Shavuot Yizkor 7 Sivan 5767 / May 24, 2007

Chaim Yankel came home from shule and announced to his wife that this Shavuos he wanted blintzes, just like those wealthy Jews. “Every year they go on and on and describe how delectable their Yom Tov blintzes are. This year I want you to make blintzes.”

His wife Sahrah Rochel readily agreed. She found the flour and the water, blended them together to make batter and then stopped. “Chaim, the recipe calls for cottage cheese and we don’t have any cheese. What should I do?” Chaim Yankel told her to continue without the cottage cheese. “Dear,” she continued, “it also calls for honey and raisins and walnuts and we don’t have any of those ingredients either.” “No matter, I’m sure that what you make will be delicious.” Sahrah Rochel continued: “The recipe also calls for some cinnamon and a little vanilla and we don’t any of them, either.” “Just do the best you can. I can’t wait to eat your blintzes.”

And so Sahrah Rochel took the batter, poured it in to a pan and lightly fried the pancakes, then folded them like blintzes and served them to her husband. He eagerly bit into them. After a few bites he looked up and said: “I don’t know what those rich people think is so special about blintzes.”

W hen most people think of Shavuot they think of dairy foods, usually cheese blintzes and cheesecake. (Neither, by the way, are among foods I like: now a nice cheese soufflé and some Boston Crème pie are nice alternatives, though not vetted by my cardiologist.) Where did we get the idea that we have to eat milchigs on Shavuot? I dare say that you would be hard-pressed to find a passage in the Bible that explicitly says something to the effect that on the 50^th day of the Omer, which is the festival of Shavuot, you shall eat cheesecake. Okay, they didn’t have cheesecake back then: but there is no Biblical injunction to eat dairy. There isn’t even a Talmudic passage that can be cited as proof. I have come across 7 or 8 different explanations for why we eat milchigs on Shavuot, all of later origin. The fact that there are so many reasons proffered suggests that the custom evolved and there were various efforts retroactively to justify the practice. In fact, until recently Sephardim didn’t know from this custom, let alone observe it. They were content to cite the Rambam, Maimonides, who taught that Yom Tov is marked with wine and meat. There was no dairy exception for Shavuot. (In fact, Rambam doesn’t even have a separate chapter for this holiday in his book on seasonal celebrations.) The earliest mention of the practice is from a book called the Kol Bo, attributed to Rabbi Aharon HaKohen of Lunel, (which was in southern France) who wrote the book about 700 years ago. There he writes: “There is an established custom to eat honey and milk of the festival of Shabu’ot since the Torah is compared to honey and milk as it written honey and milk beneath your tongue.”

Other explanations developed over the centuries. A common one is: once the Jews accepted the Torah, they became obligated by the laws of kashrut, but since they weren’t yet familiar with the laws regarding slaughter, they had to eat dairy. Another possibility: The Torah promises the Jewish people a land flowing with milk and honey. Dairy meals recall this lyrical description of Israel. A third explanation: spring time was when an abundance of diary products were available, as this was the time of year when new lambs and calves would be suckling. And finally one more: the Hebrew word for milk is chalav, which in gematria adds up to 40, the number of days that Moses was on Mount Sinai. As you can hear, the explanations are very weak, because the Biblical basis is really non-existent. Even the suggestion that the passage in Exodus juxtaposing the bringing of the first fruits with the passage about not seething a kid in its mother’s milk, as proof of the origins of dairy on Shavuot, a suggestion offered by Moses Isserles, the Ashkenazi half of the Shulchan Aruch, seems like a major stretch.

But Isserles offers another explanation and along with it a practice which most are unfamiliar. In commemoration of the two loaves of bread set out on this holiday in Temple times, we are to have two different meals, each with its own loaf of bread. First there was a dairy meal, with a milchig loaf, and then a fleishig meal with its own loaf of bread. No one I know follows this practice.

Clearly, the custom at least in Ashkenazi circles may derive from the desire to make something special of Shavuot, to make more than just a belated postscript to Passover. (In fact, it is sometimes called Atzeret, reminding us of Sukkot’s postscript of Shemini Atzeret. I guess this should be called Chamishimi Atzeret.) Similarly the practice of the 16^th mystics of engaging in study all night, Tikkun Layl Shavuot, was a way of adding a ritual to a holiday devoid of its own special celebration, lacking the seder and matzah of Passover and the sukkah and the lulav and etrog of Sukkot. There was in essence an innate sense of creativity within the Jewish world, at least in Europe. When the early Reform movement created Confirmation and placed it on Shavuot they were attempting to invest the holiday with significance for themselves and their progeny. Here at Beth-El, we set aside the eve of Shavuot for consecration of our Aleph students, honoring them as they finish their first year of Hebrew School and present them with a siddur.

What remains for us? The fact that you are in shule today means that Shavuot still calls out to your neshama, to your soul. The challenge is to invest this holiday and the rest of the Jewish calendar with meaning more than eating of some cheesecake or blintzes or some other dairy treat. Decades ago, Professor Louis Finkelstein suggested that the Pharisees, who in his view were urbanites, re-crafted Shavuot. As city-dwellers they were disconnected from the practice of bringing the first fruits and so they transformed the holiday—ultimately saving it for later generations—by associating it with the revelation at Sinai. With what enduring power are we investing Shavuot? Is it a time to remind ourselves of the importance of study of Torah? Or is it a time to re-commit ourselves to God and the commandments? Or is there yet another transformative element yet to be established that will appeal to us?

For those whom we recall today at Yizkor, Shavuot continued to have an enduring appeal. I doubt it was only the opportunity to have blintzes. It was for them a sign of connection with our faith and its heritage. Let us remember their commitments and absorb them as their legacy to us and the future.

Chag Sameach.