecake, cherry cheesecake, and it disappears quite quickly! It’s a day that even adults feel like little kids. After the dairy meal in shul, we wait a certain amount of time, and then we go home and eat a meat meal.