Why Shavuot is my favorite Jewish holiday

It's not just because of the cheesecake

I have a soft spot for minor Jewish holidays—they're set apart from day-to-day life, but not weighted down with expectations or responsibility. I don't need to go to synagogue, host a gathering, and/or spend the month beforehand in spiritual introspection. I can just eat some hamantaschen and get on with my day.

Shavuot, even by minor Jewish holiday standards, is especially low-key. In ancient times, it was one of three pilgrimage festivals, when the Israelites gathered at the Temple in Jerusalem. Timed to the first grain harvest of the season (in the Northern Hemisphere, late spring or early summer), Shavuot commemorates God giving the Torah to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai. In the modern era, there are only a handful of customs associated with the holiday: staying up all night to study the Torah (or for more liberal Jews, other Jewish or Jewish-adjacent texts or media); a public reading of the Book of Ruth; and eating dairy foods, especially cheesecake, blintzes, and dairy kugel.

If you know me well, it is completely unsurprising that I would be jazzed about a holiday that encourages dairy consumption. Ice cream is my favorite dessert, I love cheesecake, and I'm so serious about artisan cheese that I spent a weekend in New York attending a cheese boot camp. This year's Shavuot celebration will involve a miniature Basque cheesecake, cheese board, bagels slathered with cream cheese, and a savory kugel, at minimum.

However, my passion for Shavuot goes deeper than dairy. One of the things that drew me to Judaism was its intellectual depth, so a holiday involving learning highlights one of my favorite things about being Jewish. Instead of reading the Torah, I typically catch up on the Jewish podcasts in my listening queue and attend part of Judaism Unbound's ShavuotLIVE, a 24-hour marathon Zoom event with diverse speakers who delve into Judaism in all sorts of fascinating ways.

Another aspect of Shavuot that I value is that it is an especially convert-friendly holiday—the central text is the Book of Ruth, the story of Judaism's most famous convert. (I love the Book of Ruth so much that I chose Ruth as my Hebrew name.) The oft-quoted verse "For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God," is such an eloquent encapsulation of a person's decision to link their fate to that of the Jewish people. Converts are rarely acknowledged, much less centered, in organized Jewish life, so it feels validating to have a holiday that with a text celebrates us. Plus, since there are so few holiday traditions associated with Shavuot, it doesn't feel like you're missing out if you don't have a latke recipe from your bubbe or a bunch of Jewish family members to host for Seder.

But going even deeper than that, the appeal of Shavuot for me is what it commemorates. There is a famous midrash that all Jews—those who were there and every Jew since—stood at Mount Sinai and received the Torah.

What you think this means says a lot about your approach to Judaism. Mystical-leaning Jews tend to interpret it as indicating that every Jewish person's soul was at Mount Sinai, including those who were born as non-Jews and converted. I can't co-sign that belief, since it seems to imply predetermination and a supernaturally-guided world view that I don't necessarily hold. However, I respect that it is meaningful for many people. And to be completely honest, whenever someone tells me "our souls stood together at Sinai" as a way to acknowledge our shared Jewishness, it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling, even I don't hold that as the literal truth.

The interpretation of the "standing at Sinai" midrash that I tend to hear in progressive Jewish spaces is that receiving the Torah was not a one-off event that occurred in the Middle East thousands of years ago involving a particular set of books. Instead, there is an ongoing revelation of wisdom to every single Jew throughout time, perhaps guided by the divine, perhaps informed by each person's unique humanity. We were all metaphorically at Sinai because we all have Jewish wisdom to offer, whether we were contemporaries of Moses or are living in the United States in the 21st century. This interpretation reflects the decentralized, grassroots approach I take to Judaism. But for some reason, thinking about the ongoing revelation of wisdom doesn't give me same cozy glow I get from imagining everyone's souls standing next to each other.

The way I've come to think about the midrash stems from the block universe theory. According to that theory, our universe is a giant four-dimensional block of spacetime, containing all of the things that ever happen. The past, present, and future are all equally real. The revelation on Mount Sinai exists simultaneously along with every single Jew across spacetime. In a way, we're all there.

It's actually kind of strange that I spend so much time thinking about the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai, because I don't believe that it actually occurred. Outside of the Bible, there's no evidence the Exodus happened or that Moses existed as a historic figure. My conception of God is not of a being that hovers atop a mountain providing divine wisdom. I think of the Torah as literature that reveals far more about worldview of the people who wrote it than some eternal God-given truth, although some aspects of it certainly reverberate across the millennia.

But still, despite all that, I'm fixated by the idea of all Jews receiving the Torah. I think it's because more than anything else, it helps me wrap my head around the concept of the Jewish people—how people spread across the world, speaking different languages, and with wildly varying cultural traditions are nevertheless linked together. Across generations and geography, regardless of our particular level of observance or what faith we were born into, we somehow all stood at Sinai.